When Manu came into my life again, I was not the person I later became.
I did not ride a scooter. I did not ride a motorcycle. I did not drive a car. In many ways, I was standing still — not only on roads, but inside life too.
Our first journeys were by bus.
There was something simple and beautiful about those journeys. Sitting together, watching roads pass, carrying small bags, waiting at bus stands, talking, laughing, planning things that perhaps seemed ordinary then but became precious later.
But Manu was never someone who allowed life to remain smaller than it needed to be.
She encouraged me to ride.
We bought a Honda Activa, and with her belief beside me, I began to move differently. Roads that once belonged to others slowly became roads I could take too.
Then she encouraged me to learn to drive a car.
I may have hesitated. I may have doubted myself. But she did not doubt me in the same way. She had this ability to see a stronger version of me before I could see it myself.
Because of her, I learned.
Because of her, I drove.
Because of her, I later found myself on mountain roads, difficult routes, and journeys I once would not even have imagined attempting.
She did not simply teach me to control a vehicle.
She changed my relationship with fear.
That was one of her greatest gifts to me.
Manu believed in movement. She believed that life should open. She believed that a person should not remain trapped only because fear has become familiar.
Every road I drive today carries something of her.
Not only memory.
Courage.
When I hold the steering wheel now, I often feel that I am still holding a lesson she gave me. The road ahead may be uncertain, but it is still meant to be taken. The turn may be sharp, but it can be crossed. The climb may be difficult, but one does not stop living because the road rises.
She taught me to move forward.
And even now, when I travel without her beside me in the way she once was, I know she is still there in another way — in the courage with which I start the engine, in the confidence with which I take the road, and in the life she placed inside me.