It’s difficult to tell where she comes from. Attired in a designer dress with silk stockings, Italian pumps, a quasi-British accent, and an attitude to match, she could be from anywhere in the western world. So you do a double take when she breaks into Punjabi, the kind you hear only in the dusty boondocks of Punjab’s Malwa belt.

Mamta Sachdeva, 24, a stewardess with Etihad Airlines, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, laughs at your bewilderment, and then makes the introductions: “I am Mamta, from Moga.”

As a child, Mamta would shut her eyes to the bitter fights in her two-room house in the narrow Patti Wali Gali of Moga and dream—of flying. There was a lot to escape from. When she was barely eight, mental illness forced her father, a tailor, to drop out of work. Her feisty mother eked out a living by selling clothes at a roadside stall. Life was tough. Today, two-and-a-half years into her career, Mamta draws a handsome Rs 75,000 a month along with free accommodation and transport; she has travelled to 30 countries and spends her spare time learning new languages—she is on the verge of mastering Arabic. These days, she is scouting the real estate market in Punjab to buy a flat for her parents.

It’s a transformation of lives and social mores that is being replicated across Punjab. For Mamta is part of the growing tribe of small-town girls battling a thousand odds to reach for the skies. It’s these young women who have made air hostess training institutes such a roaring business in Punjab.

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