She has traded the ladle for a dao (machete) for a better family life and a bright future for her sons.

Meet Shanti Kalita, a woman butcher who runs a meat shop from a makeshift stall at Kamakhya Gate near Nilachal hills.

It is easy to accept a woman wearing the apron or a chef’s hat, but imagine her holding a machete or a long knife confidently at a meat shop without showing any discomfort at the smell of dried blood or poultry!

We have women working in different industries, even in male-dominated ones like fuel stations. Many run paan shops, drive bike taxis. But running a meat shop is hard to imagine even at a time when women are storming the male bastions and emerging on top.

Running a household with her husband’s meagre income was easy enough to sustain with two decent meals a day, but difficult to secure the future of their two sons. That is when Shanti decided to come out of the comfort of being a homemaker and set up a makeshift pork shop at Kamakhya Gate.

“I thought it would be profitable to set up a pork shop in that area because there wasn’t any,” she said.

But when her business started thriving, there were others to join the pork-selling club in that area too. That is when Shanti decided to divert from selling pork to selling chicken and duck meat only.

Today, she is a successful businesswoman in her own right. Her husband and her elder sister are diligently helping her to make the business more profitable.

It is a myth that women who dare to break free from social stigma and stereotypes mostly belong to the well-to-do families. Shanti Kalita is a perfect example of a woman from the lower-middle class taking on the world on her own terms.

She still faces challenges almost every day, but refuses to give in. She knows it is a profitable business and she sticks to it, come what may — all for her dream to see her sons grow up to be fine, young men equipped with the best of education and ready to take on the world.

Shanti’s infallible drive and optimism to find solutions to her problems, her knack and courage to think what others might not dare to think and her resilience to fight every odd in order to reach her goals are some qualities that every entrepreneur should possess.