By Rajat Pandit

Tessy Thomas can take a bow as 'Agni Putri,' or the daughter of fire, proving as she has her mettle as the project director of the 3,500-km new-generation Agni-IV missile that was successfully tested, November 15.

Having systematically broken gender barriers in the decidedly male preserve of strategic weapons and nuclear-capable ballistic missiles over the last two decades, does she still feel out of place? "No, not at all. Science has no gender. I have five-six women working in my team," the 48-year-old scientist in the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) of India's Ministry of Defence, said.

There are around 20 other women scientists working on the Agni program, but Hyderabad-based Thomas was the first to become the Project Director of an Agni system in 2008. She was a little down and out last December, when Agni-IV's earlier avtaar Agni-II-Prime plunged into the Bay of Bengal barely 30 seconds into its parabolic trajectory.

"It was a failure but not a complete failure. We were perplexed but we got lot of support and encouragement...it motivated us to work harder," she said a day after basking in the glory of the previous day's successful Agni-IV test.

The team led by Thomas, at Wheelers' Island off the Odisha coast, prepared, fired and tracked the nuclear-capable missile as it attained a height of 900-km and then splashed down near the pre-designated target in the Bay of Bengal over 3,000-km away. "Next, we have to do Agni-V," she said.

That may well be so but what got her started in the esoteric arena. Her fascination for "rockets" began with the Apollo moon missions when in school at Alappuzha in Kerala. "Then, there were rockets being launched from Thumba (the earlier space launching station). From childhood, I was fascinated with science and mathematics," she said.

A B.Tech from Thrissur Engineering College, Kozhikode, and M.Tech from Pune-based Defence Institute of Advanced Technologies, she was selected for "a guided-weapon course" being offered by DRDO. Her missile sage began soon after.

"Dr (A P J Abdul) Kalam [said to be the Father of India's missile program who later became the President of India] was my original guru. He was my Director. I have been with the Agni program since 1988...I have designed the guidance programs for all the Agni missiles," she said. From the original "missile man" to the new "missile woman," things have indeed come full circle.

[Pandit wrote this report for the Times of India.]