All in a day's work

From the streets

Frank Tyger, a famous columnist, once said, ‘Listening to both sides of a story will convince you that there is more to a story than both sides.’

Sometimes one gets so used to cribbing and complaining that they forget this basic fact, especially if the subject in question is a perpetual cause of worry and annoyance to a good majority of people.

A substantial number of locals and visitors have a somewhat uncharitable view of the providers of transport in Bengaluru — especially the cab and auto drivers. Talk to any individual here and most often than not, they will recount a tale of their distressing encounters with this group. Maybe someone is posting a rant on Facebook even as you are reading this. But while some of the complaints are genuine, these drivers have their own stories to add.

“Some passengers are quite nice but others are very rude to me,” says Amir Pasha, who has been ferrying people around in his auto for almost two decades now. “It is my responsibility to ensure that all my passengers are dropped off safely but sometimes the people themselves are not clear about where they want to go. They give confusing directions, make us go around in circles and then create a ruckus if we ask for a little bit extra. I have had people fighting with me for one rupee. What can we do with one rupee?,” he adds.

Siddhu has a similar tale to narrate. After having worked in his village farm initially, Siddhu came to Bengaluru in the hope of better prospects. He did a couple of odd jobs before learning driving and buying an auto. “That was in 1997,” he says. “Since then, I have seen all types of people. Most problems arise when passengers don’t know where to go or they are not able to tell me properly. I can manage Kannada and a little bit of Hindi but there are people from all parts of the country here nowadays. So language can be a little bit of a problem. Then there are people who get into the auto, dead drunk, and are unable to remember where they have to go. I have to wait for them outside the pubs and drive up and down the same road while they search for their houses and after all this, if I ask for something extra, they throw a tantrum,” he explains.

“We have been driving on these roads for years and we know which routes are likely to be congested, which ones are one-way streets, which ones have a lot of potholes and so on,” continues Amir. “Sometimes, we take other routes to avoid these problems but even then, the passenger starts complaining, saying that we were taking the longer route for his money. And the ladies are no less when it comes to fighting with us. I have seen no difference in them,” he says.

Not just auto drivers, even cab drivers, especially those working with aggregators, have faced a tough time with unreasonable passengers. Says Kanti, who has been in the city for about six months now, “Some customers make us wait for long periods of time. We travel four to five km and try to reach their places as soon as possible, inspite of all the traffic. So when these people take a long time just to come out of their houses, we get annoyed. They don’t pick up their phones even when we call them. If we tell them to come fast, they get irritated and cancel the ride. So what about our diesel, our effort, our time? No one thinks about all these things,” he says.

Kanti too has faced situations where customers raise a hue and cry if he takes a different route to avoid traffic. “They think we are trying to get more money from them while we will just be trying to avoid the highly-congested roads. These people should remember that the faster I drop them off, the faster I will get another ride.

Also, there will be some people who want to smoke inside the car and they get angry when I refuse. I don’t smoke and I don’t want others too, to smoke inside my car because it will smell and then other customers will complain. But people think we are being arrogant. There are different types of customers and we have to adjust with all of them. It is our job, our livelihood,” he signs off just as his phone begins to ring and he answers with a courteous “Ola cab ma’am?”.