Ruby Singhal (30) is regarded as a bit of an oddity in Ghaziabad. A mother of three, Singhal is the UP city’s only woman autorickshaw driver. But she made headlines last month, after a vandal torched her and husband Ajay Gupta’s autorickshaws. The vehicles were parked outside their rented house and the culprit was a young man, allegedly drunk. He set fire to his own car, the three-wheelers and a few houses in the area. “The police showed me a huge can of petrol,” says Singhal.

From January 6 — the day of the incident — till the second week of February, a harried Singhal rented vehicles to feed the family. With a little help from an anonymous donor and the Apartment Owners Association in Ghaziabad, the family then bought a second-hand auto for ₹74,000. On Saturday last, Singhal and her family were chauffered to Lucknow by the state government, where she was handed the keys to a new vehicle.

Singhal is aware of the attention she gets as Ghaziabad’s only woman auto driver, but when she started out six years ago, it was not to break a glass ceiling. “I began driving an auto because we had no money. We lived in a shack on the roadside, and my husband decided to stop driving autos and start a small shop,” she says. That’s when she saw an opportunity to earn a living, using an important skill that she had — the ability to drive.

The eldest of three siblings, Singhal first learnt to ride a cycle, then a moped, a scooter and also a motorbike. She ran errands for her family and shuttled her brothers to school. An autorickshaw was in natural progression.

“I was refused a licence by the Road Transport Authority… they laughed when I asked for an auto licence, so for a few months I used my scooter licence, after which a local journalist helped me get a driving licence for a light motor vehicle,” she says.

Despite run-ins with corrupt traffic constables, aggresive drivers on the road and lecherous passers-by, Singhal enjoyed her work from day one. “I came home crying many times after policemen snatched my earnings, but I went back each morning,” she says. A few months later, Singhal learnt she was pregnant with her third child, Prateek, who is now five. “I thought, we’ve made the mistake now, so I should work harder. I was in the auto with a passenger when I went into labour. I went to the hospital at 2am, when the pain became unbearable,” she says.

Within a month of Prateek’s birth, Singhal was back on the road, with the infant tied to her waist. A few passengers offered to hold the baby while she drove. Even after six years on the road, the catcalls and whistling have not stopped. Singhal recalls an incident where three cars ended in a pile-up, because the driver of the first vehicle was busy looking at her. Sometimes, people stare at her, openmouthed, then want to take her pictures to show their wife, friends or children. “I think of only the money I earn by driving this auto, I focus on that and ignore the catcalls or whistles,” she says. This year alone, Singhal has had eight to 10 altercations with men on the road. “Some of my passengers feel more outraged than I, some even ask me to chase these rascals and teach them a lesson. I just avoid problems,” she says with a smile.

Singhal’s smile disappears as she recalls the torching of the two autos. “When the fire was raging, our main concern was to prevent the CNG cylinders from exploding. We kept pouring water on the cylinders… It would have been a disaster, there were houses all around,” she says.

Shaken by the incident, the family decided to move in with one of Singhal’s brothers. “You can see how we live here, in one room… With a country liquor store right below, there are drunkards loitering all the time,” she adds. But all is well in Singhal’s mind as long as her children — a daughter and two sons — are going to school. Students of a private school in Ghaziabad, they continue to inspire their feisty mother to stay at the wheel.

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