PlainGeets

My love-hate relationship with autos started when I moved to Pune. This is pre-Uber, and in a city where the buses were not only overcrowded and had the tendency to just break down in the middle of a road, they were almost never on time. If you didn’t have your own vehicle, you had only two choices – endure the death traps of PMTC buses, or take autos. 

Back then, Bombay autos never said no to your destination, and always ran by meter. So the concept of an autowala who would not just refuse to go where you wanted to go, but question your desire to go there, was rather alien to me! Agreed; we lived far (technically outside the Pune city limits), but conversations like this made me want to do more than just grit my teeth, and move on:

• 🙎🏻‍♀️ Me: Keshavnagar?
• 🛺 Autowala: Udhar kyun janeka hai? (Why do you want to go there?)
• 🙎🏻‍♀️ Me: Mein udhar rahti hoon. (I live there.)
• 🛺 Autowala: Hai re baba! Udhar kyun rahti hai? (Oh my god! Why do you live there?)
• Me: Family rahti hai. (Family stays there.)

At this point in this ‘destination judge’ game, I was sure that he’d feel sorry for me, especially since it was 20:30 and Keshavanagar was at least an hour’s drive away. But no, there’s no melting a Pune autowalas heart, if he thinks you’re in the wrong! And I was definitely in the wrong for daring to live anywhere beyond the heart of Pune!

And then of course were the return fare demands:

• 🙎🏻‍♀️ Me: Station jayenge? (Will you go to the station?)
• 🛺 Autowala: Return fare lagega. (I’ll charge the return fare as well.)
• 🙎🏻‍♀️ Me: Kyun? (Why?)
• 🛺 Autowala: Wahan se bhada nahin milta hai. (You don’t get passengers from there.)
• 🙎🏻‍♀️ Me: Station hai, wahan pe bhada nahin milega to kahan milega? (It’s the station. How can you not get a passenger from there?)
• 🛺 Autowala: Par mereko yahan waapis aaneka hai. (But I want to come back here.)

At this point I would just give up, and agree to the demands, or if I had time, head to the bus stop, hoping that a bus would appear soon!

I’ve had so many versions of these conversations in the 7 years that  I lived in Pune, that had Instagram been a thing back then, I’d have gone viral by sharing them! By the time I left Pune for Bangalore, I’d come down to cursing the autowalas who had unjustified demands. My favourite was telling them that their God would punish them for exploiting passengers! 

I moved to Bangalore expecting better behaviour from the auto universe. I shouldn’t have had such high expectations. Within a few weeks, I’d gotten accustomed to shaking my head at their absurd demands, and walking away. And then came along the world of Uber and Ola. If you assumed that I must have immediately adopted this new mode of transport, you’d be wrong. Despite my love-hate relationship with them, I stayed loyal to autos and have even waxed lyrical about them. How did this happen? Well, for one, my commute in Bangalore wasn’t to objectionable areas. 😉 But a big reason for my continued loyalty to autos was one particular autowala, Umapati, who’d often be standing outside the Alliance Française, and ferried me back home, sometimes with multiple stops to pick up stuff, with the grace and dignity you’d expect from an English butler. Demonetisation came, and I was forced to start booking rides on Ola autos for a while, but I stayed true to my preferred mode of transport…

…till this time while visiting Bangalore, when I was unable to find autos who agreed to ferry me from Point A to B. The few that agreed, charged absurd amounts (one of the few things in India that remain unchanged). Most simply refused, leading to such a strong déjà vu feeling. Even trying to book an auto on Uber or Ola (which always worked in the past) yielded no results. 

Much to my disgruntlement, my primary mode of transport in the two weeks I’ve stayed in India has been taxis, which has left me wondering how many autos I’ll see on the street by 2025. If Bombay can bid adieu to the iconic kali-peeli taxis and double decker buses, what’s to stop the autos from disappearing from our streets? Don’t the autowalas worry that people like me will reduce in number and they will become increasingly irrelevant? But the most basic question that has dogged me for years: why do they become autowalas if they don’t really want to ferry people wherever they want to go? Why would you prefer standing idle for hours, instead of just accepting a passenger and doing your job? This isn’t a case of a personality-career mismatch, so really why are autowalas like this?