Ranjitha Gopakumaran Nair, 42, a native of Pullad near Thiruvalla in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district, who was killed in the Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad on Thursday, was the sole breadwinner of her family comprising her two children and aged cancer-diagnosed mother.
She came to her native place in Pathanamthitta on a short visit of three days from London to complete the process of extending the leave she had taken from government service. She dreamed of joining her two children and her aged mother after leaving her foreign job as soon as her house construction was completed. Her plan was to settle in her hometown and live with her children and her mother, and move into her nearly completed house in Pullad by July. But the ill-fated Air India flight dashed all her hopes.
The youngest daughter of the Gopakumaran Nair-Thulasi couple, Ranjitha, pursued graduation in nursing at Pandalam and began her nursing career at a hospital in Gujarat. She later worked in Oman before moving to London last year. In between, she had secured a government position at Pathanamthitta General Hospital five years ago and was on long leave while working abroad.
Ranjitha, a single parent for her two children – Induchoodan, studying in Class X, and Rithika in Class VII, also wanted to secure a good bank balance that would take care of their education. Her dream house, which is in its last stages of construction, was adjacent to her ancestral house
Ranjitha left home on Wednesday afternoon. She travelled to Ernakulam from Tiruvalla on a train and flew from Nedumbassery to Chennai and then to Ahmedabad, from where she boarded the ill-fated flight to London.
Her neighbours said Ranjitha came home for a long vacation of around two months in April. “During that time, she tried to get the papers for her leave extension moved. However, there was some delay in that,” they said.
She had to travel to Kerala again for the leave extension process due to this delay. That travel turned fatal for her and it made Ranjitha’s two children and her mother orphans. With Ranjitha’s death in the plane crash emptiness looms over her family.