Tag Archives: rants and more

The Auto Saga

21 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by in Random thoughts, Uncategorized

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In a ten on Tuesday form on a Wednesday 🙂 abhi thoda belated tou chalta hai na

  1. Bangalore auto drivers are amazing and impartial people they don’t like to hurt anyone so they continuously refuse to go everywhere. After all if they go to place A and not place B, it won’t be fair right? And no I am kidding, ask anyone. I have once asked an auto driver “where will you go, I will go to that place” in as many words because he said no to atleast 10 people in front of me
  2. They also don’t want you to waste too much of your time and hence any distance above 15kms is really not done, but wait lets be fair to them and not go too near too, so there is a minimum distance limit of 5kms. So kindly chose your travels to be anywhere between 5-15km. Anything not falling in this bracket is strictly a passenger’s fault and an oversight in planning the city
  3. Meter, whats that? Its just an evil device forced on them you see and its mandatory to add atleast Rs 25-50 to the amount which comes on it (if at all its used that is) else they will be in such a loss, poor auto drivers
  4. Another thing you must remember about these guys is they don’t believe in keeping change with them, it’s an insult you see so if your bill is not a round figure (note Rs 50 or Rs 100) its your responsibility to give him change and please if you don’t have change, don’t insult the poor man by asking it back so what that it sometimes might even be Rs34 (I have myself been forced to leave this amount once) forget about single digit numbers
  5. They also love bangalore as it used to be u know, the small city comprising or malleshwaram and MG road and frazer town and around. So all new places are really out of the city and hence demand a double meter and this includes areas like outer indira nagar and if u live in Martahahalli or hosur road, god help you. All I can say is “Good Luck”
  6. Somehow in Bangalore I see another huge problem, the poor auto wallas never ever find a savari back you see, whether its a drop in the middle of kormangala or whitefield or even sometime MG road, I think we people of Bangalore must have a sensor which detects that this auto just dropped someone here and hence we shouldn’t take him
  7. There are so many phone applications that these days provide you with shortest distance and some even with the fastest route to a destination, but have you ever seen an application which provides you with the longest possible route,Bangalore has many such walkie talkie applications yes our dear auto driver who else. He knows the longest route from every A to B possible in the city
  8. What its 8 o clock? and what u still are on the roads? its your fault obviously and the poor auto walla has to pay for it now to drop you to your house I say. U better give him atleast the double of what is the meter, even if the rule actually is 1.5 times after 10:00 pm. Auto drivers of Bangalore believe in following nature and not the man made clocks and the natural cycle says 8pm is dark and is night
  9. All auto drivers in Bangalore are slowly getting impressed by their Chennai counterparts and turn promptly to Kannada if there is any confusion while  interacting. So inspite of living in this city without Kannada for 10 yrs now I feel the need for it. May be they are acting as government agents and helping the govt implement the learn Kannada rule
  10. And last but not the least inspite of everything if you have gone lucky and got an auto, I have only one thing to say “good luck” for two reasons – one you should reach where you have to safely as they really are the most rash drivers on the road and two I pray for your mental peace because they really are an expert in every single thing in Bangalore
  11. And this bonus point for people who are on the other side of auto drivers (including me most of the times). They are also the best friends of car drivers and even better than police in keeping accidents at bay, what confused? Ask any car driver in Bangalore and they will tell you how extra alert they become when they see an auto near their car, after all if an auto is driving in the middle of the lane and going either side every two minutes, you really can’t be anything but alert and I have always been taught “being alert is the best way to avoid an accident” 😛

This post actually started in my mind after I tweeted saying this because the Mumbai folks were cribbing about their auto drivers and the response I got was am I sure 🙂

Dear Mumbai people I know strike is bad but if u hate ur auto wallahas so much please pass them to #Bangalore we’ll gladly take them

so tell me now folks u think the same 🙂 Trust me having an experience in auto drivers in four major cities in India I think Bombay really has the best auto drivers (it might seem like a case of andhon main kana raja but nonetheless) followed by Delhi (right now) and the only city which probably beats Bangalore is Chenai… so my sympathies with them, may be we can split the mumbai auto wallahs chennai if u promise to share the murugan idlies with me 😛