Innocent Tease ?

I am not the Indian woman out of a soap, so quite obviously I wasn’t really dressed up at 10.p.m. in the night. A silly pink nightdress, and Innu to give me company in the exact same nightdress in a different color.

My dad always complained to me about one (supposedly) terrible habit my mom has – that she remembers all the important things at late hours. And my mom just lived up to this complaint dad has, and remembered one really important tablet we just HAD to have at that hour. I am paranoid (I am tired of explaining this – so assuming all my readers out there know it by now), so I wouldn’t let Mom and Innu go to the medical store by walk at 10.p.m. in the night. And after much fight with my lazy-self, I decided to drive them down, ONLY and ONLY on the condition that I will not change (nightdress is THE thing to live in), hence will not get off the car! My mom said of course no problem. So if I didn’t have to get off anyway, I could safely wear dad’s bathroom slippers too. Innu looked exactly like me, and my slippers on her were even better than the bathroom slippers on me, trust me!

We reached the medical store and Mom gave me that Oh-I-Work-For-You-Guys-All-Day-Long look. Almost begged Innu and me to get off and get the tablets. WHAT???

So we just sneaked in trying to go unnoticed. Found a safe corner and stood there. There are at least twenty guys at the other side attending the huge crowd, cause this medical store is apparently the best, and most crowded, in Bangalore. And those guys just have to have a girl on the other side, they come running to attend you. That always helps to get out of the store quickly :D

There was this broad man standing in front of us and he got a call, he wanted to move out, he just dashed into me and moved out. I got super pissed, and before I knew it, he again came all over me and moved back in. It was so annoying; Innu and I uttered loud curses at him, still trying to go unseen… Those nightdresses and giant slippers were making us look just HORRIBLE – we just couldn’t afford to get noticed! And again! He gets a call and barges out and that’s it! We both screamed REAL loud, in chorus – EXCUUUUUUUUUUUSE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE !!!!

All, and I mean ALL heads turned, and gave us one thorough look, and this man somehow had the support of the crowd and the advantage because we looked like Idiots in those pajamas. This broad-guy just made us feel more stupid, and put up a really innocent face and said “Oh! So Sorry!” All this was actually so hilarious, and till we stood there we kept getting Silly-Girls stare and this man made sure he said loud excuse-me-pleases before he would move. We took our packet, returned a few stares and RAN!

Madam - one and a half please !

They leave you with a bitter taste; their money is hard earn (Khoon-paise-ki-kamayee), ours is all lottery business; they harass; they are unsafe; and they are broad day light robbers!! Yes, it’s the very famous auto driver nuisance.

Since office moved, I don’t travel by car, and any extra traveling will be at the mercy of a stupid enough auto-driver. I caught up with my friend at The Forum Mall last evening, at around 8 ‘o’ clock, and we had to head to Shantinagar. I knew it wasn’t a good time for one (paranoid one) to be taking an auto. Having decided to go prepaid, we walked towards the Christ college entrance; the cop at the Prepaid counter recommended the other entrance. We walked there to find it shut! Got back to the front entrance, with an irritated expression well defined on our faces, and finally got a receipt – thirty bucks to Shantinagar. Isn’t prepaid just as pointless if they don’t let you pay up right there? We could foresee the excess fare menace now. By the time we approached Shantinagar, this dude starts off – “Madam this is not Shantinagar, this is Double Road”. And mind you, he was arrogant, very arrogant! This guy was totally bigheaded and argued till we showed him a big yellow board that read – ‘Shantinagar’. He couldn’t argue about it not being shantinagar anymore, but hell he could still argue, over just some random, arbit thing! We asked him to stop and when he did, we were in a lonely by lane. He said fifty bucks. We didn’t intend to pay any more than thirty.

It’s not about ten bucks but about the attitude and the unreceptive environment that these auto drivers create. They invariably have to ask for excess fare, all they care about is to over speed and dump you at your destination to catch the next fool. They harass the ones inside the auto and the ones driving outside. They are a big nuisance on the roads, and more often that not, an auto travel leaves me sick of the city!

I opened my wallet to find five hundred bucks and no change in it. No Choice! He was fuming, and could have ripped of our clothes any minute! I was well aware of where we were and frankly, I know a lot of people think its cowardly, but I knew that beyond a point, I wouldn’t argue. Of course, I wasn’t close to giving up yet. I asked for change, he gave four hundreds, then a fifty, and then of course – a ten. That’s it! We screamed and said he would have to pay us back, else we would complain. The moment I began to take notice of the number, he tried to run his auto over me while my friend still tried getting our money back! K A 0 2 A 4 7 5 1 sped off, leaving us with his damned registration number.

After all this, getting an auto from Shantinagar to Vijayanagar was a nightmare. We boarded at least three autos, with drivers being their nasty selves, demanding excess fares! Finally one decent auto driver came along and we got home that evening.