At the crack of every dawn, Ajitha Vijayan mounts bags of milk packets on her two-wheeler, rides through every neighbourhood in Thrissur’s Kanimangalam and delivers milk to almost 200 houses. This is Thrissur’s new mayor, who was appointed on Wednesday. But even before taking on the new role as the leader of the city corporation, Ajitha is known to the people of her ward as Kanimangalam’s long-standing milk supplier, a job that she has been doing for the last 18 years.
So if you are a resident of one of the 200 houses in Kanimangalam, your milk will now be delivered daily by Thrissur's mayor, because Ajitha has no intentions of stopping her old work. In fact, she says it will help her do her job even better. “I would continue travelling to different houses, and I would be able to meet and interact with the people directly. No one can say that I was one of those who were not to be seen after the elections,” she says.
A member of the CPI(M) since 1999, she became a councillor in 2005 and a CPI(M) standing committee chairman in 2010. For the last five years, she says, she has also been an Anganwadi teacher, which disqualified her from standing for local elections (due to a clause that bars anyone who already receives a salary from the government from standing for elections). Now that that ban has been lifted for Anganwadi teachers, she is eligible to hold the post.
Ajitha’s husband, Vijayan, is also a CPI(M) leader and has been running a Milma booth for the last 22 years. She has been helping him with milk delivery for the last 18 years. Ajitha also has a daughter, who got married last month.
When asked how she plans to continue delivering milk now that she has been appointed mayor of Thrissur, Ajitha sounds surprised. “We have to continue living, right? If we need to live, we need to work, and we need to work hard. The work of mayor, I will do in its time, and this work (supplying milk), I will do in its time. I wake up at around 4 am or 4.30 am, and start supplying milk at 5 am. Unless there is a special function or inauguration, the mayor work begins at around 10 am. So it works out fine,” she says.
When asked about her plans for Thrissur as the mayor of the corporation, Ajitha says, “I will continue the work that has been done by the CPI(M) for the last three years. As a woman, I am interested in continuing the projects of the CPI(M) for women, such as opening more SheLodges, and other projects to make Thrissur a corporation that is completely safe and friendly for women.”