WOW WOMANIYA!
These four
women from different walks of life have another thing in common apart from
their gender. They've all forayed into professions dominated by men and
shattered stereotypes along the way
“It’s
all about the male ego – it doesn’t allow them to lose to a woman. But once the
helmet is on, I am only a racer, not a woman.”
READY FOR A TAKE-OFF
SNEHA SHARMA driver
Airline pilot/Race
If you were being
fanciful, you might imagine 25-year-old Sneha Sharma as a cartoon figure of a
determined child who is hunched with such concentration over the steering wheel
of her Go Kart as it goes faster and faster that she hasn’t noticed the
contraption has actually taken off and she’s flying.
But you don’t actually
need to be fanciful about this young woman. At 25, Sneha is India’s fastest
woman on a Go Kart track, and she’s a pilot with IndiGo Airlines. Because life,
you see, must be met head on.
Even as a teenager Sneha
was adventurous, perhaps because that was the kind of life she was used to,
sailing around the world with her father who was in the Merchant Navy.
When she was 15, she had
her first shot at Go Karting at the Hakone track in Powai, Mumbai. It was fun
and she went back every weekend, until she watched two professional drivers on
the track and realised Go Karting needn’t be just a weekend sport. It could be
her life. Slowly, Sneha picked up racing tips from the people in charge of the
track and started participating in competitions. Soon she was so good at it
that the National Karting team asked her to join them.
“I was elated of course,
but my parents weren’t,” says Sneha. “They wanted me to focus on my studies.
And so, I took my books with me to the track to study between races.” But her
textbooks did not only relate to board examination curricula. They also
included books on flying, because Sneha intended to be a pilot.
At 17, she took a break
from the track and went to the US to get a pilot’s licence. She returned to
acquire an Indian flying licence and get back on track.
Racing is an expensive
sport and Sneha couldn’t really afford all that she needed, so she made do with
what she had. “You need proper racing shoes, but they are expensive. So I wore
my regular canvas shoes,” she says. “I also decided to work with the National
Karting team to earn some money. So I managed their accounts and did other
administrative tasks.”
In spite of the hard
work, Sneha could only compete in the second half of the Volkswagen Polo Cup in
2010 because she couldn’t afford it.
Then in 2012, she was
among the top 20 people selected for the Toyoto EMR and ranked 8th in the same.
This was followed by a top five ranking in Mercedes young star drive where
Sneha drove the Mercedes E63 AMG. Cars excited her and in 2014, Sneha began
driving in the Formula 4 category too.
Apart from JK Tyres,
which was among her first sponsors, her employer IndiGo Airlines supports and
helps Sneha plan her leave so that she can spend equal time flying and driving.
“Sponsors don’t come forward because they feel a woman may not match the
performance of a man,” she says. “But I don’t take these issues to heart.
Instead, I think about my race strategy.”
Formula racing is one of
the most gender-discriminatory sports in the world, and Sneha’s often been at
the receiving end. “It’s all about the male ego that doesn’t allow them to lose
to a woman,” she says. “But for me, once the helmet is on, I am only a racer,
not a woman.”
She remembers how, once,
a male driver was so upset when he couldn’t overtake her on the track that he
pushed her kart into the mud with a smirk when she finally gave way. Incensed,
Sneha shoved back with her own kart when she had the chance, pushed him off the
track – and then got a volley of abuses from her male rival.
This is why, though good
sportsmanship does exist on the tracks, Sneha’s big dream is not only to win a
national championship, but also to run an NGO that helps women who face gender
discrimination. She should be able to help. After all, she’s had lots of
experience.
THE SUPER SLEUTH
BHAVNA PALIWAL Detective
We
can't do continuous surveillance. In our country, a woman standing at a site
for a few hours will have to field queries
Chasing suspects on
desolate stretches, across cavernous malls and seedy hotels may appear to be an
odd pursuit to most. But 38-year-old Bhavna Paliwal, one of the best-known
women detectives in the Capital, says her profession isn’t just exciting, it is
immensely satisfying.
For the last 13 years,
from an inconspicuous office in North Delhi’s Netaji Subhash Place commercial
complex, Paliwal has been running the Tejas Detective Agency. “If through my
work I can allay the anxieties of people, I am doing the society some good.’’
Indiscretions by wayward
wives or errant husbands form a chunk of Paliwal’s work. If it isn’t spouses
spying on their bitter halves, it is parents fixing their children’s weddings
who want to be sure of the match’s character. “Wasn’t it Jane Austen who wrote,
‘Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance’?” asks Paliwal. “As
detectives, we ask people not to leave it to chance,” she guffaws.
