Cab Race …

Before I begin to write about this incident, let me thank the invisible soul-God, who might have been pleased now by his own benevolent act in restraining fate from playing any mischievous role in depriving my life in the last couple of days. Ok enough of my gratitude let me begin the story.

If I was made to answer the question: Are you interested in taking car race in the Chennai dashed hot roads precisely in the morning traffic hours 8.00A.M – 9.00 A.M? My answer would be blatant “NO, DEFINITELY NOT”. Only fellows who want to commit a heroic suicide would prefer to entertain the thoughts of taking cab race (or any other vehicle race) in Chennai’s traffic. I was not given a chance to answer that question. Instead, unknowingly I was forced to that daring act.

For the past couple of days I had the sneaking suspicion that something wrong with my office cab driver. Because his manners were not appreciable as it used to be. I hope others who are traveling along with me might have had the same suspicion. It is not something hard to fathom because it was very evident in the way our cab danced along the city roads.

I guess my driver tired to experiment some new driving techniques and it indeed helped us reach the destination (my office) earlier than before. He attempted to drive the cab like a race bike. Of course, like how much it is hard for a train to flew like a plane it is hard for a cab to run like a bike. If a cab acts like a bike, it would certainly cause inconvenience to the fellow travelers on the road and so is ours. Some gentle passer by’s forgave our driver’s mysterious cruel driving, but some chased us to shout at driver’s arrogance. Nevertheless, our escort did not give up, whenever the shout gets louder; our driver would engage himself in the act of obscenity.

We are perplexed by our driver’s sudden harshness and alacrity but still no one questioned him because of his dark mood. Later in the evening when he regained his temper, he told us that he had earned 200 rupees because of his driving. I was stunned because I only expected some cops to fine him and definitely not 200 rs. Then he told us the story behind all this and the dark mystery unveiled.

It seems some blighter in our transportation department announced to our drivers that here after the first three cabs that reach our office premise in the morning would be sent for an additional pick-up at the very nearby railway station. This provoked a tough competition among the drivers, on whom to reach the office first and grab the 200 rupees for that additional trip. At present, it is not just our cab, but all our company cabs are violently vibrating along the city roads. Instead of this 1,2,3 competition if this offer is given to each driver in some round-robin method this problem can be resolved but our transportation executives mind doesn’t think that way.The blighter who introduced this intelligent scheme overlooked the fact our lives are something more than 200 rupees . Now again I am forced to do the horrible act “COMPLAIN” !!!