By Zahid H Javali
Five years ago, when Annie Sinha Roy was a resident of Bangalore (Somasundrapalya), she was still India’s first tunnel engineer who worked for the Bangalore Metro. Today, she is a resident engineer for the Mumbai Metro with six engineers reporting to her. “There could be another woman tunnel engineer now, but I am not aware of it,” she says. “Work cannot be hectic if you love your work,” says the Santacruz (East) resident about her increasing responsibility.
Small beginnings
The 33-year-old mechanical engineer who graduated from Nagpur University in 2007 encountered happiness and sorrow at the same time. Her father had passed away and just about then, she got a call from Delhi Metro. “I didn’t have any choice because my financial condition was bad, so I had to take up the job,” she says and has never regretted her ten years as the first and only woman tunnel engineer.
Chennai Metro experience
After three years, she moved to Chennai to work for the Chennai Metro. Five years later, she went overseas to work for the Doha Metro-rail project in Qatar. But the stint was short-lived. She had to quit within four months because she got married and had to shift to Bangalore. For about three months, she worked as an assistant teacher at Vibgyor High School in Somasundrapalya near HSR Layout. “Then one day, I saw a recruitment advertisement on the internet from Bangalore Metro. “I sent all my documents and eventually, got the job.”
‘It’s teamwork all the way’
“We have a lot of responsibilities. We work as a team with other members. We use a massive boring machine to create the underground tunnel, segment by segment, and with proper grouting. We have to maintain the alignment and earth pressure, which is already pre-determined. Taking care of quality and safety is important, otherwise you can face fatal accidents. We have to take care of geo-technical conditions and the quantity of excavated material. We work inside the tunnel. Each and every breakthrough is a major milestone for me. I can’t count any one thing as an achievement… all of them are.”
The litmus test
I never faced any problem as a tunnel engineer. It’s a challenging job, ofcourse. In the beginning, it was difficult for a woman to work in a man’s world. And then, there was the ego factor of how can a girl work on site, and full time. This is the mindset of Indian men that office work is good for girls, but on site, it’s not because of dust pollution, chemicals, gases and so on. People even told me to sit in the office and visit the site only once a week. But I understood that if I want to learn, I need to be on site, full-time. In the beginning, it was tough working with a contractor. But then again, if I had to learn about tunnelling, it’s best to start work with a contractor. And thankfully, I always got great support from my seniors.
On the first day of my site visit, I met Mr Hall (Manager, Alpine) who asked for my name, designation and education. Then, he showed me a loader and said the boom was not working. “Go down and check out why?” he said. One supervisor replied to him instead of me: “Sir, how can she go down the vehicle? She’s a woman…” The supervisor replied without skipping a beat,“She is an engineer… that is her only identity on site… no man or woman. Are there words like ‘Male Engineer’ and ‘Female Engineer’ in the dictionary?”. I felt proud about myself when he said that and later realised why he said that in front of everyone. He made me feel free to work without any hesitation. My advice to any woman taking up mechanical engineering is to not change their branch of engineering. So what if you are a woman? You have enough capability to handle any problem and any situation better than a man. If not a tunnel engineer, I would have been a fashion designer. My future plan is to do some sort of business… but nothing decided yet.
Bangalore Diary
I came to HSR Layout extension in January 2015. I liked it because it met all my needs within the neighbourhood itself. I don’t have to venture out of my vicinity to buy anything. It’s completely self-sustaining. My grouse is that the road conditions need to be improved and indiscriminate tree cutting should be stopped. The pollution rate is also increasing every year and something needs to be done about the traffic and commercial establishments causing it.
Pastimes
I love to draw and travel to discover new places. I just want to fly like a free bird and inhale pure oxygen.
My family
My mother is a retired businesswoman. My husband is the Vice President of LeadSquared, MarketXpander Services Pvt. Ltd.
My daily beat
6am: Get up and meditate
7.10am: Walk my dog June for about 20 minutes
By 8am: Pack my lunch and take a bath
8am: Give breakfast to my twin cats
8.30am: Have my breakfast
8.45: Step out of home to reach the office
8pm: Reach home and go for a walk with June
8.30pm: Food to my twin cats and finish all the minor household work
10pm: Dinner and listening to music
12am: Sleep