Paliwal says the
proliferation of social media is fuelling an environment of suspicion. She
cites a case where a 35-year-old teacher became friends with a 28-year-old.
“After striking a friendship on Facebook, she became intimate with the NRI when
he was visiting India. Her suspicious husband approached us. After monitoring
her movements we directed him to the coffee shop where she was chatting with
her young lover.”
Paliwal’s interest in the
world of detectives was kindled during her childhood. Her father, a farmer in
Uttar Pradesh’s Firozabad district, died when she was just six. Her mother had
to shoulder the responsibility of raising Bhavna and three siblings. But even
in school, young Bhavna loved to devour Hindi pulp fiction written by Surender
Mohan Pathak. “That is where I first developed a curiosity about detectives,”
she says.
Having completed her BA
in Humanities from Agra University, young Bhavna moved to Delhi.
It was here that she
responded to an advertisement from the Times Detective Agency and was hired. As
a 22-year-old rookie sleuth, Paliwal’s first big test came during a routine
check to confirm a girl’s marital history. She gained entry into the girl’s
home posing as a salesgirl. “I befriended the lady of the house and began
chatting with her about her family. She revealed their daughter was married to
a small-town businessman before things went awry. At this point her husband
forbade her from spilling the beans. He sternly asked who had sent me. The man
said he understood psychology since he had himself retired from the
Intelligence Bureau!”
For a few nervous
moments, Paliwal thought she’d been caught. But she kept her cool. “I insisted
I was a salesgirl selling shampoo and showed him some documents to back it up.
It was a close shave.”
Over the years, Paliwal
has become more cautious. “A detective can’t afford to stick out. We conduct
background checks and blend in with the environment.”
Having navigated the
world of detectives for more than 15 years, Paliwal says being a woman
detective has its positives. “Women clients are much more transparent with us
about their problems.”
On the flip side, there
are certain disadvantages a woman detective faces in India. “We cannot do
continuous surveillance. In our country, a man standing at a site for more than
a few hours won’t raise eyebrows. But if a woman is standing somewhere for long,
she should be prepared to field awkward queries.”
She charges at least `
35,000 for pre-marriage checks, ` 1 lakh onward for extra-marital probes and `
10,000 upward for checking credentials of employees.
Still, dealing with
deceit and adultery day in and day out hasn’t shaken Paliwal’s faith in the
institution of marriage. “I don’t take my work home. I am married and my
husband is not a detective. My work has taught me a crucial lesson: Have faith
in your partner but don’t have blind faith.”
DRIVEN TO SUCCEED
POONAM Cab driver
Five years ago, when she
moved to Delhi, Poonam was 18 years old, pregnant, unskilled and alone. Today
she has a happy son, a skill that not a lot of women from her background can
dream of, a job and the car she needs for that job, with the taxi service Uber.
Poonam couldn’t have even
conceived of such a life when she was a child. Born to a conservative Jat
family in Rohtak, like all the women in her family, Poonam was supressed and
repressed, not even allowed to talk to non-family members, leave alone use a
mobile phone. “We had a joint family and decision-making powers were given to
the men, while the women were expected never to ask questions,” says Poonam.
By the time she took her
class 12 exams, Poonam was married off to a boy in Bhiwani; who turned out to
be unemployed and good for nothing, always pestering her family for money,
threatening to divorce her, and beating her.
When
Poonam turned to her parents for help, they told her to ‘adjust’. But she
couldn’t take it for long. One day, she left her husband and went back to her
parents. As “My independence has come at a cost. But today I can hold my
head high and my son is proud of me”
From page 9 always,
they coaxed her to return to him. But she’d had enough. She went to Delhi
instead.
“I knew that nobody in my
family would understand my situation, but I was tired of compromising and
getting beaten up for no fault of mine,’’ says Poonam. “I wanted to get away
from it all.”
In Delhi, a friend gave
Poonam a place to stay and helped her look for employment. Job-hunting for
months, Poonam also had to fend off her parents whose idea of honour did not
include having a woman of the family go out to work. Eventually, the men in her
family snapped ties with her.
Fascinated by the thought
of being behind the wheel of a car, Poonam learned about an NGO called Azad
Foundation that helps women learn to drive. Soon she became a private taxi
driver.
But that was far from
easy. “People never believed that I was a driver,” says Poonam. “They’d look at
me and ask whether I had a valid driving licence in the first place!”
When Uber arrived in
India, it appeared like a good opportunity for Poonam to become self-employed –
all she needed was a car of her own. It was easy to get a car loan and buy a
Honda Amaze. Now with a total of four years on Delhi’s roads, Poonam urges her
friends to learn to drive. “My independence has come at a big cost, but today I
can hold my head high and set an example for my son. I want him to grow up to
be a sensitive man who respects women.”
