Gunjan Saxena Poem by Saroj Padhi

A father's daughter
with a dream to fly,
a desire to sit as air
on wings of butterfly
and like a shooting star,
touch the horizon of the sky

With a vision she grew up
with a conviction to fly
not perturbed
by askance in others' eye,

she had the colossal prop
of a solid father who believed
and made her believe:
'a pilot has no gender';

the long ordeal,
the system hostile
couldn't nip her vision,
she walked tall
with head in the sky,
as the tough Kargil girl
steered the fighter jet
into dangerous combat zones
rescuing fellow soldiers
and thro her grit and spirit
rewrote the history
of conviction in new letters
poohpoohing the myth of genders.