“I learnt driving by sitting next to my father and watching him drive,” says Anjum Shaikh, who is part of the first batch of 28 women drivers recently recruited by the State-run Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC).
Ms. Shaikh’s father was also an MSRTC driver who used work at the same bus depot where she works now. “I love driving. I am driving since the age of 16. I used to watch my father drive MSTRC buses when I was young and get fascinated looking at him drive the bus with so much ease. My family tells me, I drive just like him,” says the 28-year-old, the youngest in the family of seven who live in Shevgaon, Ahmednagar.
Her retired father had come to drop her in Pune when she got selected for MSRTC’s Pune division. Ms. Shaikh and her friend Bhagayshree — also a driver with the service who hails from Yavatmal in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra — rent a room together for ₹4,000. She misses her family and goes to visit them whenever she can, but the thrill of her job has not faded. “I used to drive my family around in our car, but driving the bus is an altogether different feeling. I will never forget my first day, I drove on the Solapur highway,” she exclaimed.
