112 ‘First Ladies’ break into male bastion, feted

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 20

In a rare convergence of talents, 112 women from across the country today assembled in the capital to share their unique journeys towards breaking into male bastions.

Hours before being feted by President Ram Nath Kovind, these achievers sat together to talk about their struggles and partake of joys of breaking the glass ceilings.

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“We do what we do” was the takeaway from every story, be it the story of Praveen Solomon, India’s first woman to manage a crematorium; Anju Mangala, the first woman superintendent of a men’s jail; Rajani Pandit, the first-ever woman private detective, or V Saritha, the first female bus driver.

“It was a challenge when the NGO I worked for asked me to manage a crematorium in Chennai,” says Solomon. She took up the job unhesitatingly, well aware of the struggles that came with it. “One can imagine the odds of such a task in a country where women’s entry into crematoria is still considered a taboo. But I accomplished the job with persistence. My family stood by me,” says Solomon.

Pandit didn’t have it easy at all. A subject of several documentaries, the Mumbai-based private investigator acknowledges the dangers inherent to her job. She once posed as a domestic servant to a woman suspected of murdering her husband and daughter. “There was no proof and the only way to get proof was to enter the suspect’s house. I worked there for six months and we cracked the case,” says Pandit, who has solved 7,500 cases in her chequered career. She routinely aids Mumbai police with tricky probes.

Also among “First Ladies” (a phrase Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi coined for the 112 exceptional achievers) was Surekha Yadav (51), who became India’s first female passenger train driver in 1988.

On March 8, 2011, Yadav was named Asia’s first woman train driver to run the Deccan Queen from Pune to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, one of the most difficult rail routes. She remains a highly commended driver of the Indian Railways. In Yadav’s league is Telangana’s V Saritha, who drives a DTC bus in Delhi to sustain her family. “Ten girls from our NGO took the test when the DTC invited applications from female bus drivers. Only I passed,” she added.

Braving curious glances of passengers, Saritha has made a place for herself in the male-dominated field just as Mangla has created a land of opportunities for men inmates of the Tihar jail.

Working on prisoners’ psychology, Mangala has earned a name for empowering inmates. Formerly Superintendent of Prison, women jail, Tihar, Mangala was handpicked to run the men’s jail in July 2016 for her special skills to train inmates through positive psychological reinforcement.

In the pool of exceptional talent searched by the WCD Ministry are women like Bachendri Pal (first Indian women to scale the Everest summit), Deepa Malik (first to win a medal at Paralympics), Shatbhi Basu, India’s first bar tender, and Archana Jayan, the first female bagpipe artiste.

As the President rewarded these women, the underlying message was loud and clear — there are hardly any male bastions left to breach.