Yogita Raghuvanshi is probably the most qualified truck driver in the country. On monday morning, passers-by gawked in disbelief as a petite woman in her late forties expertly manoeuvred a massive 14-wheeler truck with its 30 tonne-cargo through Palakkad’s busy english Church Road. She had driven a liquor consignment all the way from Bhopal to a kerala State Beverages Corporation godown.
Yogita is far from the archetypal inter-State trucker. She also happens to be a qualified lawyer, who preferred the tough and risky life on the highways to look after her family, instead of the pittance she would have earned as a beginner in the black robe.
She and her huge truck have been criss-crossing the country through all kinds of terrain since 2000. “I certainly am not doing this job because of a resolve to break stereotypes. I am behind this wheel owing to my circumstances. So please don’t make out as if I am from another world,” she said. This is her second visit to kerala she and her truck were in kochi last year.