Our Tribute to the Auto Rikshaw Community...

I have never seen such a corny one-liner in my life. The one liner in question is the title to this blog. This is one of the many ingenious ad strategies that Himesh Reshammiya's creative team (or was it Himesh Reshammiya himself?) came up with for the former's debut movie.

The tribute in question involves three auto wallahs crashing into and....obstructing three Australian (or being Himesh, maybe even American) police cars.

The real tribute lies in actually getting those autos to Australia (or the US) and getting the authorities there to allow the shooting of such a blatant affront to their law and order machinery.

All this aside, there are a million other things about the movie that can consume the whole of this blog entry and the next and the next.....

But my blog audience deserves better. Therefore, following is my tribute to the auto rikshaw community.

I have always held this partiality toward the auto rikshaw as my preferred mode of mobility. For one, it is open on both sides, allowing the free passage of air. Two, Indian traffice jams do not affect the mobility of this vehicle. Three, auto rikshaw drivers are great people to use as specimens in character sketch assignments. No two auto wallahs are alike. Of course you could counter with no two people are alike. But you just don't get introduced to random people from random places on a Sunday morning. Most of the time, you are with friends, family, blah. New people come in once in a blue moon.

The auto wallah community not only varies from state to state across India but even within little pocket roads of a single city, their dialects and mode of action vary. By mode of action, I refer to the varied ways in which they attract potential passengers.

During the four years of my bachelors in Ranchi, I have figured that the auto wallahs in Ranchi are the most harassed and unfortunate in their fraternity. They normally ferry twice, or even thrice the auto's capacity at sometimes less than half the standard fare. There are times when I think an auto fit to explode and yet......as if to defy every known law in the universe, a full grown Bihari man (and they are of decent built) can still fit in. If that was not enough, every girl above the age of 5 in the state can bargain. There are days when I have seen my friends bargaining for half an hour to save a rupee. Over the last two years, I have had the opportunity to see myself doing that. Its insane how that sort of petty victory can get to your head. But there it is, it can.

In contrast the auto wallahs in Kerala are a pampered lot. Not only are they entitled to the amount that blinks on the meter, but twice as much thanks to the very revolutionary concept of "return fare". They are entitled to this amount even at busy junctions where they are bound to get customers to pay for their way back. I say the concept is revolutionary in a purely communist sense. Besides, Malayalees need the auto more than any other people. The dingy roads, traffic jams and monsoons which flood the main roads give the autos a distinct advantage. The auto driver is something of a hero here. The auto driver in Kerala has the unique freedom of being very choosy about his customers. He can simply decide not to take you where you want to go. My mother and I, over the course of time, have figured out how to use metaphors and other creative phrase line-ups, that allow us to leave the name of the place we are going to out of an auto hiring conversation. Ingenuity runs in the family.

Now I chose to move on to the many auto drivers who have made or screwed my day. Buried somewhere in the deeper depths of my chidhood is the friendly neighbourhood auto karan who used to ferry a dozen or more of us to the local school and back. Besides having to deal with stuffing all of us into the vehichle and extricating us from it later, which involved making sure he didn't loose even one of us (we were the size of mosquitoes and a hundred times more pesky), he had to deal with screaming, wailing, unearthly nature calls, lost tiffin boxes and bags and not to forget the occasional child who felt the need to crawl all over him while he drove. In spite of all this he was ridiculously cheerful and kept singing this very corny malayalam movie song that goes something like "Tell me the vowels..aeiou.." I used to like that song at that point. In fact I knew my vowels better than the ABC because of it.

Another auto driver of repute was the guy who constantly felt the need to assault me with malayalam riddles. Taking into consideration the fact that I was a fraud mallu, (born and brought up outside God's own country), it was painful even trying to understand what he was saying. As for actually getting around to answering them, its anybody's guess.

Recently I met him at a vegetable stall. I turned away as a reflex. I guess thats how he recognized me. He actually started off right there in the middle of the vegetable stall, by the main road, near the Palarivattom Bus Stand. He was literally gloating at the fact that I, a full-fledged engineer, could not answer his questions. He even dared to ask me what they taught me at college. Since I wasn't particularly sure myself, I decided to pass.

There was of course the Ranchi auto wallah who kept insisting that all his female customers were like his sisters while giving us very un-brotherly looks through the rear view mirror.

I could never complete this blog without mentioning my mom's favourite auto driver. As a sort of preface, I must tell you that my mom has a hundred watt smile. This implies two things
A)That she looks lovely when she smiles
B)That she finds it necessary to flash all her pearly whites when she does so
Legend has it that this cute little man use to remark "the sun has risen", every time she passed the stand on the way to college. Since the finer nuances of this comment is only captured by the malayalam lexicon, I rest my case.

And my final salute goes to the Mangalorean auto wallah who drove us all over town on a rainy day, all the while knowing that the three women in the back seat had no clue where they wanted to go. Now thats what I call heroic. ;)

Now if this isn't a tribute, I really don't know what is.