" Green peace" auto in Bandra

In Bandra ..here is a happy autowallah showing it is à to break the stereotype. Mumbai commuters are resigned to the stereorype of a brash, rash, scowling, horn-ok type of auto drivers. But u do bump into the happy autowallah who used to be common on Mumbai's streets till a few decades ago.
So found this happy automan who had made some changes in his vehicle to have some indoor plants fixed. Nicce..
He posed happily requesting me to write " a few good sentences" about the experience.
If journalists want to interview him, u are likely to find him off National College, Bandra.
Another autowallah watching me click pix groused that such additions are not possible unless u have safe parking.. Yes..all happy things need a safe caring space. Let's reclaim such safety for Mumbai.

Commuters' strike: I am participating

This Thursday commuters -- the ones who take auto regularly -- plan a strike. I plan to offer my moral support by not taking an auto too on that day.

Did u people read Quadros' interview in the Mumbai Mirror: (He is the auto-drivers union leader). He says auto drivers are not slaves and they are also human or other such sympathy-milking statement. I do not think at all, for one moment, any commuter treats an auto driver as a slave. On the contrary, most of these fellows, with the biggest chip on their shoulders about the rest of the world, treat commuters like shit. I believe union leaders, like political parties, must create the idea of `the evil other' against whom they will protect you. For long, political parties in India have thrived on dividing and ruling, and are still thriving on that unbeatable formula that they inherited from the British. So, I am not surprised Quadros is making out like commuters are the evil ones who are making unnatural demands (He says what if the poor auto driver must sign off, or may have a problem at home..It seems 99 per cent of the auto-drivers are suffering some such malaise day in and day out. 24 X7 ?) .

Though I hate the idea of contributing to global warming by taking an auto (does a gas-cylinder auto also contribute to that?) instead of the BEST bus or the sardine-can trains, I still do it because commuting by public transport is becoming hell in Mumbai (The Borivli station has become a knee-breaking maze for me) I have been resorting to autos to go to Kandivli for music classes. Fare comes to a whopping amount.. which I won't reveal..
But the last one month I have discovered the worst side of auto drivers:
On every route, to-and-fro -- and I am not exaggerating,  they would agree to come, then mid-way, they will flag another auto down and tell me, some even acting with tears in t heir eyes(!!), that the brake is broken, something is cracked up, they are on reserve and whatever else they mumble ...
I realised the pattern: since the traffic police drive against auto-drivers has become strict, these fellows are making up this ruse, so somebody who looks militant like (note those muscles?) does not call the police control room to complain .. otherwise how come on six trips continuously I have been dropped midway and shoved into another auto?

So now, before getting into an auto I tell them that this trick has been played out before me and so to kindly spare me a repeat... Its been working, touchwood. I have gone in one auto for the entire trip ..

BRAKE BREAKS
However, before that, once, I had to change thrice!!! On the second leg of this eventful  journey, this auto driver suddenly says he won't come to Pali because I said Linking Road before I said Pali. What!! I told him that some northern suburban auto-drivers do not know where Pali is, so when you board an auto you give them the destination broadly (Like Bandra West, Or Linking Road) then lead them more specificially to the exact location. And Pali Village is off Linking Road, it is two shops off KFC, yet this fellow says he won't turn right to take me to my home because  I had said Linking Road first. He said I was doing a BIG WRONG!! (I think you can guess where this sort of behavior comes from -- the sort of propaganda which keeps drumming into their heads that they are the victims of the commuters and must be protected from them? Otherwise what would union leaders do for a living?)  So I completely forgot that I am aspiring for monkhood and world peace, then bristled and told him to stop the auto. I told him:" Please stop. I rather walk then travel in the vehicle of an adharmic person like you... Here is your money." Then I walked a long long while in anger at my own anger, stomping to cool it off, before I flagged another auto driver.

FARE TOO:
And btw. If you are smart enough to buy your own auto meter fare card, you will catch on that it is very different from what they have. The auto fare on their meter is a round figure. For instance, if the meter comes to 178, it wil show 180 and so on... This is something Value Added Tax, I guess. If hotels do it, why not poor driven auto fellows who just want to say they are not slaves?
What happened to my beautiful Mumbai of yore, where auto drivers gave back money, or often told you to keep the change (if you did not have one buck, they will say, chalta hai!!). I used to love Mumbai for its auto drivers. But Chennai is worse, a nightmare .. Delhi as bad I suppose. So I guess I am destined to put up with autowallah's khunnas and forget I have any rights of my own...

Auto rickshaw: rocking rides

(The image is from this link... seems an official site of an auto rickshaw-manufacturer)

When I landed in Mumbai, two decades ago, during monsoon, my sandals broke. I was just walking distance from my destination so began to limp tortuously towards it... One auto rickshaw fellow gallantly stopped, allowed me to hop in, and when I covered that minimum distance and alighted to give him the fare, he refused to accept it. That was the Mumbai I had fallen in love with.

About seven years ago, such a thing was still likely to happen. While walking with my daughter I remember being hit on my chest by a teenage boy: I ran after him as he began running, a tribal for whom running was like the very breath. But I kept up, panting, angry, trying to flag some vehicles down, to chase him effectively. Only one auto fellow stopped, I hopped in, dashed after the running lad, and landed ahead of him, and thrashed him with my handbag, quite effectively, so that he would think twice again before touching a Mumbai woman. He took it silently, even apologetically, because by then a grinning, gawking crowd had gathered. In any case, as I wound up my wrath and paid the auto rickshaw driver the minimum fare he had covered, the sweet driver refused to take the money!! So seven years ago, that still was the Mumbai I loved.

