A Chance Meeting

I know i have a soft spot for the Sikh community especially because my dad happens to be a Surd.Don't know what it is ...maybe all the surdy jokes i get to hear from different quarters...i have this insane urge to make up for all those jokes by being extra nice when i come across a surd.

as usual i got off at Churchgate after work and made a beeline for the exit which as usual is crowded with pedestrians all jostling each other in an effort to catch the eye of a cabbie who will take them to the comforts of their cozy homes.
I was no exception to the milling crowd.but even through that insane crush i spotted this cab with a surd at the wheel.went upto him and in my usual cordial way asked him if he would go to Colaba.....

to my relief he conceded right away...and in a mad spin of wheels and closing doors i was able to stow myself and my belongings in the back seat.Now you've got to know this...there is this curious habit ...nay necessity i have of listening to music while traveling........ and who could deny me "when i look at the world" by U2.......

yes i know you are getting rather bored with all this detail...but im almost there.........then our nice surdy cabbieman asks me in the most impeccable fluent British accent if i wouldn't mind taking a detour...yes those exact words..."detour" so as to avoid the traffic...

needless to say my jaw literally dropped ...and had it not been hinged to my head by some network of tendon n muscle...or whatever it takes to be there...it surely would have fallen off.Now you are wondering why so much description about my jaw...well make allowances for my poor sensibilities i am still in shock from the encounter.
i acquiesced blabbering some garbled shit like "Not Mind"...yeah i know sounds like i was missing the second half of those two words.

anyway we started cruising...and then i finally got up the courage to ask this magical cabbie why he was driving a cab if he was so educated...( a fact i presume purely from the fact that he actually used a few words i use...have been told often that i have a flair for being verbose)...

i know a person who speaks English well need not be educated.i mean its quite commonplace nowadays...
On the same hand a person with that fluency can always find some manner of desk job and not have to drive a cab. Don't misunderstand i'm not denigrating any profession...just try to reason out the motive of this guy.

wait here it goes curious and curiouser...the Moment of truth that took the wind out of my sails...he said he did it because that way he could study people listen to their interacting and meet all sections of society.i dug a little more and find out to my astonishment...that he was writing a book and was driving the taxi as research for his book.

at this moment i kind of resembled one of those huge fish pulled out of the water and looking goggle eyes and glassy...I'm sure you can understand my predicament.

Am stuck in a cab with a cabbie cum budding author.well he sure wasn't looking like Khushwant Singh, so i was safe to assume he hadn't made it to the bestseller list just yet.Turns out he was a scholar trying to write a paper on psychology and behavior of people in peak traffic hours and their response to adverse stimuli bout Aural & psychological.it kind of flew all above my head. what threw me completely is the fact that he did the exact same thing in different cities across the world --- Paris,Boston,Sydney,the Hague & not to forget the good old London.Mumbai was is current stop and Bangkok was the last in a stretch of 18 months of taxi driving.
i told he should also write a 'taxilogue'........like a hybrid of taxi driving & a travelogue...

He then very gently put me i my place. i apparently was in the outliers of the sample as i didn't behave as the majority and get agitated.I think what he didn't realize i the dim interior of the car was that my left ear was in rhapsody listening to U2.Music does to me what icecream does to children ...enrapture them :)


finally i made it to my destination and as usual i politely asked him how much i owed him and he left me with this parting shot...

"there isn't anything that you owe me...all what we have we owe to the almighty"---a most profound end to an interesting ride.

For the price of Rs 34...a definite steal...







Oh By the way........he wasn't some stuffy old scholar......and i didn't completely embarrass myself by asking him his age.......seemed around mid 30s...