This blog post is on the miserable state of auto-rickshaw drivers in Mumbai. I thought that this post would be more relevant to Delhi drivers, but today I realized that it was not so.
The unfortunate incident happened at around 7 PM when my friend Sonali and I got into a rickshaw at Linking Road in Bandra. The fare meter was up, and so the driver could not have refused to take us to our destination (Bandra Station). As soon as we sat in the rickshaw, he started swearing disgusting ‘hindi galiis’ and said that he would not go to the station as his rickshaw was not working fine. Bull shit! Then we simply told him to take us to the train station / police station. He refused and instead picked up a fight and then he had the audacity to turn into an unknown lane… which was quiet and out of the way… When asked to stop, he said ‘if you don’t want to get off, I will take you both wherever I wish to.’ This freaked us out and we called the police.
Until the police arrived, there were many people who asked what was wrong and that sort of kept the driver engaged. And his explanation to any questions (in a very polite manner) was that we were wrong and that we beat him up. HIDEOUS!
After a few spectators went, he started to drive the rickshaw again, which put me into my drama mode… and I yelled at the top of my voice and a few people on the road stopped the rickshaw and accompanied us till the cops arrived. After that he was dragged to the station and was beaten up…
Did not really want that to happen… but anything could have happened… probably something weird. It feels good to speak up. I would have totally not been able to do it without my friend Sonali.