Hello people. This article is totally dedicated to the “auto-wallahs” in Bangalore, Mysore and to their greater community all over India. In about one and a half day, “we” found in them, people who are nobler for their profession and people who fall into the other category which I would connote as “dangerous and explosive”.
Let me start of by introducing what I mentioned as “we” earlier, it involves Rahul, Raghav, Anmol, Aditya and I (college mates, class mates and best of buddies, the mention makes me grin though, as this is nowhere close to what refer to each other as, but keeping reader convenience in mind, I would not mention those references). Professionally, we are all engineers working in multinational companies, yes that’s a fact. For those who know us and are wondering, we are still looking for clues about how we have managed to reach this far. The lead character of this story is Raju (partial name), an auto-wallah in Bangalore and along with him a few other anonymous auto-wallahs who are an inspiration for this piece.
The planning for a three day long weekend had started about 20 days ago, after visiting Goa, Pondicherry and Mangalore in our thoughts, we finally decided to go to “BANG-A-LORE” to meet our dear friend Aditya who apparently cancelled his Goa trip for which he had already booked tickets. Having known him for a few years now, the fact that he cancelled his tickets for us sounded strange, but he seemed convinced.
We started our journey from Mysore, rather excited and hungry. Raghav repeatedly talked about some place in Bangalore, called “Sukh Sagar”, which is known to serve delicacies. In anticipation of a grand dinner, we managed to kill our time in a 3 hour long journey. When we got down from the bus at the Bangalore bus stand, we met “Raju”, the first auto-wallah on that eventful night. We packed ourselves in his auto along with our “luggage” and headed to our destination “Sukh Sagar”. Raghav and I got down from the auto first and moved into the restaurant, Rahul paid the auto-wallah while Anmol confirmed the details of our next destination from someone. We had barely looked at the snacks menu, when Anmol suddenly realized that a bag which was common to him and Rahul was missing, or rather they forgot to take it from the auto. Anmol sprang out of the restaurant like rear part of his body (read ***) was on fire. We all followed suit. Anmol and Rahul quickly got into an auto (driven by anonymous 1 and headed to the bus stand to look for ‘Raju’. Back at the hotel, Raghav and I were caught in a tenser situation, hungry stomach and confused brain is a deadly combination. As soon as we laid our eyes on a pizza after much deliberation about the loss, we saw Anmol and Rahul back at the hotel rather quickly (goodbye pizza, I thought). For the quickly part, the auto-wallah, took them to the bus stand, didn't stop there and came back to the same place before my engineer friends could realize that they had made a round trip without actually stopping at the destination. A few abuses (all for the auto-wallah) and about a 100 ‘oh shits’ later, Anmol said, there was a digital camera and an “expensive” goggle with MRP of a few thousands in the bag, other than clothes. Dude, you are screwed was my first reaction, but then, somehow I felt the urge to go look for the bag, something told me that we could find it, though Anmol’s idea of asking every auto-wallah about ‘Raju’ seemed absurd to me considering there are only 1,00,000 odd autos in Bangalore. An auto-wallah (anonymous 2, a rather good man I must say) dropped me and Anmol at the bus stand for our search operation.
Not many people are lucky enough in this world, but that night, we had our share. At the bus stand, we found ‘Raju’, Anmol was only half alive or half dead, by the time we found him. ‘Raju’, an honest man had deposited the luggage in the nearby police station. We quickly got into the auto and reached the police station where we were greeted by a police inspector who seemed way too heavy and way too happy for his job. After a few smiles that we passed at each other and some written formalities, he came to the point. I was surprised by the candid way in which he asked for his rewards, but then, we were happy, nothing like finding a lost thing of yours; we quietly slipped a 100 rupee note into his pocket. ‘Raju’, you deserve it, said Anmol as he slipped another 100 rupee note into Raju’s hand after he dropped us at “Sukh Sagar” yet again, only to find out that Raghav had forgotten my bag inside the restaurant as he came out(****** I screamed, but I don’t think we could have lost anything that night).
One good thing about Bangalore is that after 11 pm, the city sleeps like it’ll never wake up again. Let alone getting food, people stare at you like you are going to rob them for food. But as I said, luck was on our side that night, we found a place called “Kaamat”, at 11:45 pm, paneer with roti sounded like heaven to our ears. We had a gala time having dinner at Kaamat’s where Raghav shared Rahul’s concerns about “the memories in the camera”, which were supposedly lost!! Who cared about the camera, and clothes were never in question. Fun is never an issue when Raghav and Rahul are around, for Raghav has a peculiar knack of poking Rahul in a way which only he can do it. The 'Jhumar' (chandelier) in the restaurant pointed by Rahul was enough for him to create laughter waves.
