[hok kolorob]

Came across this news:



https://epaper.telegraphindia.com/in...18-6-21&type=a

It takes courage to be a woman truck driver. Truck driving is one of the most challenging jobs on the road. We all know about the security, road condition, the extreme weather across states, not to mention the working condition or what they need to do for the deadline. My deepest respect for her. Hope we can provide a safe passage to all drivers be in a city or highway and proper public toilets.

Mods if there is any such thread please merge it or if someone has posted this before then please remove it. I am unable to find any apart from http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/commer...-truckers.html

[jinojohnt]

Some people just stand up in life, but a select few looks at life right in the face.
Once had the opportunity/struggle to drive a Container Truck just for 10 meters, so I take a bow

[sudev]

I know so many boys who wanted to live this dream but chickened out due to anticipated harassment by police and fear of unknown. Hats off to her for courage and determination.

[Prafful_Rathod]

Some people just inspire you so much. We all know how difficult job it is to be a trucker. Read yesterday only an article that more than 50% of the truckers suffer from physical and mental health issues. While the article above may not highlight in detail, but I can only imagine, being a woman, she would have faced n number of hurdles, hazards while completing her 100s of trips across states. This is determination at its very best.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by jinojohnt

Some people just stand up in life, but a select few looks at life right in the face.
Once had the opportunity/struggle to drive a Container Truck just for 10 meters, so I take a bow

Originally Posted by sudev

I know so many boys who wanted to live this dream but chickened out due to anticipated harassment by police and fear of unknown. Hats off to her for courage and determination.

Originally Posted by Prafful_Rathod

While the article above may not highlight in detail, but I can only imagine, being a woman, she would have faced n number of hurdles, hazards while completing her 100s of trips across states. This is determination at its very best.

Originally Posted by hok kolorob

It takes courage to be a woman truck driver. Truck driving is one of the most challenging jobs on the road. We all know about the security, road condition, the extreme weather across states, not to mention the working condition or what they need to do for the deadline. My deepest respect for her. Hope we can provide a safe passage to all drivers be in a city or highway and proper public toilets.

Well said. I could not have said it better. She deserves our praise and our prayers. One cant even imagine the taunts and slurs she must be coping with.
In honour of Yogita above and her courage here are a few women who had the courage of conviction in other similar fields of transportation



Surekha Yadav, India’s first women train engine driver. She operates out of Pune and has built a career despite opposition from one of the engine driver associations. Age 53. She joined the Railways in 1988 and was supported by officialdom which was a far cry with what happened to Durbsa Banerjee 3 decades earlier. Read on…



Durba Banerjee, first woman commercial pilot in India, first to earn her wings as a commander, first Indian woman to fly the Boeing 737 and the first woman to fly the Airbus A300. She paved the way for the 700 odd women pilots in Indian commercial aviation which by the way is the highest in the world for any country as a percentage (13%) of total commercial pilots. She now lives in Calcutta. When her application to Indian Airlines was turned down this gutsy lady went and met the Civil Aviation Minister Mr Humayun Kabir who was uncomfortable with the idea of a woman pilot and offered her the job of an air hostess instead. Fortunately for Indian aviation Banerjee was made of sterner stuff. We should not judge Mr. Kabir with the lens of 2018 - he was simply a creature of his times.



Sarla Thakral (1914-2008) became, in 1936, the first woman to earn her pilot's license. Later she also became the first woman to clock 1000 hours of flying. Her first husband PD Sharma was also a pilot and encouraged his wife's desire to fly. She later became a successful businesswomen.



And ….Captain Radhika Menon, India’s first Merchant Navy ship Captain. She also received an international award for bravery at sea bestowed by the International Maritime Organization.



And the youngest of our list….Avani Chaturvedi, 24 the first fast combat jet fighter pilot of the IAF. She flies the MiG-21 Bison. Three women pilots qualified in the same batch of which Avani was the first to go solo.

I hope young women and girls take inspiration from these strong and determined women. It's a pity our newspapers don't focus enough on these stories of inspiration dwelling instead on negative news.

[srishiva]

I wanted to be a bus driver when I was a kid She had to take this up out of necessity and its not a easy job even for men. I dont like using words with prefix of 'woman' for any job because there is nothing limiting them. But in our country this is really tough one to do travelling alone.

[pcpranav]

indeed, this is very courageous of her to be a trucker, lots of respect, God bless.



