Pratibha Raman/Bengaluru

The railway station in Bengaluru has received around 11 oxygen express trains so far, each carrying around 120MT of liquid oxygen. While oxygen is being transported from places like Jamshedpur and Odisha, this train has been piloted by an all-women crew from Jolarpettai in Tamil Nadu to KR Puram in Bengaluru.

When the train chugged its way into the station in Karnataka’s capital on May 26, Sirisha G and Aparna RP disembarked from the oxygen express heaving a sigh of relief. They ought to be for they steered the train through the 130km stretch and clocked it in 90 minutes.

“It’s a big responsibility now when so many lives are gasping for breath and are dependent on this oxygen supply,” said 30-year-old Sirisha, who has invested 7 years in railway service.

As a little girl in Kerala, Aparna lived near a railway station. Having grown up watching the tracks and trains, she wanted to track her route into the railways while finalising her career. “I was always interested in a job at the railways. I started preparing for the exam in 2016. It’s highly competitive. It was in October, 2020, when I landed this job,” said Aparna, who is just 26 years old.

Sirisha and Aparna are quite famous now. There are plenty of passengers, who stop to get an autograph or click a selfie with them. “This reminds us of how important our duty is,” said Sirisha, who still gets a call from her mother every now and then to find out if she is safe.

Sirisha G and Aparna RP in the drivers' seat

“My husband is very understanding and supportive. But my mother is always anxious,” she said, eagerly waiting to meet her husband residing in KR Puram.

Never did gender come in the way of their career, say Sirisha and Aparna. Challenges have only come in the form of bad weather or language problems. “In 2017, I was piloting the train in Mysuru. There was heavy rainfall. During such conditions, we need to maintain maximum speed. The pressure we need to shoulder during such times is tremendous,” said Sirisha.

“Since I am from Kerala, language was a problem when I was posted here. That was a challenge for me in terms of settling down,” said Aparna.

However, both of them agree to the fact that the only thing that kept them going was “confidence”. Agreeing with this is Thota Venkat, who is the chief locomotive officer. “I have been in service for 23 years now. I can vouch for their sincerity and confidence. They have been performing well and we were confident they will execute this task diligently,” added Venkat.

Women getting recruited in the railways has been witnessed in the last decade or two, said Venkat, adding that the recent years have seen a phenomenal increase in women participation.

Sirisha’s father, who was working in the Port Trust in Visakhapatnam, died a few years ago. Though Sirisha is married, she wants to be financially independent. Aparna’s father is a Tahsildar. This young girl wants to remain financially secure before she finds a partner in life. No wonder, both these girls take their job very seriously.

And here’s hoping they inspire more women to follow in.