Mumbai - An Addiction
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Share Cab
My usual return trip to home involves me taking a share cab from the highway near my office to Borivli. What that means is that taxi drivers who return home (I assume) in the evening and are thus travelling from the South of Mumbai to the North, take passengers at nominal rates along with them. The passengers necessarily have to get down somewhere the taxi driver is headed towards. But that’s a small inconvenience to the alternative mode of transport – chock-a-blocked local trains.
And it is not just the traditional taxis which ferry passengers in this share-cab business model, even the tourist cars, company buses and as on one occasion, an official BMC Sumo sort of a vehicle.
Only problem was that when the driver of the BMC car picked up the passengers at Garware signal, the car was not on official duty. However to escape potential questioning by the traffic police, he put up a sign of “On BMC duty” nonetheless. Obviously he wasn’t aware of the share-cab model niceties. No traffic police in the two years that I have been using share-cabs has ever stopped one. Putting up a “On BMC Duty” signboard achieved exactly the thing that the driver had set out to avoid. A traffic police who obviously realized that the car was carrying out public service under the guise of BMC duty pulled over the car. He peeked inside and saw a varied assortment of people – two IT salesmen (including myself), a couple of college students, two bricks and mortar laborers, a guy and his coy, obedient wife obviously returning from some kind of a marriage or a similar family function.
The cop then looked at the driver questioningly. And the driver committed his second blunder in the space of ten minutes. He told the cop that everyone in the car was on election duty?! The cop inspected the diverse crowd again. And said with a mocking tone: “Is mein se ek bhi election duty pe hai to main tere ko jaane doonga.” And asked for the driver’s license, took it and walked away.
Someone in the car berated the driver: “Abey jhooth to bheja laga ke bol”
Some wisdom in that. The driver probably thought that driving a BMC car made him above the law; a law which anyways didn’t bother about taxis carrying people to their destinations. And then, when the law apprehended him, he thought he was smart enough to lie through it. Any self respecting traffic policeman would have taken offense.
Anyways, I and my other IT sales colleague left the car and took another share cab. Maybe we should have stuck around and seen the hapless driver through his troubles. He was after all rendering a service to us. But the driver did not inspire a lot of loyalty in his customers. Everyone branched out and he was left to deal with his problems himself.
And it is not just the traditional taxis which ferry passengers in this share-cab business model, even the tourist cars, company buses and as on one occasion, an official BMC Sumo sort of a vehicle.
Only problem was that when the driver of the BMC car picked up the passengers at Garware signal, the car was not on official duty. However to escape potential questioning by the traffic police, he put up a sign of “On BMC duty” nonetheless. Obviously he wasn’t aware of the share-cab model niceties. No traffic police in the two years that I have been using share-cabs has ever stopped one. Putting up a “On BMC Duty” signboard achieved exactly the thing that the driver had set out to avoid. A traffic police who obviously realized that the car was carrying out public service under the guise of BMC duty pulled over the car. He peeked inside and saw a varied assortment of people – two IT salesmen (including myself), a couple of college students, two bricks and mortar laborers, a guy and his coy, obedient wife obviously returning from some kind of a marriage or a similar family function.
The cop then looked at the driver questioningly. And the driver committed his second blunder in the space of ten minutes. He told the cop that everyone in the car was on election duty?! The cop inspected the diverse crowd again. And said with a mocking tone: “Is mein se ek bhi election duty pe hai to main tere ko jaane doonga.” And asked for the driver’s license, took it and walked away.
Someone in the car berated the driver: “Abey jhooth to bheja laga ke bol”
Some wisdom in that. The driver probably thought that driving a BMC car made him above the law; a law which anyways didn’t bother about taxis carrying people to their destinations. And then, when the law apprehended him, he thought he was smart enough to lie through it. Any self respecting traffic policeman would have taken offense.
Anyways, I and my other IT sales colleague left the car and took another share cab. Maybe we should have stuck around and seen the hapless driver through his troubles. He was after all rendering a service to us. But the driver did not inspire a lot of loyalty in his customers. Everyone branched out and he was left to deal with his problems himself.
posted by Himanshu at 2:05 AM
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