Sonu. Munim. Raju. Ram Ratan. Usman. Jitendra. Gautam. Balbir. Sunny. These are strangers who came into my life, at different times, for just a day — at the most two — and I never saw them again. Yet I remember their names, and if I try hard, can recall some of the faces.
These people, after all, have contributed to my career as a writer. They were all drivers whom I had hired while on assignments in places unfamiliar to me. Each went out of his way, often literally, to make sure I got what I was looking for and, as far as I remember, looked positively embarrassed when, on the completion of the journey, we spoke about money.
There can be no better way of knowing your own country than taking the road — in a taxi. A distance of 400 km can be covered in barely 45 minutes by plane, but you don’t really travel, you only fly from one glass-and-steel structure to another. When taking the train, you are like a prisoner watching the landscape change from behind a grilled window. In a bus, you are a prisoner of the driver’s mood and do not have a say.
But in a taxi, you are the boss. You can stop whenever and wherever you want to: to eat, to stretch your legs, to get some fresh air, to answer nature’s call, to take pictures. You remain connected to the soil at all times, and the man serving as the connection is the driver — your guide, friend, and often philosopher, in an unfamiliar territory. Treat him well and he will assume the additional role of a bodyguard.
Treating him well is not always about paying for his tea or meals, but something as simple as enquiring about him and his family. He will open up instantly and then ask about you and your family. Once the details are exchanged, you are no longer driver and passenger, but two kindred spirits bound by the need to travel for livelihood.
I have never come across a driver unpleasant or ill-tempered, and perhaps never will, because such men will never qualify as long-distance drivers. The ones that I have hired have always been happy-go-lucky: whether they take to the profession because they are happy-go-lucky, or whether the profession makes them so, I cannot be sure, though I suspect the latter is more likely. Once you recognise life as a journey, you have no choice but to cheerfully take everything in your stride: potholes as well as smooth roads.
One regret: I never took notes when these drivers told me their stories. I could have produced an engaging — and entertaining — book on their lives. Their stories are always honest and give a picture of the real India, the one that lives miles away from the malls, swanky gyms and restaurants, untouched by the cacophony generated by news channels and social media.
Balbir Singh, who took me around towns in Punjab, told me that in his part of the country, a disobedient daughter-in-law is punished by being sent to her parents' home for a year or two. Jitendra Singh, who drove me around towns in Uttar Pradesh, narrated to me the killing of an adulterous woman in his village — he even took me to the village, where his mother had cooked a delightful meal for me. Then there was Yusuf, my sole companion in Hyderabad for two days, who told me all about the ‘good time’ he had in Saudi Arabia, in spite of witnessing three public beheadings there, before washing off his sins by going to Mecca. He returned to Hyderabad a ‘clean’ and rich man, but his entire savings was spent on his father, a former soldier in the Nizam’s army, who was diagnosed with cancer. If only I had taken notes.
