For Yedalapalli Adilaxmi, balancing the kitchen and the garage is all in a day’s work. The 30-year-old mechanic handles wrenches and spanners as easily as she handles a spatula or a spoon in her kitchen.
Reportedly, she is the only woman mechanic in the state of Telangana. A mother of two girls, Adilaxmi works with her husband in his automobile repair shop at Sujatha Nagar near Kothagudem in Telangana.
She does everything from mending the tyres and tubes of two-wheelers to trucks and carrier repairs. Adilaxmi is also an expert welder, but this particular work affected her eyesight, as her eyes could not stand the flash of light from welding. After being forced to spend a huge sum of money to correct her eyesight, she stopped doing welding jobs.
Her husband, Y. Veerabhadram, is more than happy with his wife’s work. “I have no words to describe her contribution to the family’s well being. All I can say is that I am fortunate to have her as my wife,” he told the media.
Adilaxmi and Veerabhadram got married in 2010, soon after which they moved to Sujatha Nagar in search of a better livelihood.
In order to make ends meet, the couple set up a mechanic and welding shop, on a mortgaged amount of no less than one lakh. She started learning the skills to help her husband.
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Although a primary school dropout, Adilaxmi, a native of Anjanapuram, knows how to cope up with life’s challenges. “I don’t know about all this stuff about women’s empowerment, I just wanted to keep my family’s finances reasonably comfortable. That is when I decided to lend a helping hand to my husband ” she told the media.
Though it seemed tough at first, now they are able to run their store twenty-four hours a day.
“At first, people coming to our shop were a bit apprehensive of finding a woman handling mechanical and automotive work that are normally done by men. But once they see her skills, they just watch her finishing the task,” says proud husband Veerabhadran.
(Edited by Anju Narayanan)
