WHEN Mrs. N. Valarmathi became a house-hold name in Tamil Nadu’s Ariyalur town, she actually was confused to some extent. She would not know why people were showering upon her so much adulation. For, she had taken her work as the Project Director of RISAT-1 satellite’s successful launch as a matter of professional routine, not realising in the least that her able leadership had catapulted the country onto a new horizon of space technology. “That is what I have been doing -- working diligently for years. Nothing else mattered, you know!”, she said. But Mrs. N. Valarmathi has been one of those iconic scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The entire community of space scientists regards her in highest esteem. Young scientists vie with one another to be able to find a space in a team led by her. Such is the magnetic quality of her unassuming leadership.

 

For any lay person, she may appear to be a woman casually moving around in ISRO facilities, dressed mostly in South Indian cotton or silk sarees. But in her heart is the burning ambition to help India become a space superpower, and in her head is a treasure-house of scientifically feasible ideas to pursue her goal. Of course, Mrs. N. Valarmathi is not a feminist by any standard. But she believes in the innate power of womanhood. “I would say, all women are equally capable, and they all have a very good potential; it should be utilised properly,” she says without much fuss. In her early life and subsequent career in space science, Mrs. N. Valarmathi has had two main attributes that have taken her to such a great height -- dedication and hard work, besides, of course, her scientific acumen in electronics and communications. Of a different stuff has Mrs. N . Valarmathi been made. No matter her humble beginning, she often believed that only the limitless sky (literally) could be her limit. Then came a very proud moment -- she became the first woman to get the very prestigious Dr. A.P,.J. Abdul Kalam Award instituted by the Tamil Nadu Government. Even at that moment of personal glory, Mrs. N. Valarmathi was almost nonchalant in a way. She hurried to express her sense of gratitude to her people at home and at workplace. “I would never have been able to make such an achievement possible”, she insisted. She was in a great hurry to pass the credit of her success to everybody else other than herself. Of course, this does not surprise her banker husband Mr. G. Vasudevan.

 

“She is like that only”, he says smilingly. During her years as a student of Bachelor of Engineering in electronics and communications, at the Government College of Technology in Coimbatore, or her subsequent time pursuing her Master’s degree at Anna University, all the young N. Valarmathi knew about herself was that she had to work her way up as she had no godfather at any time. Then came the job opening at ISRO in 1984 -- from which point on, the young scientist never looked back. At ISRO, she was part of the teams that worked on prestigious and high-grade projects such as INSAT 2A, IRSI 1, IRSI D, TES. She also formed Agni V’s leadership team -- typically without fuss, without any airs. During this actual work, there also has been much research work on 10 major tasks which earned Mrs. N. Valarmathi as many as 22 citations, and 300-plus references (or ‘reads’ in research terminology). It is not possible to imagine by merely looking at Mrs. N. Valarmathi that this simple-looking woman with bright eyes embodies within her so much of science, so much of burning nationalist ambition. This is her story -- which we need to tell one another.