Dirtscapes

1. The reverse gear is the most powerful of all the gears in any vehicle. He knows this because he climbed up one whole section of the Western ghats driving in reverse, whereas three other drivers had failed to ascend it even in the fourth gear. Yes.
2. Driving a cab is less stressful than working in IT. He knows, since he was a hardware technician once. To prove he wasn’t just breaking wind, he went to tell me about a problem he once had at a client’s place – “printer not working” – so he checked the LPT port, the data cables, the USB port, till he found out that somebody had unplugged it from the power supply. Heh Heh.
3. He gave up fleecing customers at the airport because the only time he did it, justice was instant, and he got rammed by a truck. Never done it since.
4. People give him a tip over and above the fare, because he is so well…honest. Needless to say, I double checked the fare before paying him.

1. Yeh taxi meri maa hai. Roti deti hai, aasra deti hai, aur swabhimaan bhi. I have a very dirty feeling he is a closet Mithun bhakt.
2. A ‘ladies’ customer once left back a bag with 55k cash, and two bearer cheques (Me : “Bearer matlab?” Him : “Matlab jispe naam aur amount nahi likha ho, sirruf sign ho…” Me : “Accha…”)
3. This customer was very impressed, and her husband touched by his honesty, used to make this guy run errands for him, wherein he’d be given half a hundred rupee note, and a briefcase containing cash to be delivered someplace, and the other ‘party’ on receipt would verify this cryptograph, by comparing it with their half… (Honest. I’m NOT making this up. And I believe, neither was he…)
4. His cab is a lucky charm, for people desperate to go to ‘foreign’. He guaranteed that I would go too. Within 15 days. Come to think of it, Andheri (East) sure looks SO ****ING international nowadays, it’s almost as good as being there.

1. Some really arcane Sanskrit shlokas lamenting the fall of mankind and goodness in general in this ‘Kalyug’.
2. A woman’s only path to salvation is through her man. A man can do what the hell he wants, god will always forgive him. Even if he has an extra-marital fling or two. But women? No…that’s not in their ‘dharam’. She’ll be consigned to the flames of hell (or forced to go to SEEPZ from Andheri (yes…East) EVERY DAY), even if she entertains such thoughts. He gave me examples of Sati, Savitri and some others who have attained salvation through their husbands.
3. A woman is inherently evil. She is always on the prowl, trying to gain control over your mind. And the best way to do that is through exchange of bodily fluids. Because, every drop of a certain bodily fluid that a man loses, makes him physically weak, if the flesh is weak, the mind is weak, if the mind is weak, then she wins. After this, he placed a trembling hand on my shoulder, and started to implore me to never do it. I feverishly grabbed whatever money I could find in my shirt pocket, and just pushed it in his hand, and got the hell out of there. It may have been extra, but God knows it was well worth it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 12:20 AM.