Road runner

She was running a food stall, selling bhurji and misal-pav, when she realised that drivers had it better. The 42-year-old is now Mumbai’s first woman BEST bus driver. It’s taken effort, discipline, and numerous twists of fate, she says

Most people think women don’t make good drivers, but I’ve proven them wrong, says Laxmi Jadhav, 42, with a mischievous smile.

It’s been a week since she became the first woman bus driver in the history of BEST (the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport undertaking), which has been running Mumbai’s always-on-the-road, red masstransit buses for 96 years.

Jadhav believes it was fate that brought her here. She’s assured of it when passengers stop to take a selfie or to compliment her on a job well done. “Those reactions are the most enjoyable part of my job,” she says. “There isn’t a day that goes by when heads don’t turn.”

Jadhav has lived in Mumbai since 2000, when she moved to the city from Satara in western Maharashtra, with her husband Dilip Jadhav, a driver.

Before the BEST job, which she calls a dream come true, Jadhav worked as a doorto-door salesperson, selling plastic products. She also tried her hand at running a streetside food stall. It was at the stall (which served bhurji-pav and misal-pav) that she first imagined driving for a living.

The majority of her customers were drivers. They made a good living. It was a better job than the ones she had had, more comfortable and better-paid. This became her goal, she says. Most of the men in her family were heavy-vehicle drivers. Two of her uncles drove buses for the BEST; her father drove trailers and her younger brother drives trucks.

Being a woman, she did wonder if she’d be able to find similar work. But the thought didn’t cause her to slam on the brakes, not even a little bit, she says. Give up her dream because she’s a woman? “That was not a good enough reason.”

In 2015, she learnt to drive a car. She started working for private transport companies, where she was trained to drive luxury vehicles such as BMWS and Audis. But she couldn’t manage the irregular hours while caring for an octogenarian mother-in-law and two children. So Jadhav began to look for something on wheels, but more stable.

In 2016, she tried autorickshaws. “The words ‘Jhansi Ki Rani’ (a reference to the 19th-century Indian warrior-queen) are still written on the back of my autorickshaw,” she says, laughing. “That’s what my rickshaw driver friends still call me.”

She knew that driving a heavy vehicle would mean a steadier income, and a BEST job would come with several other perks too. She was tired of trying to balance revenue against the price of fuel and repairs. “You also get respect when you work for a company like BEST,” she says. “So I decided to push myself to get a heavy-vehicle license. That became my ultimate goal.”

The heavy-vehicle licence came in 2019. She continued to ride her autorickshaw; there were no openings at BEST. But in 2021, she enrolled at a BEST depot to learn how to drive the red buses. In May 2021, just after her course had concluded, she heard that BEST was looking for women drivers. “I quickly applied and was selected.”

It was a great feeling, but not everyone was as elated.

“Many people shrugged and told me that I wouldn’t make it, that there were very few woman bus drivers in the world. People said, ‘You won’t be able to drive a bus in Mumbai

It’s a great feeling to sit high up in the driver’s seat and look out over my city.

traffic’,” Jadhav says.

Jadhav is now a pioneer, in her dream job: working with a private company that runs buses leased by BEST, on behalf of BEST. Before she started this week, she spent another month in BEST training, getting tips on how to respond in case of a road accident or a medical emergency, how to communicate with passengers.

Through the years, Jadhav crafted a couple of training courses of her own too. “Initially, with cars, I didn’t have great clutch or brake judgment,” she says.

“So at night, I would borrow a car from friends and practise. In later years, I would finish the cooking and cleaning, attend BEST driving classes from morning to afternoon, then go home, cook dinner, and drive my autorickshaw from 9 pm to midnight. Women can do whatever they want,” she says.

Her husband and sons Santosh Jadhav, 20, a biomedical engineer, and Sahil Jadhav, 18, a college student, are her biggest supporters, she adds. “They help me with the housework. They’re so proud of me. They say they want to be like me when they grow up.”

“My mother’s journey teaches us about how to strive for what we want,” says Santosh. “I want to be able to persevere like her.”

Currently, Laxmi Jadhav drives on Route 11 Ltd, a long and vital north-south link. She’s looking forward to having more women as colleagues soon (see box). For now, “it’s a great feeling to sit high up in the driver’s seat and look out over my city,” she says.