Like many of my generation, a 60+ senior citizen living in Mumbai, I am quite unfamiliar with Ubers. I do have the App on my phone and I do use it once in a while but while my children happily call for an Uber at the drop of a hat, I still prefer flagging down a black and yellow Mumbai taxi known as the ‘Kaali-Peeli’ as a default option for travelling in the city. And I think many of my generation automatically call a dial-a-cab service whatever it may be called by the generic term ‘kaali-peeli’ even if they don’t sit in one.
So one afternoon when I had to go to Crawford Market ( oops, Mahatma Phule Market), I stepped out of the Club and asked the watchman to call for a taxi. Within minutes a rickety kaali-peeli pulled up. It was driven by a white-bearded Sardarji who was busy stroking his beard . Before I got in I asked if he had a QR code because even though my operating system hasn’t revved up to the Uber, I have happily adopted digital payment and very rarely step out with real money. And to my chagrin, not many taxi drivers like online payments.
The old man muttered something which I couldn’t understand because it was a strange Hindi jumbled up with Punjabi. What I understood was that he asked me to get in and he would take mewherever I wanted for free.
All at once, I was alarmed even though it was 3 in the afternoon and there was no where he could ‘abduct’ me. I definitely didn’t want to be beholden to a stranger. But then, I comforted myself that the taxi driver was probably going towards the market anyways and would have preferred a fare rather than going empty.
While we made our way to the market, I kept telling him to share his mobile number so that I could pay him the fare. Once again he refused and complained that the world would go to hell if online payment wasn’t stopped. Cash was king he assured me and even if I didn’t pay him, Guru Nanak would pay him.
I was beginning to wonder if he was a bit crazed because he kept stroking his beard and telling me that his children wouldn’t let him use mobile banking ( not his words of course) and that he only became a citizen of this country six years’ ago. By this time I was convinced that he had completely lost it when he suddenly stopped by a crowded bus stop and asked a person who was obviously waiting for a bus/taxi whether he wanted a ride.
Coincidentally, that person also wanted to go to Crawford Market ( yes, another person who called it by that name even though he seemed twenty years younger than me). The taxi driver asked the new passenger to sit in front and asked if he had cash. Then he told me to pay the passenger up front by UPI and asked the passenger to give him cash.
I was stunned by the ingenuity of the taxi driver. He got my full fare while the new passenger got the free ride!
Ciao
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