Driving into a man’s world

K. Radha is Madurai’s first lady motor driving instructor. She may be in a minority on the city’s congested roads but she stands out in her uncommon job

Radha deftly steers her way through the rush-hour traffic on the busy Goripalayam Road and waits for the signal to turn green. Suddenly a bus comes from behind and scrapes past forcing her to tilt her two-wheeler. “You want to run over me? Let me see your guts,” she shouts at the driver, who glowers at her. A young girl shouts from behind, “This is the driving school madam.” Others waiting at the traffic signal turn to take a look at her.

Both agitated and happy, Radha buzzes off. “When men see a woman driving, they try to take advantage. Sometimes I ignore them but often I feel like giving it back to the guy,” she says. But when her students recognise and acknowledge her, she feels happy enough to dream big.

“The day will come when majority of the drivers on the city roads would have been trained by me,” says Radha, who since 1999 has trained 7,000 women in car and scooter driving. Male students so far add up to a little less than 1,000, she informs.

With all her family members in the job of driving, sitting behind the wheels is in her blood. But nobody taught her anything about driving. She shocked everybody when as a 14-year-old, she asked one of her uncles one day where the brakes and the accelerator were in the scooter and simply kicked off.

“There was no turning back since then,” she laughs.

Radha started earning pocket money by teaching the girls in her locality the basics of driving a two-wheeler. Her parents chose to marry her off early to a workshop mechanic who surprised her by asking her to ride his motorbike. “I loved the freedom of zipping around. It gave me a sense of power,” she says.

Radha recalls her first student, a young bank employee from the neighbourhood who agreed to pay her Rs.250 for 10 classes of an hour each. “I always wanted to become a teacher and sensed an opportunity to give lessons in driving!” says Radha.

The concept of a lady driving teacher was alien in Madurai. She offered her services to pick up and drop back the girl students safely after the class. Parents started trusting her with their daughters. Young women working in the city started flocking to her. But she had only one scooter and could accommodate six students a day.

When her husband passed away in 2004, the pressure to earn more fell on her. Leaving her two small kids with her mother, Radha went to Namakkal for training in bus and lorry driving. After obtaining her heavy vehicles driving license, she drove TNSTC buses for two years. In 2006, she joined the Gopalkrishna Driving School in Anaiyur and became the only lady instructor in town. Savings from her salary and a loan enabled her to buy her first two-wheeler – a Bajaj Sunny! It brought back sunshine in my life, she says, as her students started growing.

After her driving school hours, Radha started taking private classes. As long as the girls and their families had no problem, she and her students would be out on the road at the break of dawn and as late as 11 in the night. Over a period of time Radha added half-a-dozen more two-wheelers and two four-wheelers to her fleet to break off into her own Radha Driving School, the first one owned by a woman. With pride she displays all documents and says, “I am living part of my dream.” She now dreams of owning a bus.

Radha, who also trained the city’s first batch of female auto rickshaw drivers, works from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily even though she has hired two extra drivers. Requests for classes before 10 a.m. and after 6 p.m. are handled by Radha, who works on Sundays too. On an average, she trains 30 women in car and another 25 girls on the scooter per month.

Though women have less knowledge of car parts and functioning, they are more attuned to safety on roads. I can raise my voice if they make a mistake, she notes, but with men it is different.

As the only lady instructor in the region giving training in scooter driving, Radha gets her students even from Sivagangai, Ramnad, Melur and also Chennai. “You feel empowered when you drive, she says, I see so much change in the body language and speech of my students.”

By building other women’s confidence, Radha has got an identity today. Though the first, she is no longer the only female car driving instructor in Madurai. Three other women have entered the field but she sees no competition.

“The male owners of other driving schools in the city harass me sometimes because they think I will take away all their clients,” she laughs. But nothing worries the feisty Radha. Dressed in a bright sari, she breezes past in her Maruti Alto amidst a scene of cheerful chaos on traffic packed roads. I ask her how she manages on a scooter pillion riding with her students. “Only today I have dressed up for the interview,” she smiles. “On other days I don’t even find time to eat my meals.” Radha enjoys driving and knows how to hold her own among men. But she is also aware of the perils of her job. “I have to guard the safety of my students while working in an openly hostile field.”