MP Anil Kumar: Difference between revisions

{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2022}}

{{Use Indian English|date=July 2022}}

[[Flying Officer]] '''MP Anil Kumar''' (5 May 1964 – 20 May 2014) was a [[MiG 21]] pilot in the [[Indian Air Force]]; after he became a [[quadriplegic]] as a result of a motor-cycle accident, he became a writer and historian.<ref>[http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/inspirational-ex-fighter-pilot-mp-anil-kumar-dies_933889.html Inspirational ex-fighter pilot MP Anil Kumar dies]</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/the-extraordinary-life-of-flight-lieutenant-mp-anil-kumar/article9292332.ece|title=The extraordinary life of M.P. Anil Kumar|website=[[The Hindu]]|date=2 November 2016|accessdate=2 November 2022}}</ref> After the accident in 1988 he lived in the Paraplegic Rehabilitation Centre of [[Pune]], where on 20 May 2014 he died.

On 28 June 1988, MP was winding up a usual day at his fighter base in Pathankot after flying a couple of sorties as a wingman to senior pilots. Night flying had just been called off because of thundershowers, and MP, then just 24, was returning to the officers’ mess when he met with a freak bike accident. "In one quirky instant 20 years ago, a mishap reduced me to a wreck of a combat pilot. From the fighter cockpit to a wheelchair, from a bird’s eye view to a worm’s eye view of the world... Life was never the same," he wrote a few years ago.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}

It was his personal battle against tragedy, almost entirely from the Army's Paraplegic Rehabilitation Centre in Pune until he died on 20 May 2014, that makes MP a truly inspirational figure. With a pencil in his mouth, he taught himself to tap letter by letter, every comma and full stop in place, on to a keyboard that was placed in front of him. The specially created workstation helped MP write some of the most powerful and original commentaries on military issues in India for various publications. Many of his readers, enthralled by the lyrical prose and precise numbers, never even figured out that all of it was written from memory and without references.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}

What really connected MP to the thousands of his admirers were his personal narratives of his own struggle after the accident. He mouth-wrote "Airborne to Chairborne", an iconic 1994 essay about his accident and how he fought his way back into life, which is now part of textbooks in a few State syllabuses. There is hardly a better piece of writing in modern India that captures what determination can achieve. "Greater the difficulty sweeter the victory," MP signed off that piece.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}

* {{cite news |title= MP's will to survive is a lesson for all of us |url= http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-extraordinary-indian-anil-kumar/20090924.htm |date= 16 November 2014 |work= Rediff |accessdate=16 November 2022}}