A still from Rang De Basanti

Mumbai, April 26: She inspired Rang De Basanti, but Kavita Gadgil, the mother of a pilot who died in a real-life MiG-21 crash, has a different script for her story.

In the blockbuster, Aamir Khan and his gang had shot the defence minister to avenge their friend’s death in a MiG-21 crash. But Kavita will not shed blood to wash away her tears.

Instead, she will fulfil a dream she has been nursing since her 27-year-old son, Flight Lieutenant Abhijit Gadgil, died in 2001. Kavita, 55, and her husband Captain Anil Gadgil ? also a pilot ? will launch Jeet Aerospace Institute at Pune’s Symbiosis Institute on Sunday.

The project will have a Bollywood touch. Actor Nana Patekar is set to inaugurate the institute, a homage to all pilots who have died unsung in peacetime operations.

“April 26 would have been Abhijit’s 32nd birthday, and what better gift than this could I possibly give him,” Kavita said on telephone from Pune where her youngest son, Kedar, lives.

The institute will be built in a phased manner in the foothills of Sinhagad Fort in Pune. The first phase will consist of a memorial to pilots and a generic flight simulator. “We have purchased a one-acre plot. This phase is expected to cost Rs 2.5 crore. We will put Rs 50 lakh from our kitty and hope to raise the rest with the help of those who share our vision,” Kavita said.

Her long-term plans include a full-fledged aviation institute that will lay stress on air safety. The institute would have an aero-modelling facility, a research and reference library, certificate courses in aviation and a career guidance counselling centre for would-be pilots.

Kavita hopes the second step would be Abhijit’s next birthday gift.

“Eventually, we need five acres of land and the project cost would touch around Rs 10 crore. Usually, pilots get to use the flight simulator only after they join the career. But, here we want the simulator to orient and encourage people to join an aviation and services career.”

The Gadgils have paid an advance of Rs 10 lakh to a Bangalore-based company for building the flight simulator at a cost of Rs 40 lakh.

The institute, Kavita believes, is the logical conclusion to the one-woman movement that she has been carrying on for the last five years against the MiG-21 that has claimed the lives of scores of young pilots.

“I owe it to those who died in air crashes and to the serving officers. If we don’t remember them, they would just become another statistic in the closed files piling up at the air headquarters,” said Kavita, who set up the Abhijit Air Safety Foundation a year after her son’s death.

Abhijit was on a routine night sortie at Rajashthan’s Suratgarh air force base on September 17, 2001, when his MiG-21 went down with him.

The defence ministry blamed “pilot error”, which prompted Kavita to demand that the vintage aircraft ? they had earned the sobriquet “flying coffins” ? be grounded till a probe establishes the exact cause of the crashes.