More on lines of Indian Woman Power:
India's first woman rickshaw driver in 1988 - Sheela Dawre
https://www.thebetterindia.com/11886...n-auto-driver/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCHDyKk9YKM

Asia's first (Indian) woman bus driver : https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/51642982.cms




Few made great contribution to Science:

https://www.indiatoday.in/education-...913-2017-04-07



And just few days back we had a team of such courageous Indian women, circumnavigating the globe : https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/64260943.cms


And if Im not mistaken, as of today, the youngest girl to summit Mt.Everest is our own Malavath Purna : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malavath_Purna


Sky is the limit, kudos to all Indian Women.

[Rahul Rao]

There is another lady truck driver from Tamil Nadu https://www.scoopwhoop.com/news/tami...er/#.8xh8uzr2j I googled and searched for this article as I remember that she was felicitated by the then Tamil Nadu CM ms Jaylalitha. There is a link to another lady mentioned as the first female truck driver in asia.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/12490162.cms

Rahul

[ssambyal1980]

There are many such courageous ladies all over the nation who never think twice before venturing into men's work domain. Read about one such brave lady who is from Haryana. She is the first woman driver of Karnal City Bus Service. Kudos to such brave ladies who come from the hinterlands of the country where patriarchal mindsets rule the roost.

News Courtesy: Hindustan Times

Driving a passenger bus is a passion for 30-year-old Archana who has become the only woman driver of the Karnal city bus service.

The journey of becoming the first woman bus driver was challenging for Archana of Ballah village of the district, as she has to play the roles of a wife, mother and a daughter-in-law. But she crossed the threshold of the gender bias and got selected as driver on contractual basis in the city bus service started by the Karnal municipal corporation (KMC) in March this year.

“Since my childhood I wanted to do something different to make a mark in this man-dominated society and I did it by becoming a bus driver. Now several girls and women are taking inspiration from me, when they see a lady behind the wheel of a bus,” said Archana, sitting on the driver’s seat in a 40-seat bus.

Archana originally belongs to Rajana village of Jind district and she could not study after Class 12 as she got married at the age of 18. But she chased her dream even after becoming mother of two children.

She said her husband Dharmendra Sheoran, who is a taxi driver and has small agricultural land in Ballah village, helped her realise her dream.

“Five years ago I talked to my husband about my desire to become a driver and he extended his support to me. He even talked to his parents and convinced them to send me out of house for driving training,” she said.

“After getting the heavy vehicle driving licence in 2014, I took up the job of a driver with a private bus from Ambala to Pipli in Kurukshetra. Two years later I left this job and joined as driver of a private school bus in Assandh in 2016.

I got a chance again when KMC started city bus service. Out of three women candidates, I was the only one to be selected as a driver,” she added.

Archana said, “It was not easy for me to become a driver as I often heard people saying ‘bus chalana bahu ke bas ki baat koni’ (driving a bus is not the job of a daughter-in-law). This never discouraged me but rather gave me the confidence to prove them wrong.”

“Driving a bus was a best job I could do to answer these people who believe that women should not go out. Now people with such a mindset get shocked, when they see me driving a bus,” she said.

Though Archana drives a bus, she is soft-spoken and behaves very gently with people, unlike most of her male counterparts. “Though I drive a bus, I am still a woman. I talk to people very politely and people prefer to travel in my bus,” she said with a smile.

Archana gets a salary of Rs 18,000 per month. “I am thankful to Karnal MC for giving me this opportunity. I would like to apply for the post of driver in Haryana Roadways in future.

Archana on the wheel of a Karnal city bus. Image Courtesy: Hindustan Times

[centaur]

I feel the women folk are much much more capable than men but they are deterred by their own (fathers/brothers/husbands etc.). Yes there are challenges but even in them I feel the women will outshine the men if given a chance. They are adept at multitasking way more than men can even imagine. Its an irony that many of them prefer to stay back home once they become mothers. For a change, the fathers should sit back home and baby sit while the mothers go to work.

Kudos to the lady to be a part of a male dominated profession and seriously hats off to the kids who stay alone at home while mommy drives that truck around. I personally believe that there is nothing that a Woman cannot achieve which a Man can. The reverse may not necessarily be true

[naveen.raju]

Here's something that happened here.

