comedy on my way home

This happened yesterday. It was such a funny incident that it became the highlight of the day. Where else but on the taxi-ride home? Mumbai taxi drivers believe in giving the customer choice. The choice of route. So far so good.

The catch is that he is not necessarily aiming for customer satisfaction. What he is actually doing is testing your knowledge of the roads. One wrong choice and he knows that he has found a scapegoat. He can now take you for a ride. Literally.

And boy! do i make a good scape-goat. What with my chronic day-dreaming tendencies. My mind has a mind of its own. It simply drifts away without any warning at all. On a taxi, my reveries are often rudely broken by a "madam? upar se ya neeche se?" (over or under?). Back to reality, I would find myself racing towards a flyover with barely 5 seconds to make the decision. And as much as I wish to tell him "Listen my dear taxi driver, I don't know the roads ok? I don't know! That's what you want to hear right? Fine! please yourself! I DON"T know!" I simply purse my lips and look helplessly at the rather familiar flyover and try to conjure up all the dormant brain parts to help me with this. The 'directional sense' department is the laziest. The 'intuition' department comes more handy.

Usually, once I've used a route continuously around 5 times, I get the hang of the route. However, it is taking me longer to understand my way home from office to our new apartment in Worli. The reason being, it seems that there are a 100 ways to get to my house in Worli from my office in lower-parel. I never find my taxi-driver taking the same route on two consective days. And the choices I get are of a different league altogether. It makes my intuitions run for cover. The directional sense department faint. The laughter department on the other hand excitedly wakes up and urges me to write a post on it.

Yesterday, I was asked "right se ya left se". (right or left?)

It was late in the evening, I couldn't see his face in the rear view mirror, so I moved closer to the front seat and asked him to repeat the question just to confirm what I had heard. I found that he was not making a joke. He indeed wanted to know "whether i wanted to go to worli taking the left or taking the right"

I said in Hindi " b..but those are two opposite directions...."

He still continued, sounding very sincere "ya..but you can take either to get there..."

I wanted to tell him " yes. I know. The earth is round"

But I simply said "you decide...i am sure you know best". He took the right and reached in 5 mins flat. He had certainly taken the shorter route and I was grateful for the act of mercy on his part.