Though Poonam’s mother
wishes her daughter had a less risky job, or at least not drive passengers at
2am, Poonam has never had bad encounters as a driver. “But that doesn’t mean
I’m not prepared,” she says. “I may look small, but I can protect myself. I
never stop to ask for directions. I use GPS, I keep pepper spray handy and have
downloaded the women’s safety mobile app – Himmat.”
She has faced harassment
though, from the very people who are supposed to protect her: the police.
“There was one particular cop at New Delhi railway station who sat in my car
and tried to harass me,” says Poonam. “But I dealt with him sternly.”
by Veenu Singh, Aasheesh
Sharma & Supriya Sharma
SORCAR SORCERESS
MANEKA SORCAR
Magician
“In the
West, women are no better than props, meant to divert the audience’s attention
from the magician”
The applause dies out and the auditorium falls silent again as
illusionist Maneka Sorcar, dressed in a bejewelled pantsuit, moves on to her
next act. She pulls in a vertical crate on wheels, slightly larger than a
coffin, painted and perforated to resemble a condominium, and opens it from all
four sides to show that it is empty. Two of her assistants, playing the parts
of parents in this dramagic narration on space crunch in metros, step into it
and are locked away. Maneka then begins inserting long cylindrical blocks of
wood into the perforations, the couple inside still visible through other
openings, and pushes them in till they come out from the holes on the other
side.
Once done, she turns and smiles at the spectators, and flicks
her hand. When she pulls out the blocks and opens the door, the couple steps
out smiling and unharmed. There is the sound of a doorbell, and the crate is
opened again to reveal two kids. The bell rings again and out come the
grandparents. The third bell is almost drowned by loud clapping and laughter.
This time, it is the domestic help who steps out with the family’s dog.
“Unlike in a movie or on TV, there are no retakes or editing at
a live show,” says Maneka, 36. “You have to be a quick thinker because you do
not meet the same spectators every day. Their profile changes, as does their
level of intelligence and EQ. I may be performing in New York one day, Delhi
the next and a two-tier city in West Bengal the day after. The dynamics are
different every day and you should know how to mould yourself accordingly. You
have to make allowances for mishaps which you cannot foretell, while making it
all look effortless,” she says.
The daughter of Prodip Chandra Sorcar Junior, and the
granddaughter of Protul Chandra Sorcar aka the father of modern Indian magic,
Maneka, is the ninth generation of Sorcar magicians. “It took nine generations
to produce one Maneka,” she says. The eldest of PC Sorcar’s three daughters,
she is the only one to become a professional illusionist.
“I am a magician by choice,” says Maneka. “My father gave me
complete freedom to do whatever I wanted to do.” When she expressed a desire to
take up magic, he advised her to complete her studies first (she has an MBA
degree). “He told me becoming a magician was not going to be easy,” she says.
Traditionally, magicians have been men. And women, their
assistants at best. Even today there are very few female illusionists in the world.
“Everything from the props to the costumes is fashioned around men. In the
West, women are no better than props and used for their sex appeal and to
divert the audience’s attention from the magician,” says Maneka.
So when she started out with her independent stage production,
Maya Vigyan, in 2007, Maneka realised that failing was not an option. “If I
failed, people would not say that Maneka could not do it. They would say women
cannot do it,” she says. Prior to that she had been working on and off with her
father while still a student.
Though Kolkata is home, her work takes her across the world and
Maneka performs around 200 to 250 shows in a year. Maneka, who is married to
businessman Sushmit Ranjan Halder, says she loves it when the initial scepticism
of her audience is transformed into wideeyed wonder at the end of a show. Her
oeuvre consists of classical acts with twists and contemporary acts, which “are
all my own”. Maneka has bicycled on the waters of the Ganges in 2008 and when
her father vanished the Taj Mahal for two minutes in 2000, she brought it back.
Maneka’s unusual childhood spent helping her parents behind and
onstage, understanding the science that went into making the illusions, playing
with “pet lions, an elephant, two camels, one emu bird and two pythons”
prepared her to carry forward her family’s legacy. “I worked my way up as an
assistant and gained hands-on experience,” she says. Maneka is next working on
a gravity-defying act.
Magic essentially is the forerunner of science, says Maneka. But
in this age of technology where palm-sized gadgets can do stuff that would be
considered magical a few decades ago, and there exist a zillion avenues of
entertainment, how does magic stay relevant? Maneka believes magic shows will
never lose their charm because humans are always hungry to witness the
miraculous. “Look at the popularity of the Harry Potter books, mythological
fiction, or movies like The Prestige, people are always hungry for miracles,”
she says.
·
Supriya.sharma
HTBR6MAR16
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