Travel time again!!

This is travelogue season again..

As part of my company training program, have to undertake a vessel ( a ship) tour on any one of the company ships on a specified route, touching atleast three ports of call..

The route i chose ( or rather , had to pick from a few options available) was the Singapore -Kaoshiung - Busan leg of the Asia- Europe 2 service of Maersk Line. I embarked on the vessel '"AP Moller "at Singapore, took four days from SIN to Kaoshiung , a port stay of about 12 hours there and from there a further 2 and a half days to the south korean port of Busan where i diesmbarked.

Took the oppurtunity to do some sight seeing as well. 2 days in Sinapore prior to boarding, one day at busan after dismebarkation and a day and half in seoul , prior to flying back.

Here iam now at singapore's changi international airport, waiting in between flights , roaming around this huge modern complex that is changi and marvelling at its multitude of facilities and comforts for the traveller.

coming back to the trip.. that would be split into 3 blogs ..and described further in detail.... one for Singapore, one for the sailing and one for South Korea.... and all three dedicated to Sara, my most wonderful colleague from Pakistan , with whom i did the vessel tour, and without whom the tour would have been half as exciting as it was.

My new friends: the Auto drivers of Chennai …

Ask any Chennai-ite, any visitor to Chennai, any tourist, or anybody who has ever had to ride on one of the city’s auto rickshaws and they would tell you that the biggest bane of this misunderstood city are these auto rickshaws and its drivers. Their reckless driving, lack of respect for other road users and their patrons and their fleecing of the customers are as infamous as it gets.

The auto rickshaw is a typical Indian invention of the yesteryears. Small, cheap, low on quality, noisy, polluting and unattractive. An invention for the middle classes. For those people who cant yet afford a car, but who are nevertheless too proud to travel or are hard-pressed for time to travel in the congested and dirty public transport.

The vehicle itself is somewhere in the middle , it rides on three wheels, not yet there as a full fledged 4 wheeler , but presumably higher on the road chain ( a la food chain) over a two wheeler because of having one wheel extra. The auto is a vehicle that has not evolved over time. No body is proud to own an auto, no body dreams to have one parked in their house, there is no ownership value attached to it. Even though thousands patronize it, only hundreds own it and there by reduces the need to innovate and improve them. Do you ever recall seeing a new model auto on the road, except for the brief while when there was an electric powered auto? From time immemorial, these have always yellow and black, looking like an inflated bean and generally giving out the impression of a naughty imp on the road.

The chief patronage for these autos come from people who want to travel short distances quickly and cannot wait for a bus, from college girls who I think have a deep rooted allergy towards public transport, as a means of shuttle to and from the nearest railhead and also from sales personnel like me, who use them to travel to their clients place and back. For the last three months I have been using the auto to commute from office to the various clients spread across the city on a daily basis. There is an auto stand outside my office building and hence I use one of the many autos stationed there. And hence over the last few months have grown accustomed to seeing the same set of auto drivers, using their services and hence end up having a brand new set of friends.

There is one driver, a middle aged chap, for whom I am the consultant for everything in life. He claimed that his mobile phone has been tampered with and was not working and I had to check on that. Closer inspection revealed that the card had to be recharged and for which I had to dole out a 100 rupee advance, which would be adjusted on my subsequent trips in his auto. There is another guy who is a music buff. He plays the FM non stop and the ride on his auto is always a musical experience. There is little to discuss and talk with this guy, since with the din of the songs played one is not able to have a conversation.

Talking of conversations one cannot beat auto driver number 3, a well informed chap who discusses everything from politics, to the high handedness of traffic police, to my nature of work, to ironically the rash driving of two wheelers on the road. You could imagine my surprise when the other day he correctly identified a jazzy car overtaking us as a BMW. Given that there must be only a few of these on the roads in Chennai, this was phenomenal.

Once I took auto driver number 4 to a clients place outside the city limits and came back outside after a couple of hours. I simply forgot this guy and took a cab and returned back to office. 2 days later I use his service again and he politely reminded me that I had left him in the lurch 2 days back. He was far removed from the image of the aggressive, abusive auto driver.

I have noticed that these people are not as bad as they are imagined to be. Give them respect, speak to them politely and these people are as normal as you and me. They are in a thankless job, driving mostly a rented auto and having to share the collections with the owner, always being suspected of being rogue, of being cheats and pilloried about by the public and the police alike. Add to that the high fuel prices and a paralyzing traffic to negotiate, life is not easy.

But as long as these people run amok on the roads and charge a million bucks for a short distance, they would always be viewed as the villains. In the fast paced life that we are in, this crazed little three wheeler and its lords would always be seen as necessary evils