Kochi Metro appoints seven women as loco pilots. Full report here:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/58758738.cms

[ssambyal1980]

Read about another brave lady who took to truck driving to help her family come out of financial crunch. The lady in limelight is 28 year old Tabassum Ali from Mandla in MP. After completing her graduation she decided to assist her father and brother in augmenting family income. The family owns two trucks. 'Sherni' (Lioness) is what Tabassum affectionately calls the truck she drives. Apart from truck driving she is also preparing for Public Service Commission Exams (PCS). Hats off!!!

News Report Courtesy: Outlook Magazine

First gear,” shouts the commander, sitting astute on the co-passenger’s seat. The lieutenant kicks down the clutch, and pushes the gear, propelling the ten-wheeled giant ahead. Tabassum Ali, the first woman in India to drive such a monster, dressed in summer uniform—a crisp kurta-paj*ama, a dupatta tied deftly across one shoulder—can handle the vehicle well. But her father, Shabeer Ali, still gives her driving tips when he’s occupying the navigator seat. She glances at her boss as the overloaded carrier screams to be shifted to the next gear, the pounding of its cylinders increasing at a crescendo now. “Can’t you see it needs the next gear,” barks her father. “We have to get the consignment today”. Suddenly the motor comes to a screeching halt as the truck, she has named it Sherni, slumps to one side. There is a puncture in one of those huge tyres.

For Tabassum, it’s just another hurdle in a busy day. The 28-year-old from Mandla in Madhya Pradesh drives trucks for a living, for at least 20 days a month. It’s a gruelling job and the pay is not that great, about Rs 35,000 a month, but it’s what she loves doing. It started off, as many things do, by chance—on a summer morning when an urgent consignment had to be delivered. Tabassum’s father fell ill and her elder brother was away on his bus tours. This left her, the only other driver in the family, to do the job. “I was the only one who knew how to drive, and I remembered my dad telling me ‘if I could drive a car, I could drive a truck’,” says Ali. He lay by her side the whole 100 kilometers up and back, giving her *instructions all along, as he does even now, on the few occasions they get to share a ride together.

Most of the time it is Tabassum on her own, traversing the roads of her state, and the neighbouring ones of Chattisgarh. Having completed her Bachelor degree in Arts, Tabassum took to driving one of the family’s two trucks to help out in times of a financial crunch. Her mother’s failing health consuming much of the family’s income, and a family of ten to feed, meant that her father and elder brother alone could not make ends meet. “We have had to rent a flat in Jabalpur to be closer to the hospitals, and take mummy to endless dialysis sessions to help cure her kidney problems,” says Shabnam, one of Tabassum’s elder sisters. In the business of transport for over two generations, Tabassum and her father, manage the two trucks owned by the family, and use them to deliver rice loads to-and-from the mill for government distribution. Her elder brother drives buses that go on pilgrimages around the country.

Being the first woman driver of a ten-wheeled truck ensures that she receives a lot of respect from people around her. “To be able to handle a truck is not easy. Add to that an overloaded vehicle, which is usually the case with trucks carrying ‘dhaan’, the balancing is a very difficult feat,” points out a neighbour who has taken driving lessons from Tabassum. She has even won a few community awards for women empowerment. But, more importantly, she is quick to mention that she has never felt any different from other truck drivers on the road, so much so that there isn’t a pay disparity between genders. “It’s all one big community, and I have never been made to feel like I am not fit for the job,” she says. She reminisces about the times she spent around a bonfire with other drivers, coo*ked meals with them, and sang songs to no tune. “They have always been around in case of any help,” she adds.

Image Courtesy: Outlook Magazine

Meet Tabassum Ali, the courageous trucker from Madhya Pradesh.




Tabassum changing a punctured tyre.




Tabassum and her 'Sherni'



Preparing food on the highway.




At home with family.






Behind wheel at night.

http://youtu.be/zIE19VmL0Uk

[su1978]

All salute to these brave-heart ladies with the will power more stronger than steel. This proves that the fairer sex is in no way weaker. They cannot be suppressed or taken for granted. Railways or Airlines are a much structured sector and still have much security while on the job but on the road its always a big bad world out there and the way these ladies would be taking everything head-on really calls for a 90 degrees bow.

Without a doubt, when we worship power, we worship goddess Durga and Kaali.

[ObsessedByFIAT]

This is just awesome! The number of roles a female can play in life is just commandable! Hats of to all the females who appeared in the above discussion or not, they just deserve a bow!!

Just a few days back I myself came across a lady ola driver for the first time.

[hok kolorob]

Shell did an advertisement with her. Way to go mam!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIb2lRW0VGU