An 'Auto'mated Reaction

Urgh. After trying (very very unsuccessfully) for over 3 months, I still haven’t been able to control my horrid temper. And the subject of today is: the auto. Not one, but the whole lot in general. There was a time when I depended on them to take me to and fro college for 2 years. Then I considered them as bright spots of sunshine (read: jarring yellow coloured rooftops). And now, they only look like some jaundiced three wheelers.

My love-hate relationship with the Autos has been going on for quite a while. Back in Delhi, I’d squeal with excitement if I saw an auto whiz past me. Fatfatiyas, I think, they were called. They were oddly shaped and judging by the number of people squashed inside it, they could easily compete with a minibus! But I was never allowed to go on them. They were considered a taboo. (We South Delhi kiddos took great pride in commuting in the boot of Maruti 800s. They were cozy for two 6 year old girls making faces at everyone behind them!)

And so I grew out of the boot and entered the forested streets (yes, some trees did exist in the Garden City). Here, autos became an essential commodity. Especially in my 11th and 12th standards. My friends and I took a ‘rick’ (as we called it) to college everyday. It was only a distance of 3 kms and no buses went in that route. So we had little option but to take autos….or walk amidst open drains and dusty main roads. And each day was an experience for the three of us. Once, we got a driver who sang all the way to college. Once we got autos with rather ghastly images of knife-stabbing-eye stuck on his windscreen. Once we even got an auto with two drivers. And in the middle of a traffic jam, one of the drivers...get this...... gave a rose to the other! We sniggered non-stop at the back and tried to hide our faces in books!

But you know, despite the weird autos we’d always seem to get, the fares were at least reasonable. The meter would be rigged, but we knew how to pay the right fare and manage our travel finances.

That turned upside down when I came to Chennai. Urgh! My dreams of commuting without a hiccup went for a toss. After a week of sun, sand and bargaining in Goa, I landed up in a similar position. Not the sun or the sand, but a Bargain with the drivers.

So they start off at astronomical rates. And then taper it down to twice the amount you’d pay with a fair meter. You feel like you’ve achieved the impossible when he accepts your ‘quotation’. Only to get home and realize you could have always bargained more. I am awful at bargaining. Simply awful. I prefer order and restrictions which people must abide by so I don’t have to bend the rules. Or maybe I’m just too lazy. But the autos here have taken the little sanity I had left and driven over it. Urgh squared.

The worst thing is, as we’re all being taken for a ride (pun intended) here, no one seems to be doing anything about it. Sure, everyone complains. But it just stops at that.

Well, if you expect a solution in this post, there certainly isn’t going to be one. I just had to rant. About a day full of auto rides. And it seemed so similar to a business proposition, or an auction. The only couple of solutions I can suggest to myself is:
1) Wait patiently for 5 more days and I’m back to the wonderful city of metered autos and a car waiting to be driven (ahem, by me……if I can get it out of my mum’s clutches)
2) Start going for anger management classes. That has to be a priority. The next time I come here, someone is bound to send me to a lock-up for displaying road rash at a couple of innocent looking autos!