This Kothagudem woman is at ease with spanner, spatula too!

To keep the family finances comfortable, Yedalapalli Adilaxmi (30) matches her husband's skills in their automobile repair shop at Sujatha Nagar near Kothagudem

Kothagudem: She handles wrenches and spanners as easily as she handles a spatula or a spoon in her kitchen, and is a no-nonsense person when it comes to gender equality.

Meet 30-year-old Yedalapalli Adilaxmi who matches her husband’s skills in their automobile repair shop at Sujatha Nagar near Kothagudem. She mends tyres and tubes of two, three and four wheelers, as also heavy vehicles like trucks, earth movers and tippers.

Though she dropped out of school at the primary level, Adilaxmi, a native of Anjanapuram, knows how to face life’s challenges. “I don’t know about all this stuff about women’s empowerment, but I just wanted to keep my family’s finances reasonably comfortable. That is when I decided to lend a helping hand to my husband Y Veerabhadram,” she said, explaining how she got started on automobile repair works.

Adilakshmi and Veerabhadram got married in 2010 after which they lived at Tekulapalli for a few years. In search of better livelihood, the couple settled at Sujatha Nagar three years ago. She started learning the work to help her husband and is now quite an expert mechanic.

The couple set up a tyre vulcanising and welding shop investing about Rs One lakh to purchase some good equipment. They had to mortgage a piece of land Adilakshmi’s parents had given her at the time of her marriage. “I now can handle the work like mending a punctured inner tube, greasing and fitting tyres into the vehicle rim and axle on my own, though it seemed tough initially. We serve the customers round the clock,” Adilakshmi, a mother of two girls, told Telangana Today.

And her husband 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 noted.

“At first, people coming to our shop were a bit apprehensive at finding a woman handling the work, which normally men do. But after seeing her skills, they just watch her finishing the task,” he added.

Adilakshmi is an expert welder too but that work has affected her eyesight. She had to spend a huge amount of money to get the eyesight restored. “Since my eyes cannot tolerate the brightness of the welding flare, I stopped doing that work,” she said.

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