The rickshaw wallahs of Bandra East are an industrious lot, especially the ones who run between Bandra east and BKC. They may seem undisciplined and ruthless. But they are just those who live on the edge of two worlds. Which two worlds you ask?
The world of corporate and government buildings of BKC and the other world, the ones you and I inhabit when we are not occupying the aforementioned buildings.
The other world is impacted by the former. It is what happens in these offices and banks that determines how we live our lives. How we save, how we spend, what do we spend on and what we splurge and also most importantly how we earn.
These autowallahs ferry us on the conduit joining the two worlds. They hate to wait and they will break all queues to get their three passengers and hit the road again. They love to perform this circuit. Godrej One to Station to Godrej One. The world that they inhabit is a paradigm of its own with its own unique characteristics. And for the twenty minutes that you ride in the auto, you get a glimpse of it.
Some of them are devout and embellish the dashboard with stickers of their gods. Some of them love pot and are known to indulge in it off and on. There is playful hazing at the corners where they wait. There is a smattering of cuss words among them but hardly with the passengers. The passengers hate them because they hike up the price by ten bucks during peak hours.
There are fights and of course, there is racing. They race each other and share moments of banter at the traffic signals. They start a conversation at the pick up point and finish it in instalments at the various traffic signals. They hate to wait, like I said earlier, so the moment the signal turns green, they veer off into every galli-khopcha they find to take you to your destination only to catch up with their friends at the next stop.
While driving, they love to sit on the edge of their seat. Hardly any of them sit in the centre. They are forever, right or left aligned, never centre aligned – like a well formatted bulleted panel on a PPT deck. When I ask them why they sit like this, one of them told me that it is for the fourth seat passenger in case they get lucky, others say it is just the way it is. Some say it is my ishtyle. I believe all of them.
They love to make a quick buck. The competition is crazy. The cops are always on their tail. So every ride is an opportunity to maximise your earnings. Occasionally the traffic cops become hyper vigilant, and suddenly there is an attempt to instill order outside the station.
Passengers wait in queues but the rickshaw supply slows down. Turns out that when regulated, they don’t comply and we end up waiting in long queues. But the day the vigilance is lowered, the hustle for getting passengers resumes. Try getting down the stairs of the station and you will be met with eager faces, shouting the names of various locations of BKC.
To them these buildings and landmarks don’t mean anything beyond their livelihood. But turns out even to many of us, they symbolise the same thing. And each time I am delayed to get to the station or to office, I know I can count on the impatient, ruthless and industrious autowallahs of Bandra East to take me there just in time.