These days every day I am finding that the auto rickshawallahs are beginning to change this great city into another Delhi with it cantankerous autos ... and cheating drivers. Soon Mumbai's auto fellows would be winning prizes ahead of Delhi and Chennai (another worst city in that sense because the auto fellows are so annoying and have been since I started affording autos in that city) for the title as to `Who is the worst of them all... '

Some problems I am facing and that is what most other Mumbaikars, especially in the northern suburbs must be facing (Bandra, I have found, is not so bad)...are as below:

• Autowallahs will not come for a minimum distance. And they will not come for a maximum distance. As a rule, they will NOT come, wherever you want to go. Most are saying no just for the heck of it, is what I have realised!
  
• Even though there is a provision for complaint against such behavior, I find that it can be tiresome to do that. Plus, most of these fellows are hanging outside at unregulated auto-stands. When you have a kid wandering about the complex, I can imagine that most parents would hesitate to take on such goons who are passing off as auto wallahs.
• Meters are tampered with maddeningly. I travel often to Bandra: the fare on a nice, empty road (early mornings is the time I travel, being yoga teacher), is Rs 120 one way. I have had fares bloating from Rs 150 to Rs 190. Is this fair? I am supposed to complain?? How many fellows can I complain against.......Especially, as I had explained, they are sitting just outside my gate, watching who goes in and comes out.... and clearly have their local gangs or whatever local goons they pay hafta to, in order to take over prime roadsides to set up their stands?
  
• I have had to deal with auto fellows who will suddenly decide mid-way that their `auto brake is broken down'. This has happened so many times, I cannot tell you how frustrating it is. Especially when you are travelling on the highway where you will not find another auto, empty. Or if you find a taxi, the driver will refuse to ferry you. And this `brake break down' happens usually after the auto fellow asks you what is the time. That is because his shift is ending, he must return the vehicle to the owner and has decided he will turn and go back, or remain in the eastern suburb and the hell to how you find your way to the western part of the town. No care, if it is raining. Once I got into a huge argument with one auto fellow, very politely in the sense I told him that my idea of dharma refused to accept his reason or his meter (overcharged by 60 rupees) and so I will pay him only what I thought fit the distance and his behavior: his brake suddenly started working, since he followed me ominously, abusing me with the most crude words imaginable. When ahead after this torture, I halted another auto, this angry auto fellow threatens him against taking me as passenger. Then, the second guy refuses and seeing that the first fellow is still following me, abusively, suddenly decides to give me a ride. Yet, the second fellow, whose brake had broken down, follows me for a long distance, yelling crude, dirty names at me!! This is the Mumbai I had loved?
  
• Another headache with auto fellows: suddenly, since the time I take the vehicle is usually the time when their fuel stations are likely to be empty, they will insist on refuelling: an auto refuelling means joining a long line of auto rickshaws, with crudely gesticulating drivers, at the backside of the service station (that is where they are allotted space). So you are there, uncomfortably being stared at by bored, crotch-scratching men, outside smelling male urinals, in a space that is not clearly, for women. After one such experience, I have become smart, and usually step off the auto, pay my fare and walk away. But I almost got abducted the other day by this smart cookie auto fellow who suddenly shifted lanes, in the highway, to the side of the fuel station, beginning an argument about just why it was not nice of me to refuse him `five minutes only' refuel time. Imagine, I was going for a class!! (always I am headed for a yoga class in this state of absolute mental disarray, thanks to this deterioration in auto services and the men who ply them).
  
• Imagine auto unions have gone on strike protesting against the public bus corporation for plying in certain areas(the Goregaon road, the last time the autos went off the road in protest)!! I find that absolutely difficult to swallow... That means we citizens have no collective voice, no union, and must be held to ransom like this? I mean these guys wont come where we want to go. And if I am to be given an alternative transport that is reliable, he will go off in a huff and protest!! Give me a break...
  

What may be done to improve the system?

• I cannot imagine why the city municipal corporation will not allot valid auto-stands for these guys so they are not taking up road space. And there are complaint boxes or liason people (from among auto fellows) at such halts. A city adminstration cannot think of the city only in terms of private buildings and highrises. The state government only seems to think of space in terms of what it may negotiate with private builders. Unless it starts to think in terms of such allottments for auto, car parking (rentals, as happen abroad) the city will continue to bloat like an unattended garbage can. Or try to organise it the city will be a mess. And it is also becoming difficult to stomach such nonsense. What made Mumbai tolerable, despite its filth, difficult commute, etc are its sweetness in daily transactions. The auto fellows are eroding that and thus eroding the ethos of the city. If you don't see that as a problem, soon people like us, from outside of this city and who have loved it as their own, will desert it.
  
• There has to be random meter checks: it seems corruption means the one who pays the most gets away... Suppose I as a citizen even complain (despite all those inhibitions I have explained above), if an auto fellow will pay some piddling hafta, which is most likely, he is going to be left off... right?
  
• The government must insist that unions liason with citizens -- after all, the unions are not an isolated entity, but can exist only with citizen patronisation! Just like Parent-Teacher Associations are a must (though schools can flout that too) in schools, so also all registered unions must have Commuter-Union meetings regularly so that such complaints get redressed.

Till then, I will suffer and dream of moving out, to a place where I don't have to travel by autos ....