Interview with an auto driver

These days I travel home by auto in the evenings (as I have a wound on my foot that’s still healing). The driver asked for 150 bucks. I said I’d pay only Rs. 120 and he said he’d come down only to Rs. 140. I was feeling very tired and didn’t want to wait for another auto. I got in. I was curious as to why auto drivers charged so much and asked him how much mileage the vehicle yielded. He said it gave 25 km per litre. And that was the start of a long conversation, an "interview" as I would like to call it – which brought out quite a lot from the auto driver and gave me some things to reflect about.

He told me that he had driven all kinds of vehicles in his life – cars, carts, even boats. Aeroplane-um train-um than ma naan ottaley. For many years he had been a car driver; he said he’d worked for many wealthy families. He recounted his experiences while working as a driver – mostly ranting about mean employers, spoilt rich kids who were difficult to manage, employers asking him to wipe cars they hardly used, women asking him to buy vegetables… then he said “There are difficulties in every profession.” Which is of course true.

The auto driver said he’d worked for and known famous people. He talked about Cho Ramaswamy (actor and editor of Tughlak magazine) and how he was a very good man who respected and interacted with people from all backgrounds and classes. He also said something really interesting: Apparently, comedy actor “Loose” Mohan’s son was his classmate; he had known the actor and claimed that he taught him Chennai slang dialogues.

I also asked him how much he made every month and he said that some days he would make a lot of money, some other days he would make very less (a reply I could’ve expected); I didn’t get to know how much the guy made on an average. He said driving in traffic all day made him very tired (which we should really think about – imagine, all auto drivers are bound to get very frustrated because of the traffic every single day).

He felt that I was down to earth and had interacted with him without looking down upon him because he was only an auto driver. He said that my attitude would bring me a good husband and good things in life. I was really touched by this.

I am sure God had a hand in this. He wanted me to interact with an auto driver and take a peek into his world instead of being cocooned in my world and cribbing about increasing rates (this is not to say I think Rs. 140 isn’t high. They can bring it down a little.) It was an interesting evening indeed!

2 comments:

Alin said...

hey, a nice post.. was a good read :)

Unknown said...

I must say, this auto driver can predict the future :P