Sapped Sigh Of Midnight Trains

No toilets, night shifts, long hours, unsafe routes…woman train drivers brave it all.

- Jeevan Prakash Sharma

A locomotive pulling more than fifty freight coaches rattles through the countryside, its headlight piercing the moonless darkness, the horn occasion­ally blaring to alert wildlife and hum­ans alike. It’s a chilly night; almost ghostly with the ululating owls and bats doing their back­and­forth, up­and­down loops. The train fords jungles, fields, hamlets, rivers and streams noisily—the clackety­clack brutal on bridges. And behind the wheels, or rather the levers on the loco’s console, the driver sits tight, looks straight and immediate pressing matters runs through her mind.

Her? Yes, she is a she—one of the over 500 woman train drivers with the Indian Railways. Yes, she is among a handful to challenge stereotypes and social prejudices that a woman’s place is at home, and trigger a change among people who harbour a general disapproval of working women. But first, she had to overcome her own doubts and fears of running a train. She had to get comfortable working night shifts and working in positions traditionally held by men, carrying out tasks many in this conservative society have only seen men do before.

The train presses full steam ahead and the driver gets impatient. She needs to use the washroom and change her sanitary pad. The driver’s cabin is a tight squeeze; doesn’t have a toilet. The next station is 50km away. Can she make an unscheduled stop? That won’t reflect agreeably on the log book. She prays for a forced halt—the stops goods trains often make to let a passenger express pass. She can get down and complete her ablution by the tracks. But won’t her co-driver, a man, notice? He won’t. It is pitch-black outside. The thought brings some comfort, flittingly.