E-Paper
Why should men have all the fun!
DL-NO RJ-01/DLC/02/20973. That?s Vimlesh Sharma?s driving licence number, perhaps the only one that has ever been issued to a woman in India for driving a heavy vehicle. A luxury bus driver bus to be precise. Though illiterate, Vimlesh, who was in the city to receive the ?Prerna Awards? being given by ETV, is aware of the fact that she is the only woman in the country driving a heavy vehicle to all parts of the country.
Frailty, thy name is woman. No more. Not with Vimlesh, Madhuri and Priyanka at least. Then there is Dr Achla Nagar, who got literature as a legacy from her illustrious father Amrit Lal Nagar.
‘I have got the drive’
DL-NO RJ-01/DLC/02/20973. That’s Vimlesh Sharma’s driving licence number, perhaps the only one that has ever been issued to a woman in India for driving a heavy vehicle. A luxury bus driver bus to be precise.
Though illiterate, Vimlesh, who was in the city to receive the ‘Prerna Awards’ being given by ETV, is aware of the fact that she is the only woman in the country driving a heavy vehicle to all parts of the country.
She said, “I always feel like a man. No one wants to be a driver. I became one due to financial compulsions. I was married when I was 10. Then tragedy struck.
My husband and my son died. I was left with the responsibility of taking care of my six sisters and two brothers besides my mother. So, I requested my maternal uncle, who owned a travel agency, to teach me driving. He agreed.” The rest as they say is history.
Today, Vimlesh owns two luxury buses, has a travel agency of her own, gets a “right of way” on the road and has passengers queuing up to board the bus which she is driving. “People actually come because I am there,” she says.
She has now managed to marry off her sisters, settle her brothers and take good care of her mother. Naturally, for her mother, Sugna Devi, who has also come along with her daughter to the city, Vimlesh has been a proud ‘son of the family’. Ask her if she faces any problems while driving around the country, specially when she moves around at night, and Vimlesh answers spontaneously:
“There are times when you have to cope with problems. But then, as I said, I always felt like a man. So, I managed to tackle all the problems.”
“Driving a bus full of passengers has its own challenges. You have a responsibility of dropping the passengers to their destination safely. God has been kind,” she says. For Vimlesh, the journey that began about 20 years back has been an eventful one. Even today, she feels the same drive. When some lens men requested her to pose along with a heavy vehicle, she retorted, “why just pose? Get me a heavy vehicle and I would fly it around the place. Take as many snaps as you can!”
