TRACTOR GIRL MAKES INROADS INTO KHAPLAND

(A real life rural parallel to NH10’s Meera)

As the Satabdi Express chugged into Chandigarh station, what caught my eyes was the tremendously clean and neat platform, less crowded, well managed, passengers and porters following rules strictly instead of shoving and pushing people around and an utterly urban business-like aura. For a first-time tourist who is increasingly used to the mayhem of an over-crowded Howrah station, Chandigarh surely was a pleasant surprise. As the exceedingly handsome Himachali chauffeur sent by Oberoi, led our way to the black sedan waiting to take us up the hills, my husband turned to my son and declared we shall be travelling through Khapland.

I found no sign of the Khapland terrain I was used to viewing and no hint of travelling down NH10, though my son proudly replied back to his dad: “Oh so its here that NH10 was shot!” And then turning to me added: “Mom, Virat Kohli’s girlfiend was the lead actress.” As if I didn’t know! But I chose to remain silent, smiling away like an innocent bride who has just stepped into the outside world, getting to know so many new things from the men who would be escorting her to the hills.

Well, what I did realise is that we would be driving through a major part of Haryana, a state that has a dubious reputation for its skewed sex ratio. But when the trip down the semi-barren roads of Khapland throws up news of a bold woman who dared to infiltrate the male world of mechanised farming, then surely one gets a real-life parallel to Meera and her NH10.

The four lane mountainous highway reminded me of Hollywood movies, though I knew the little glades dotting them often came up with horrors of honour killing or forced female foeticides. Every now and then as we passed through small villages and towns my son kept on pointing at women: “Dad, there are many girls around,” though his dad was more interested in the Kinnauri girls up in the hills than their Haryanvi counterparts. Probably NH10 had such an impact on my son, he felt he would see a land totally devoid of women! I had to explain what a lopsided sex ratio meant and that there were enough women still left in Haryana to roam the streets though most of them were veiled in ghunghats that almost came down till their bosoms.

And then when we thought we would just see veiled women all our way, we came across Suman Rani, the Tractor Girl from Hisar. She is an inspiration for sure, may be not like the urban Meera who had the intelligence and background to avenge the lords of the Khapland, but a rural educated mother of two who in her own small way made inroads into the hediously patriarchal society of Haryana.

Clad in a salwar kameez (and without a ghunghat for sure), this 27-year-old woman showed the courage to be the first woman in the region to have applied for a tractor driving license. And that’s how she decided to make inroads into the male domain where, women driving to grain markets or participating in mechanised farming is a taboo and never encouraged. 

However, just like the widows of Bengal had Vidyasagar and Rammohan Ray to help them, Suman has her husband Anil, her greatest confidante and friend who respected his wife’s wishes and helped her to gain a status that’s usually swept under the carpet when a girl is born in Khapland. Though the in-laws were not supportive, they did not oppose either.

Suman plans to take her kids to school, help her husband on the farms, drive to the grain markets and also ferry other women to the markets of they need to. That’s how her tractor will help her. She wants to set a trend so that other young women of the area would also be inspired to try out their hands in jobs that were so long considered to be out-of-bounds for them. It also means financial freedom, as Suman plans her husband to take up some other job and not spend more time in the fields, she would take care of that and her husband can thus earn the extra penny to help their children get a good eductaion.

As I watched the Tractor Girl, I somehow remembered what the police officer told Meera in NH10: “Gurgaon mein jab aakhri mall khatam hote hain, wahin aap ki democracy aur constitution khatam hoti hai” (Where the urban malls end in Gurgaon, democracy and constitution also end there, what starts next is the rule of Khapland). And as I said goodbye to Khapland and meandered up into the picturesque Solan Valley, I realised there is a woman who has proved the officer from NH10 wrong and may be will bring in a new era to Khapland.