I was walking along the street on my way home from a café one evening. Some guy on a motorbike stopped by and asked if I wanted a ride. Sure, I said and jumped on. How could I be so naive? Quite soon I realized that the guy couldn’t drive straight. I told him to drive carefully. He turned around and taped my leg and said out loud that he got this under control. He told me for how many years he have been driving this road and I could smell alcohol. Not a good situation. I told him to stop but he started to drive really crazy and taking over all the cars in a zig-zag pattern and went out on a big road. I kept on taping his shoulder and told him to stop. I jumped off the bike as soon as it was slow enough to be safe to jump off. I didn’t even wait until he had stopped completely. Thanks for the ride dude. I told myself to never tell anyone about this and not even write about it. But it was a while ago now. Wont happen again.
I remember one time when I took a rickshaw and the driver was so excited about the fact that he was driving a western guy, that he just didn’t want to stop driving. He didn’t understand a word of what I was saying and he just kept on driving faster and faster. He went out on the highway and I could see how stressed out I was. He didn’t know what to do but he wanted that taximeter to keep on increasing. As if he thought he was going to get rich by driving me around forever. I was getting a bit worried and taped his shoulder all the time as I tried to explain over and over that he was running in the complete opposite direction from where I wanted to go. I told him to stop and let me off. It took me a while to get off that ride and I learned to be a little bit more careful with who I let driving me. Since that it has happened a several times that I just had to change rickshaw straight away because the driver seems to be crazy. It could be that they are constantly shouting a word that I don’t understand over and over, louder and louder without taking in any of what I am trying to communicate. Once there was a driver that didn’t recognize the address where I was going so I told him that it was next to the hospital. I think “hospital” must have been the only word he understood and I think he thought that I needed to get to the hospital as quick as possible. He was driving as fast as he could and completely like a crazy person. I told him to slow down but he didn’t understand anything. He waved at me as if he wanted to tell me that he got the situation under control but he looked completely stressed out. When we got to the hospital I started to point out directions on where to go. I was going to the place where I was staying. It was just an apartment house. The driver was still stressed out and completely focused on his crazy driving. It was in the middle of the night and he drove straight through the security guards at the gate with full speed and made a hell of a noise inside the society. He drove up straight to the entrance door and parked one meter next to it, as exactly as he could. Reversing to get the fine adjustment done. I would have thought he should have calmed down when he realized we are not going to the hospital at least. What happened there? When I got out of the rickshaw the security guards came and gave me shit in hindi for it all. I couldn’t understand what they were saying but I got the message anyway. I could only apologize and go inside with embarrassment. Next time I’ll take an ordinary taxi.
I booked an ordinary taxi to where I was going and when it arrived it was already someone in the back seat. An Indian guy who got pretty excited about getting to share a taxi with a foreigner and he asked me where I was going. I replied shortly “Powai” and his reaction was like “Yeah! Me too! High five, bro!” I gave him the hi-five and put my headphones on as we were rolling away.
It have also happened a couple of times that a rickshaw driver or a taxi driver have taken the role as a tourist guide and starts to point out different famous buildings and places we are passing by. With a harmonic smile and a satisfied, friendly voice they would point out places hardly worth mentioning, such as a shopping mall or just a roundabout. Thank you. I know. I have been passing by here every day for a month now.
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