November 23, 2007

Getting back home - The Auto Driver

We stayed over an extra day in Bangalore and walked about around where we were staying, checked out some chicks from Stella Maris, ate some cheap and good chicken biryani, had a couple of espressos and generally lazed around. Here’s a little fact for you: Bangalore has lots of traffic signs. Really. Lots.

Anyway, in the evening when we decided to leave for the station we caught an auto. Now this auto fellow wasn’t normal, and he was driving without a headlight. Naturally, we chose to travel by his auto. R’s mom had already told us that one particular road was blocked and so the autorickshaw-wallah was told, so he claimed the other route would be longer and he would have to charge us more, so we said fine. Then, he decides to take the shorter route after all, and has to turn right back when it turns out that the road was blocked after all. Meanwhile, Pipe strikes up a conversation in Hindi with the fellow, and since I can’t speak Hindi, I listen. The conversation goes something like this: (I’ve made lots of changes because otherwise you have to brink the rest of the conversation in and I don’t remember it all)

Pipe: Bhai, how come you don’t have headlight?
Driver: Forgot to pay the electricity bill.
…
Driver: I want to meet Goundamani, Vadivel, Senthil, they’re really funny. Them and… Jayalalitha.
Pipe: Ah, Jayalalitha, they say she has 400 pairs of shoes.
Driver: She uses them instead of clothes or what?
Pipe: They say she has lots of saris too.
Driver: She’s so big, I bet they weld more than one together for her.
…
Driver: Before you, I had to transport a couple and then suddenly halfway through she started crying really hard. I wanted to ask her why she was crying but then she’d probably cry even more.
…
Pipe: Why do all the buses here have only Kannada names on the boards?
Driver: In TN, all the buses are in Tamil, it’s just the same. [...something about English...]
Pipe: [...something else about English...]
Driver: There was this Nepali, when I took him to this place to which it would cost Rs. 49 my meter showed Rs. 53. He started complaining, he said, “You see, I see…”. What is this UCIC? Some new bank or something?
Driver: He said he was going to file FIR with the police, I told him, “What FIR? Here, police? Go back to Nepal and file it.”. He’s probably a cook or a servant or something anyway. Finally he gave me Rs. 50, so I said, “The five rupees is a tip.” Ha ha, I gave him a tip. Ha ha.

Crazy fellow, all that talk and he finally charged us Rs. 120 for the journey. Not too bad, I suppose. Ah well.

Posted by roshan.george under Bangalore, College, India, Musings, Travel |

14 Comments »

  1. ROFL that really made me grin like a happy bunneh. bangalore is one crazy place :D

    Comment by sindhu — November 24, 2007 @ 12:17 am

  2. Yeah, it’s a crazy place. The traffic is murderous and there are too many traffic signs.

    Comment by roshan.george — November 24, 2007 @ 2:56 pm

  3. Dude, the front and back signboards on buses also have English text. If it was totally in Tamil most buses would pass by me before I managed to read it.

    Comment by Marc — November 24, 2007 @ 3:04 pm

  4. Yeah, that’s true enough. Take it up with the autorickshaw-wallah. In Bangalore, the only things remotely identifiable are the numbers, they’re Arabic numerals.

    Comment by roshan.george — November 24, 2007 @ 3:21 pm

  5. The people in Karnataka have a crazy idea that if everything is in Kannada they can somehow retain their identity. They quite feel that people from other states should not overwhelm them in their own state. That’s why they make it a bit difficult for outsiders. Apart from that they are a very nice bunch of people. Um, did you see flags- half yellow, half red- flying at every pole less that 100 meters apart?

    Comment by Arun — November 24, 2007 @ 10:38 pm

  6. Ah yes, there was a similar thing in TN some time back I remember. Fortunately, some rationality won out and we have some English here and there.

    Oh yeah, what are those flags?

    Comment by roshan.george — November 24, 2007 @ 11:22 pm

  7. Sindhu thinks that signboards and hoardings in Tamilnadu are all in Tamil even after I told her it wasn’t so. Do you remember seeing any all Tamil hoardings without a word in English?

    And Bangalore’s signs are all in Kannada! I couldn’t understand anything on the roads!

    Comment by Marc — November 25, 2007 @ 5:41 pm

  8. Actually, it’s getting worse with the buses. The volvos show English, but the other new buses only have the origin and destination in English, everything else is in Tamil. Fortunately the abbreviations atleast are in English.

    Thing is, I’ve never noticed because I can read the Tamil anyway. We’ve not got it as bad as Bangalore, but it isn’t perfect either.

    Comment by roshan.george — November 25, 2007 @ 5:49 pm

  9. The flag is Karnataka’s flag, apparently. For some weird reason, this state has a flag.

    Comment by Arundhathi — November 25, 2007 @ 10:28 pm

  10. They have their own flag? I want my own flag. Flags rock so hard.

    Comment by roshan.george — November 25, 2007 @ 11:17 pm

  11. I’ll design you a flag Roshan, a pink one with green and yellow stripes.

    Gitanjali just nodded in approval.

    Comment by Isha — November 25, 2007 @ 11:44 pm

  12. Aargh! What kind of taste is that?! It’s abnormal, surreal even. Pink with green and yellow stripes, just thinking of that gives me a couple of headaches.

    Comment by roshan.george — November 25, 2007 @ 11:53 pm

  13. Sweetheart, that’s the point. You aren’t actually supposed to like it.

    Comment by Isha — November 26, 2007 @ 1:35 am

  14. Uh-oh, that’s not reassuring. It’s a bit terrifying even.

    To think I should be in class now.

    Comment by roshan.george — November 26, 2007 @ 12:23 pm

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