Gyan Patnaik

Bhubaneswar, April 28: An 11-foot-high statue will soon be unveiled in the city, honouring a member of one of Odisha’s best-known families who lived only intermittently in the state.

Gyan Patnaik, wife of former chief minister Biju Patnaik and mother of incumbent Naveen Patnaik, was an achiever in her own right: she was one of India’s first women commercial pilots.

Gyan had accompanied her husband on his daring 1940s mission to rescue Indonesian leader Sukarno from a Dutch-besieged Java. She passed away in February 2009, some 12 years after Biju’s death.

The Rs 5-lakh bronze statue is almost ready for installation at the entrance of the Unit IV Government Hospital in Bhubaneswar, sources said.

Biju, a pilot with the Royal Indian Air Force during World War II, had married Gyan, a Punjabi from Lahore, in 1938. The flamboyant Biju flew the groom’s party to Lahore for the wedding.

Gyan had been at Biju’s side as he flew sorties to evacuate British families from Rangoon when the Japanese forces advanced on Burma. The couple later worked closely with Nepal’s democratic movement in the early 1950s.

Gyan’s association with Odisha, however, remained limited to visits to the land of her husband’s birth. Biju preferred that she lived in Delhi, away from the rough and tumble of state politics.

Her visits to Odisha became infrequent in her later years, and she was seen in Naveen Nivas mainly during winter.

Subhashree “Mili” Panda, wife of Maoist leader Sabyasachi Panda, had observed Gyan’s fourth death anniversary in February this year by organising an event on the foothills of Khandagiri.

Sources said the state culture department had placed the order for the statue, whose location was decided jointly by the state home ministry, Bhubaneswar Development Authority and the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation.