First woman loco pilot in India
“You wouldn’t give me a second glance on the street because there’s nothing unusual about the way I look. Yet I am the first Indian woman to drive a train.” This statement is as simple as the expectations Surekha Yadav had when she applied for a job in the Indian Railways. She had no inkling she was about to make history.
It was 1986 when the 21 year-old took the plunge. “I saw an advertisement for the post in the Central Railway’s Mumbai Division and sent in my application. I had no clue whether the job was for a man or a woman,” recalls Yadav, daughter of a farmer from Satara in Maharashtra. She believed her only chance at landing a job with the Railways was her diploma in electrical engineering from the Government Polytechnic at Karad in Satara.
It was only when Yadav was selected as an assistant driver by the Central Railway in 1989 that it hit her—the young woman was going to pilot Mumbai’s suburban local trains, the lifeline of the country’s financial capital. “Many people expressed disbelief when I got the job. No one ever thought I could become a train driver. Although the thought that women don’t drive trains did bother me, I just kept doing what I was doing,” says Yadav, wife of a police officer and mother of two college-going boys.
Yadav’s zeal for her job has always been exemplary. After suburban local trains, she went on to become a goods train driver in 1996, a ghat driver in 2010 and an express mail driver in 2011. She hit her next big milestone in March 2011, when she became India’s first woman to drive the Deccan Queen from Pune to CST in Mumbai. Her achievement was even sweeter as her first run with this prestigious train took place on March 8, International Women’s Day, recalls Yadav, now a senior instructor at the Driver’s Training Centre in Kalyan, where she had trained.
With every successive feat, the spotlight was trained on her over the years but it’s not always been a smooth run. “While pursuing a tough job like this, sometimes managing home takes a back seat. But I have a great family that is proud of my work and supports me in everything I do.”
—Aakanksha Bajpai
Photo courtesy: Surekha Yadav Featured in Harmony — Celebrate Age Magazine March 2017
During her 60s, if you had told Sushila A that she would be securing a doctorate in Sanskrit in the….
Meet Instagram star Moon Lin Cocking a snook at ageism, this nonagenarian Taiwanese woman is slaying street fashion like….
Meet Instagram star Linda Rodin Most beauty and style influencers on Instagram hope to launch their beauty line someday…..
Meet Instagram star Shanthi Ramachandran In today’s web-fuelled world, you can now get recipes for your favourite dishes at….
Harmony Celebrate Age
502 Plot No. 91/94
Prabhat Colony
Santacruz (East)
Mumbai – 400055