Sunday, December 14, 2008

White Tiger and the Cab driver

Finally managed to finish reading White Tiger this weekend. I wouldn't rate it too high. The book does provoke your thoughts, bring out the hollowness that we city people are embracing day by day, the stark reality of the poor and the sad state of affairs our country. However, I didn't like the narration too much. The idea of someone writing to a Chinese diplomat about his life story and India in general is a little weird. The language is also just average. My best part of the story, and something to which I can relate to well.. the last bit about the story of the cab drivers in Bangalore. And this is also what I got reminded of when driving to work today morning.

This was on the Intermediate ring road. An indica cab to my left wanted to join my lane while I wanted to continue to go straight. I was too close to him, with a sumo cab right next to me on my right. I slowed down with the intention of letting him and so also the sumo fellow to go. However, it so happened that I managed to go right after the sumo. The cab driver then had to negotiate the right with the car behind me. And now what happened I saw it all from my rearview mirror, while trying to concentrate on driving. So something must have happened between the cab driver and the i10 behind me.. both the cars were moving forward, very slowly, with the drivers abusing each other. The next thing I know is that the cab driver overtakes the i10, and stops right infront of it, blocking him completely. He gets out of his car and goes back to fight with the i10 guy. The traffic on the ring road ofcourse suffered. A few meters away from this scene, the traffic police guy was just watching this helplessly ! I just ran sped fast from that place.. thanking my stars that it wasn't me who had got on the wrong side of the cab driver. God only knows what would have happened to me if I had got caught in that mess. That has just not been part of my driving lessons.. oops, some news lessons in order, for me and also for the driving schools: "How to combat cab drivers when driving on Bangalore roads". I fear much more as I do not speak the local language and amidst all the ongoing state wars, who knows when a small incident like this could turn into anything major !

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