Title - Lone woman coolie mans Goa station

CARAMBOLIM: Dressed in a bright blue sari with a rag tied around her waist, 40-year-old Shashi Bomkar is busy with disinfectants and mops at the gents waiting room of Goa's Karmali railway station at 11am. She can pass off for any other cleaning lady, if one is not around half-an-hour later to witness the transformation.

At 11.30am, a grainy voice through the station speaker announces the arrival of the Konkan Kanya Express and Shashi switches roles. She unties the rag around her waist, wipes off the beads of sweat over her eyebrows and puts on the red shirt of a porter's uniform over her sari. She then pulls out a green trolley to carry her customers' luggage and stands five-feet-tall to receive passengers.

The other porter at the station-where only a select few trains stop everyday-is a male, Ankush Parvatkar. When the train arrives, Ankush is immediately approached by a passenger to carry his luggage to the exit. Passengers walk past Shashi's calls to carry their luggage, most pulling their wheeled baggage smoothly through the sunny weather.

But nature will not allow Shashi to turn away disheartened on this particular day. A sudden bout of rain hits the station and a couple of passengers quickly throw their luggage into Shashi's trolley. She runs to the safety of the station's tin-roof shelter with the bags.

"My husband was working at this station as a porter. He passed away eight years ago. It was sudden and I had two young children-a daughter and a son-to raise," says Shashi. With no relatives to support her financially, then station master, Mohammad Yunnis, spoke to the railways' higher authorities in Margao and got her this job. "I took it up as I did not want my children to give up schooling," says the determined woman, as she waits for the train to pull into the station.

With no more than four trains making a stop at the station everyday, Shashi found it difficult to make ends meet. Soon enough she was hired by the contractor in-charge of sanitation at the station.

"I live in a mud house 25 minutes away from the station. I wake up at 4.30am to do the housework and prepare my children for school and college. Once they leave, I report to work at 7am. I clean the station's waiting rooms and the railway tracks. When the trains arrive I put on the porter's uniform and look for customers," said Shashi.

Station master Sangeeta Shirgaonkar said Shashi stays at the station till 10pm at times because she does not want to be absent when passengers arrive. ``She does not want passengers to complain, which might go into her record."

Shashi proudly tells anyone who is willing to listen how her son is now studying in Class VII and, more importantly, how her daughter has enrolled in a college in the commerce stream. "I want both my children to complete their graduation.''

It wasn't easy initially for the homemaker to start working that too as a porter in a male-dominated field. "Initially it felt odd for me as well as the passengers. But I have no qualms about my work. Some regular passengers know me and prefer to hire me as they know my financial and family situation. The labour involved does not bother me as I was used to carrying wood from the forests for cooking even as a homemaker.''

She earns a fixed sum of Rs 4,000 for cleaning the station, but earnings from the porter's job remain fickle.

"On some days I earn around Rs 100 and on others not even a rupee. But it's enough to run my house, and everyone treats me well at the station. I haven't encountered any major problems as a woman porter in the last eight years," said Shashi.