At 8 am, along a sandy stretch in Dadar overlooking the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, an audience of crows is watching a black Activa hiccup. It seems to move an inch a minute, owing to a tight accelerator and self-doubt. In a few days though, the shoulders of its rider will relax, her feet will lift off the ground and the scooter will cruise. This happy ending takes around 10 days to arrive but when it does, the ever-smiling Tessy George, who is waiting in the background, will quickly capture it on her phone and forward the video to the rider on WhatsApp. The moment marks the time when, in return for her fee of Rs 3,000, George would have just gifted yet another woman, independence. "It isn't just pocket money for me," says 43-year-old George, a former school teacher who quit her job after having a kid and started training women in scooter driving two years ago on the insistence of friends whom she had trained for free."It's fun," says the Mangalorean, who has trained doctors at Hinduja hospital, nurses at KEM hospital, lawyers and even lady cops who wanted to tame the Pulsor. This month, with over 27 female students signing up, George's business and friends' circle have grown well but the number of working women who would come from as far as Borivli and Kalyan has dwindled, she says, reminding you of an important change.
Where earlier such lady two-wheeler driving trainers were scarce, today these freedom-peddling entrepreneurs have sprung up all over the city .After all, given the affordability of two-wheelers and the ease of parking them in a city like Mumbai, the demand for these trainers, has gone up. Typically , summer keeps these trainers busy as school vacations allow mothers, teachers andcollege students to seek out the promise of motorable freedom. You can spot these trainers---chiefly mompreneurs-in online ads, on quiet roads near flyovers and at unfavoured patches by the sea, explaining the difference between `left clutch' and `accelerator'.
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Their biggest USP , is their gender. "Men are not as patient in teaching and expect women to have equal strength," says the denim-clad George, who tightens the accelerator on the students' bikes so that they don't accidentally speed away , holds the back panel of tentative scooters and then, graduates to riding pillion with students until they master driving on the highway . Asmita Salunkhe, who had started the service in Airoli few years ago gauging the dearth and ex pense of rickshaws, points out that there are barely any women instructors in driving schools. "Teaching on a bike invariably involves contact so naturally women prefer lady trainers," says Salunkhe, who promises to teach women how to ride two-wheelers smoothly in ten days even if they don't know how to cycle."I design the training based on the individual's body structure," says Salunkhe, who has seen clients from Borivliand Byculla too.
Many compelling reasons lure women to these courses.For Santacruz resident Gracy Poojary , who works as a personal secretary in Nariman Point, the drive to wake up an hour earlier for the training session in Dadar came from her sevenyear-old. Every time Poojary would walk Tanya to her drawing class ten minutes away , the little one would fret: "Mom, if only you knew how to ride a scooter." For 18-year-old Sanika Surve, an aspiring lawyer, it was the feeling of helplessness on seeing a friend fall off a scooter recently that made her vow to learn the life skill on turning the legal driving age.
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In the course of conquering speed breakers and sharp turns, the mentors invariably become confidantes. "Many wives join the course simply to prove a point to their husbands," says Kurla-based veiled trainer Sufiya Mukhtar Shah, whose clients have confided in the mother of three about everything from nightmarish past instructors to boyfriends. Shah is standing near the empty road adjacent to the Kurla Terminus bridge, one eye on the two clients she calls her slowest till date. "Some of them, who usually wear sarees, have specially bought leggings and kurtas for training," says Shah, who has paired her burqa with canvas shoes and silky black gloves that have finger cut-offs ("I burnt my hands riding in the heat," she says.) Of course, the heat and un solicited advice on driving that comes their way chiefly from male passersby , can make their job grating. Besides, they may lose profits to repairing dents and as Manisha Patil, a company secretary , who took to training fellow moms on a service road in Thane on weekends, found out, scooty training isn't really a viable way of earning a second income. But Khan, who has seen "'road confidence"' translate into upright spines in the workplace, says the fact that some women take up jobs after learning makes it all worth it.Interestingly , many students as well as trainers are Muslim women. Khan once taught a 70year-old woman on a mission to fulfil an overdue dream. "This is a one-time investment with life-long benefits," says Khan.
Sometimes, this investment is also made in kind."Some students return to give me gifts, dresses and sweets," says Shah, who has also been treated to free breakfast at the end of her sessions. In the distance, her student, a burqa-clad school teacher, veers into a depression next to the fence and Shah runs to pull the bike out."Unless you have confidence," Shah chastises the teacher, "you have nothing."
