Radhamani Amma: The driving force

We have many examples of brilliant women achievers,charming personalities and magnanimous social presence, inspiring millions of followers. These achievers and their achievements are limited to either media or the corporate domain. Starting from Indra Nooyi to Susmita Sen, Barkha Dutt, Shreya Ghoshal, the list may be endless. They truly have done stuff worthy of inspiring generations.

However, in this age of overwhelming social media influence, inspiration is followed by the sensation or hype created by women offering content that appeals more to the hormone than any sense. Forget about a lasting impact of such inspiration; in most cases, the contents keep overlapping and fade into oblivion. We tend to overlook and mostly ignore examples which are devoid of any glamour or sensation.

If I may say, there are women, far from the maddening buzz of professional or social media and does not belong to the corporate leagues, although they have accomplished much to the cause of sustenance and survival, nurturing passion they have developed just by chance.

Mani Amma, a 72 year old lady originally from a small village in Cherthala, Kerala, settled in Cochin after marriage and running a driving school for heavy commercial vehicles, having license to drive 11 different kinds of vehicles such as trailer trucks, heavy duty cranes, earth movers and fork lifts, not to miss the ordinary cars and bikes of sports category as well.

She didn't even know how to ride a bicycle when she was married off and shifted to Cochin, where her husband started a driving school for heavy commercial vehicles in her name and requested her to learn driving to justify the name. Mani Amma was too shy to readily agree at that time but she started gaining interest when her husband insisted and trained her to drive an Ambassador taxi, just sitting beside him, constantly boosting her confidence like a true mentor. This shy young bride just followed her instincts and her husband's wishes and gradually went on learning to drive all kinds of vehicles that were subjects of training in their driving school. There was an adjacent workshop where different kinds of vehicles were repaired and serviced. She started feeling the pulse of engines and other motor parts and looked after that business as well.

Recently, I had the privilege to interact with this simple, confident and sweet natured old lady, who loves wheels and roads just the way I do and it was so amazing to listen to her life's story, which I found truly inspiring for anyone, irrespective of gender. She exuded so much confidence while answering my question: if she ever felt frightened driving such mammoth vehicles like JCB earth movers or cranes or a long trailer. Her response was so honest and touching as she admitted that she was in a state of daze when she had first started driving that ambassador but her husband just never let her fear take over and he accompanied her also when she had driven a bus out of the city travelling to her native village Cherthala.

Mani Amma is also popularly known as driver amma to the younger generations of local people. She is loved and respected by everyone who knows her in person because of her simplicity and endearing nature. She doesn't have superfluous vocabulary to inspire others...in her simple words, she says to everyone..."If I could learn to drive...so can you and everyone else. you just have to believe that you can..."

I deeply feel that I was fortunate to know Mani Amma and her accomplishments. Wish her all the happiness and health and let her continue to inspire us as long as she can.

*Image credits: Taken from the website:https://a2zdrivingschool.in/news/

The author, Saikat Sengupta, is the Regional Manager of Bluedart-DHL, India.