Simran Thorat is the first woman merchant navy officer from Pune village
From financial hurdles to societal, gender and language barriers, Simran Thorat, 25, has braved all kinds of choppy waters to realise her dream of working in the merchant navy.
Her parents have not travelled much outside Indapur, about 150 km from Pune. Yet when Simran Thorat expressed a desire to sail the seven seas in a highly male-dominated profession, the only hesitation Brahamadev and Asha Thorat had was over the issue of finance. With the merchant navy training institute in Pune charging Rs 9 lakh for the three-year course, they knew immediately that they had only one option and went for it. The couple sold their three acres of farmland – on which they grew maize, wheat and sugarcane and earned a livelihood from – and set her free to fly. Or in this case, sail.
From then on the brand-new seafarer was ready to handle the choppy waters ahead. She joined her first ship in Singapore in 2019 – the only woman in the crew of 24 – and did seven months straight on board, signing off at peak Covid time.
“The company’s training was amazing and stood me in good stead. They have a brilliant safety protocol in place and no gender bias. I was able to balance cooperation at work with assertiveness if anything made me uncomfortable. Initially, I was seasick for two days. But now I can handle even the roughest of seas,” smiles Simran who steadily set about ensuring she was not “protected” from any job the rest of the crew was handling, be it pulling the heavy tug lines during mooring stations or keeping independent watch in ports.
Do the recent incidents of piracy and capture of merchant ships during conflicts scare her? “Not at all. We have been trained for all emergencies and while I pray nothing like this happens, it has not deterred me in the least from pursuing this career,” says the woman who has sailed three ships so far and is eagerly waiting to join her fourth one next month as third officer.
“My mother, who couldn’t even complete her Class 10 before being married off, was the one who convinced my father to take the step. He had already sold a portion of the fields for my brother’s education, and he sold the rest of it for mine. With no land left, he started working as an electrician for which he had been trained at an ITI while my mother, who was very active in the field, took up a job at the Ferrero chocolate factory in Indapur,” says the 25-year-old who is today the first woman merchant navy officer from her family, village and district, as well as the first woman to be taken on the deck side by her company Seaspan.
The second hurdle was societal, with the extended family and many of their friends aghast at the parents’ resolve to send their daughter on a ship that would entail her being away for months at a time. “My father decided not to let their doubts influence his decision,” says Simran.
What greatly helped was also the fact that her brother had joined the merchant navy a few years ago as an engineer, and he stepped in to allay their parents’ unspoken fears. “Even though I haven’t yet sailed on any ship with women working on them, I supported my sister’s decision as I knew she had the grit and determination to take on the challenges of this career,” says Shubham Thorat, who is now a third engineer with a Japanese shipping company.
Sure enough, the challenges were aplenty and they started right from her stint at maritime college. Simran – who had studied in Marathi medium till Class 8, and then in a semi-English medium school – had to grapple with the coursework which was entirely in English. Compounding it was the cosmopolitan city crowd amid whom she felt a misfit.
“I was one of the three girls in my batch and a fairly good student. Yet, in the first round of placements, I was rejected by one of the biggest shipping companies because I was not fluent in English. I was very disheartened and decided to work on myself. I would speak to my brother over the phone and to myself in front of the mirror in English for hours.” In the final year, when companies came around again to the campus, Seaspan, the world’s leading independent container ship management company, that had never hired women on its ships, selected Simran as their first woman deck cadet.
Meanwhile, Simran and her brother are actively looking for farmland that they have decided to buy jointly as a gift to their parents at the earliest.
(This story has not been edited by News Mania staff and is published from a Media Release)
