Austin Town's Sakhi Motors seems like any other auto-repair garage at first glance. Greasy machine parts strewn about and the mechanics at work in their blue overalls. But the hands fixing the clutch wire don't look like your regular repairman's grubby hands. Because they aren't. They belong to one of the four women mechanics who run the all-woman garage for two-wheelers with a horsepower lower than 100 cc.

MISSES FIXIT: The team hopes to tap the city's many female two-wheeler owners

Set up by Vimochana, a Bangalore forum for women's rights, in January this year, the garage has spelt confidence for the four women working there. For S. Sampige, 23, a mechanic at Sakhi Motors, it is an opportunity for a rewarding career. Sampige, who comes from a poor family, took to this track after she approached Vimochana, through whose initiatives she received a six-month training in repairing two-wheelers.

The Bangalore Sakhi project began with a training programme in two-wheeler maintenance and repair for eight women attached to Vimochana. The group, which completed a six-month certificate course at Loyola Industrial Training Institute (LITI) run by the Jesuits in Bangalore, were given hands-on training at various service centres.

Like the others, J. Pushpa, 27, was trained at the nine-year-old LITI. She also underwent training at the Jesuit-run centre in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. Says Brother A. Ignatius, LITI principal: "Normally women come here to learn tailoring, embroidery and the like; this is a challenging line for them." Brother Benedict Rosario, a Jesuit priest, was instrumental in training the first band of women mechanics in Bangalore.

For mechanics like B. Kamalakshi, 24, and Gowri, 22, who had worked in a two-wheeler showroom earlier, it was a rough road. "Some men used to poke fun at us," says Kamalakshi. "They used to say that as women we should sit at home and cook for the men." But the jibes backfired, spurring the women to newer ventures. Armed with a pager. Kamalakshi ran a mobile bike-servicing clinic for a while. She gave it up to join the garage.

It was more grease and grime than roses all the way. Stripping two-wheelers and re-assembling them was tough. Says Kamalakshi: "Initially it was difficult for us to don the blue mechanics' overalls and soil our hands with grease, but slowly people got used to us." Sampige and Kamalakshi may not know the theory of compressor ratio or max torque but they can spot the defect instantly when a faulty moped is brought in.

"Together we can make a difference," Kamalakshi declares. That's exactly what Vimochana's Donna Fernandes, a key figure in the launch of the all-woman garage, wants. "We are aiming at removing barriers that prevent women from working in sectors that remained a male bastion," she says.

The reaction from male mechanics hasn't been encouraging, though. "They are not all that keen to have us here," says Anitha Devi, who helps run the garage. "They feel the men will come to us because we are women. But they have to realise that we can provide them healthy competition."

The team takes a day to service a bike, usually working in pairs. The garage has not attained high visibility yet but the word is spreading and the garage has started attracting customers. And, Pushpa says, if the garage manages to tap women two-wheeler owners, who form the majority of Bangalore's 12 lakh riders, business will be good. Heading their way is company executive D. Monica, a two-wheeler rider, who says that the next time she wants to service her bike, she will ride it straight to the Austin Town garage. "As women, they need support from us," she says.

Says Fernandes: "Our only desire was to help these women ride their own success stories. Women two-wheeler riders can come to this workshop run by women. There is a comfort factor here and we would like to explore those chances." Helping in that endeavour were a number of privately run garages and charitable trusts that supported Sakhi Motors in cash and kind. Now the workshop plans to offer two-wheeler riding classes exclusively for women.

The women are happy. "This is an honourable means of earning a livelihood and a skilful way of doing it," says Gowri. "It is a booster to our morale. We are also breaking the stereotype of women being inferior to men."

"We will work hard and do our best to earn a good name and money," smiles Pushpa. All they are waiting for is the two-wheelers to trundle in.