After dinner, we took the next auto to Kormangla. It was driven by “anonymous 3”. Our anonymous 3 friend took us about 2 km ahead of our destination after asking us the address at least 3 times, only to charge us extra for which was somehow “our” mistake. At 1 past midnight, we tried arguing but quickly gave up considering the lack of sleep and the pleasant experience we had courtesy an auto-wallah. A few hugs, some punches here and there, and pats on the shoulders was our meeting gesture when we saw Aditya after a long time when we literally snarled at each other having to see the same ugly faces everyday 3 months ago.
When I woke up at around 10 in the morning, I realized that Rahul and I had slept with the TV on. We vacated the hotel as early as we could and the scene was all set for a wonderful day-out at Bangalore. The first place we went to is a famous mall called “Garuda”. I’ve been to malls in Delhi and Gurgaon but this one is huge. You name a brand and you’ll get it there. I was fascinated for sure, but Rahul and Raghav went crazy. By the time we reached UB Group’s Office, via “Forum” (another splendid mall), their shopping frenzy had cost them around 15 thousand rupees. In the beginning, Aditya and I tried to outdo them, but we gave up soon.
After a tiring day at shopping, we sat down for dinner at “Oye Amritsar”, a traditional Punjabi style restaurant at ‘Brigade Road’. Rahul and Raghav had given us complex with their shopping bills, this was our time to pay back. As always, Anmol and I did what we do best. We ate and ate and ate till we were stuffed to the neck. The fact that the food was delicious made us gobble even more (even though the amount of bill was harder to digest than food itself, but we managed both).
After dinner, we took a ride back to our hotel and booked a taxi for our return from Aditya’s room to the Bangalore bus stand. For about an hour at his room, we did what boys do best. We had “fun” (for the sake of those who thought otherwise). Autos are not safe at night, said Aditya and told some incident about some girl who was harassed by the auto-wallahs, they get together very quickly, he warned. I smirked at the idea of auto-wallahs harassing 4 Punjabi boys at night, but then I didn't know what was in store for us.
Our taxi wallah was a nice guy, he talked to us in Hindi all the way from our hotel to the bus stand, but for some reason, when he dropped us at the bus stand he wanted Rs.100 extra than what we had agreed upon. He came up with some strange formula of counting the kilometers and hence the extra money. After 5 minutes of arguments we used our “brains” and brought in an auto-wallah who would help us with the kilometer thing. They conversed something in their native language, and then followed another auto-wallah and another and in a matter of 5 minutes we were surrounded by at least 10 auto-wallahs, and, they all spoke Kannada. (Aditya’s words were dancing in my mind). While our taxi driver instantly forgot if there existed a language called Hindi on this planet, he refused to take the decided money. As we too refused to pay the extra money, one of the auto-wallahs (anonymous 4) came shouting towards us and indicated us to pay the money. A young man, probably a bit drunk and high on temper. We could not understand a word he said but we could surely understood what he meant. Tempers ran high, Rahul, Anmol and Raghav were flaring up for the way he was shouting at us, but somehow I (the aggressor in general) wasn't ready to take up a fight. Overseas cricket matches and out of city fights are always difficult. And no matter how much our Punjabi blood irked us to pounce on them, their numbers suggested that getting beaten up by a group of auto-wallahs on the road in the middle of the night did not seem to be a good idea at all. I indicated Anmol to pay the money and get out of there. Thank god, he understood (or probably, he too had imagined himself with a few bruises).
We had avoided the mess, but could not avoid the bruised egos. A few abuses we hurled at them were a relief, but that was definitely not enough. Never in our life had we missed Punjab the way we did on that night. ‘If we were there’, was the only thing we were telling each other. Nothing matters more to a Punjabi than the pride of being never having to bow down to anyone. But they say, life tests you first and then teaches a lesson. And we had certainly learnt one.
We sat quietly in the bus and waited for it move. Everyone had the same thing on their mind. But no one uttered a word. As the bus started to move, I spotted the same auto-wallah waving his hand at us and laughing, he was probably rubbing salt on our wounds (served his purpose I guess). The bus caught speed and we were out the city sitting in an empty bus looking out of the windows as we recollected the memories of our trip. We had reached Mysore bus stand when I woke up.
Another auto to our campus I thought, this time a cop came to our rescue to settle the auto-wallah, anonymous 5, for a reasonable price which he somehow thought was loot. We could do nothing but laugh for us it seemed like an unending tangle with the auto-wallahs. We laughed and shouted on our way back as if we have had the fun of our lives. We didn't forget the incidents that happened but we do realize the tough lives these auto-wallahs have to face day in day out. Unwillingly though, but we had given some happiness to our friend anonymous 4. In retrospect, not a bad deal at all. God has blessed us, may he or she, bless everyone else and the auto-wallahs. But make sure next time you take an auto, don’t forget to note down the number of the auto. And of course, fasten your seat belts as well. You may be in for a joy ride!!!
PS: - Rahul, I agree with Raghav, the Jhumar was indeed the best part of the trip.
Cheers!!! Keep Rocking…
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