Widowed young, she raised her son on a sweeper’s wage and rose to bank AGM

Widowed at 20 with a one-year-old son to raise, Pratiksha Tondwalkar worked as a sweeper at a State Bank of India branch in Mumbai on a monthly wage of around Rs 60 to Rs 65, before eventually rising to become an Assistant General Manager at the bank.

Tondwalkar’s husband, Sadashiv Kadu, a bookbinder at SBI, died in a road accident three years into their marriage. “I had no understanding of the outside world because I had never been allowed to step outside my home,” she recalled. She moved to Mumbai to collect his pending salary from the bank and asked the branch manager for any job, joining as a sweeper in 1985.

Her mornings began at 5 am cleaning the branch’s three floors and eight to ten toilets before it opened at 8:30 am. She then worked at a shoe manufacturing unit with her son beside her, before returning home to feed him, put him to sleep and study.

Watching educated bank staff convinced her that education could change her circumstances. She enrolled in a night college in Mumbai’s Vikhroli area, cleared her Class 12 examinations, and later completed a degree in Psychology, eventually rising through the ranks to become an Assistant General Manager at the same bank where she once cleaned toilets.