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Introducing India's first woman seafarer

Krittivas Mukherjee in Calcutta

As a little girl, Sonali Banerjee loved poring over colourful pictures of oceans and seas, beautiful tropical islands and the swank port cities around the world. She dreamt of being a globetrotter and wished she had a ship to sail.

Years later, when she passed out of a premier mariners' college in 1999, her dream had almost come true. On August 26, this 24-year-old will officially become India's first woman marine engineer, on duty with a well-known fleet of tankers.

It was the passion to see the world that fired young Banerjee's wish to "do something different from routine jobs". And the job of a mariner seemed to be a natural choice.

"Initially everyone seemed apprehensive about my storming a male bastion," says Banerjee with a chuckle.

After clearing an engineering entrance examination, she decided to join the Marine Engineering Research Institute at Taratala for a four-year course.

"In the beginning, my presence in the campus did pique a few men, including some fellow students. But maybe with time I became acceptable," Banerjee says.

"Though the students were a bit apprehensive about me, my teachers were very supportive and took care to put me at ease with the physically demanding schedule," she says.

Banerjee, who has been recruited by Mobil Shipping Co, had the advantage of having in the profession her uncles whose tales of the seas and the calling ports ingrained in her the desire to follow in their footsteps.

Interestingly, though Banerjee, who hails from Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, is the country's first woman marine engineer, she is not the first to join the 'untested waters' of a marine engineering course. In 1949 a woman had enrolled for the course in MERI, but dropped out for some unknown reasons.

Perhaps that reason is not unknown to Banerjee, who says her stay at the institute taught her a lot about the place of women in Indian society.

In spite of being open to women, marine engineering has been the domain of men. This was more than evident from the fact that MERI, a premier institute in the field, did not know where to put up its only female student when she joined in 1995. After much deliberation, she was given a place in the officers' quarters.

After completing the tough four-year course at MERI, she was selected by Mobil and put under a six-month pre-sea training as a junior engineer. Her hands-on training took her to ports in Sri Lanka, Singapore, Australia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Fiji and the Gulf.

"It was tough and very tiring. But the fact that I was the lone woman officer in a crew of 25 wasn't a problem," she says. After the training, she took an examination to secure the certificate of marine engineering officer. Having passed this crucial test, she now can take charge of a machine room at the operational level in Mobil.

"With this certificate she can join any international ship as an engineer. This certificate is the licence to it," says Registrar of Indian Ships, Ajoy Chatterjee.

Banerjee says she wants to become a chief engineer some day. "For that I will have to complete 30 months of service at sea and clear two examinations," she says, adding she is confident that she can do it.

Indo-Asian News Service

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