[Stribog]

Am back again with non car related threads, and this time my mind went back to this howlarious experience with a driver we had and thought there should be many more. So fire away with your funny, ludicrous (as mine will prove to be), sad, horrifying stories of drivers - cabs or otherwise.

1 - We were on a temple visit in Kumbakonam and had hired a car to take us around from our hotel to all the 100 temples my mom and wife wanted to visit. The car was a spanking new Indica Manza (this was around 2010) and the driver was a youngish chap from a village who had found a job as a driver. All good.

On the brief highway drives to reach different temples, I noticed the engine drop RPM's whenever he was overtaking other vehicles (mostly trucks), I found it odd on day but I usually just doze off when am being driven so didnt pay much heed to it. Day 2, I was shotgun while dad was in the rear seat, and I noticed he was upshifting everytime he was overtaking....I was like seriously intrigued and asked him, why is he doing this.

He said and I quote,

"Saar, high geerna (gear, pronounced in Tamil Nadu as Geer) high speed saar, so 5th gear max speed.

It was simultaneously funny and horrifying. I then told him how gears worked, and even took over for a spell after the next temple, and he then understood it.

2 - This was the crazy sardar driver from Mumbai to Pune, in 1988. The fact that my family still talk about it should be proof on how horrifying this was.

We had an emergency visit to go to Pune, we had just then moved into Bombay, and the 4 of us (mom, uncle, sister and I) combined spoke 3 words of Hindi while the driver spoke no Tamil and his English was restricted to Okay. A kindly relative of ours booked him for us, explained where we need to go, that he needs to wait till we return and drop us back in the same flat he is picking us up from...all in Hindi. So far so good. It was June and torrential rains started...and we were excited but not for long.

Turns out Sardar uncle moonlit in an another job as a F1 and Rally driver. The Brake was a challenge to his manhood and ego and using it would have brought down a 100 curses on his head....the only pedal he knew aside from the clutch was the accelerator.

It was a Padmini, but by the Gods, he drove like an absolute maniac. We all just held onto dear life and watched our lives flash past our eyes. Midway we mimed that we were hungry....and he stopped in a shuddh 100% fish food restaurant.

What is the problem you ask?

We are 100% vegetarians. So we just got some milk bikis packets, ordered coffee and waited for the ordeal to get over.

Reached in what was for that era, record time I guess, got out and paid up the full money and had another relative in the destination tell him that we would rather walk back but take his services.

3 - Not a long story, but on a trip from Mangalore to Sringeri, we booked an Innova...and got a 140 year old driver who most probably got his license riding bullock carts for Zameendars even before the motor vehicle was invented. He was the Yin to Sardarji above's Yang. He literally never crossed 50 kmph....and if he saw an oncoming vehicle a km away he would come to a near dead halt.....I mean there is safe driving but this was saaaaaaaaaafe driving. I even offered to take the wheel, but obviously he declined the offer.

This was then repeated in the return.

[Researcher]

Great idea for a thread. I have two that I recall:

1. Back in July 2015, my friend and I were supposed to travel to IIT Bombay from CST station with our luggage. We booked an Innova on Uber. A very well behaved, but somewhat tired looking driver accepted our ride request and took us to Powai. We kept chatting and he told us how he worked in IT during the day along with driving for Uber at night to keep up with expenses. My friend and I did feel bad for this. When we got down, we had to pay ₹ 555 to him (yes I remember exactly). Upon offering him cash, he refused to take money saying it has been paid for online! When we later checked, it was not deducted from our wallet as well. We tried paying online, but it would not work for some reason and it showed pending on us.

Later that day, when we were roaming around, we saw the same guy dropping another set of people and offered him the cash. He still refused to take for some reason despite us showing the app. Even though we could not understand, we just let it go and proceeded with our walk. My friend (who also became my room-mate for a year) and I still try figuring out the logic behind '555' till today.

2. This was during the Durga Puja vacations of 2005 or 2006 when we went with our neighbours for a trip to South India. I was in school back then. We had booked a local Qualis with a Telugu-only speaking aged driver for all our travel duties in Tirupati. My late neighbour, who was in higher up post in the police then, once took me on some errand with the driver. He left me with the driver and taught me one line in Telugu (unable to recall now) to reply in case the driver says anything to me.

So the driver starts narrating me something for 5-6 minutes then just as he looks at me expecting a response, I say the line that my neighbour taught me. This goes on for 2-3 times then the driver becomes silent. We later come back to our accomodation and I ask my neighbour what did the line mean. My neighbour swiftly says that it loosely means, "Sorry I do not understand Telugu, please repeat again."