Warriors of Night

We name our daughters Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati; we worship the divine feminine power in the temples but oppress, repress and even attack the feminine power amidst us. That is the irony in the way India sees its women.

After the safety of the daylight fades, women are seen as easy prey by the predators of the night.

We mark the nine nights of Navratri, the festival of the goddess, by celebrating the dedication and valour of nine real-life women who brave the challenges of the night to pursue their dreams.

PART - 5

Flying High

The pilot says stay determined and let your work prove your calibre.

She’s in the air at any time of the day or night. It could be at 6 AM or even 11 PM. As a captain, her security is assured but before she got her pilot’s license, Ankita Dhanavade, 35, worked as a ground staff member. Back then, the 4 AM reporting time at the airport seemed daunting as Dhanavade travelled to the airport on her scooty. “I have had my uncomfortably scary moments every day. Forget humans, even dogs have chased me. Considering the rising number of crimes against women, I always carried a paper cutter with me,” she says.

Her training made her feel secure. “It covered self-defence, patiently dealing with passengers, dealing with unruly behaviour and emergencies. We were completely trained for all types of situations from terror attack to emergency landing to dealing with misbehaviour,” she says.

Challenges are not just external. Women, she says, face challenges even in their own home. As a 16-year-old, when Dhanavade told her family that she wanted to be a pilot, her choice met with resistance. “The very first reaction from my parents and grandparents was, who will marry you? Being a pilot implies traveling and not being at home for days together. I was denied permission. However, I was very sure. I did not budge. I revolted,” she says.

Dhanavade got her pilot’s licence in 2010 but had to wait for seven years before she got hired. That time was very challenging for her—apart from anxiously waiting for a job, nosy relatives and neighbours would criticise her father for spending large amounts of money on her training, particularly because she was a girl. “We only read about big crimes but every single day, there are several reactions that hamper the self-confidence of a woman. People ridiculed my parents’ decision to spend on pilot training for a woman. I chose to not react, ignore and avoid all of those people,” she says.

She needed to work so Dhanavade worked as a cabin crew member for one year in Jet Airways and then joined Indigo Airlines as ground staff member where she worked for three years. In 2017, she secured a job as a pilot in Indigo Airlines. Late nights are part of her work profile but her safety is taken care of. “Being a pilot, I am very much secured. Security guards, pick up and drop is very much sorted for pilots. However, I felt extremely unsafe when I worked as a ground staff,” she says.

Despite people’s speculation and her family’s concern about how marriageable a woman pilot is, Dhanavade is set to tie the knot in a month from now. But not before facing uncomfortable and chauvinistic questions. “I met many boys through this arranged marriage process. All of them rejected me because I was a pilot. I came across horrible reactions. The most common questions asked were, ‘do you cook?’ and ‘How will you keep yourself available for home’,” she says.

Times are changing but stereotypes aren’t easy to crack as Dhanavade has experienced. “Cooking is just one of the routine home chores which even a man should be able to manage. Rather than being worried about cooking, people must ask if the girl has trained herself in self-defence. That is the need of the hour,” she says.

Her word of advice to women is—learn self-defence techniques. “Stop relying on others for protection. Women must pull up their socks, stay undeterred, chase their dreams, stay determined and find their own ways to protect themselves,” she says.