71-Year-Old Grandma Drives Heavy Vehicles & Holds Licenses for 11 Vehicles
71-year-old Radhamani Amma drives and owns licenses for 11 vehicles, including heavy vehicles like JCBs, excavators, road rollers and cranes.
71-year-old Radhamani Amma from Thoppumpady, near Fort Kochi, Kerala is a little more than your average grandmother. She is special. She is the only woman in India to hold 11 vehicle licenses. This includes heavy vehicles such as JCBs, Cranes, trailers, forklifts, excavators and road rollers.
Radhamani amma, often fondly referred to as Mani amma, took up driving as a passion when her husband TV Lal set up a driving school in 1978. Under her husband’s training, Radhamani amma learned how to drive a bus and a truck. Then drove a bus from Thoppumpady to Cherthala, 33-odd km, where the heavy vehicle licensing authority was based at the time.
This was a time when women did not drive much in Kerala. Not even cars, let alone the heavy vehicles. According to Radhamani Amma, at those times people on the streets were shocked to see a lady driving a heavy vehicle and often called out to others to show them this rare sight. “I had my husband accompany, I was not afraid of driving the bus. It is like any other vehicle besides I was driving after learning how to,” Radhamani Amma says in an interview.
In 2004, after her husband’s death, Radhamani amma took up the driving school, A-Z driving school and is operating it currently. Interestingly, even at 71, Radhamani Amma is still a student. She is doing a diploma course in mechanical engineering from the Government Polytechnic College at Kalamassery. Since she is not a regular teaching staff at the driving school, she need not drive these heavy vehicles on a daily basis. But she gets to showcase her skill occasionally when they give a demonstration to the students.
Curiously, the only common vehicle she does not know how to drive is a bicycle. Ladies’ bicycles were rare at her time, and it was difficult to ride a men’s bicycle in a saree. This prevented her from driving a bicycle. But she learned how to drive a scooter and a car. And still rides a scooter everywhere.
According to Radhamani amma, she learned to drive each of these heavy vehicles just because of her passion for driving and her curiosity about it, not because she needed to. She wants to learn how to operate a tower crane next.
Credits: The Better India
Read the full story here.
-Staff Reporter
