Thursday, February 17, 2011

Shareauto Tales

PSR has been telling me for sometime that I must write about my shareauto tales. The traffic gives me the heebie jeebies and hence I do not drive. That means public transport. Since taking a bus at the peak hour is not even worth mentioning and regular autos are way too expensive for daily travel, that leaves shareautos.

It gives me a chance to see the human race at its weirdest.

Before I tell you anything more, you really need to understand the concept of shareauto. Its a large auto or small van, where the people (mostly the IT ppl) are stuffed like salmon in a tin can. The drivers try to take in as many people as (in)humanly possible. Sometimes as many as 13-14 people travel in one auto. Idea is to make maximum money out of each trip.

=> To prove me wrong, just yesterday I noticed a poster in this romantic owned shareauto. It said "Valentines Day special - Couples can travel for free today". Sweet huh?! :-)

=>The other day. much to the irritation of the rest of us travellers, a drunk got in and promptly sat on a gal's lap. She squealed and moved away and got out ASAP. So now he was sitting between a lady and another guy. When the lady moved a bit forward to the window (probably coz of the smell next to her), the drunk fell on her. (I got kicked by him in the process and I was happy enough to crush his feet with my heels and aargh! the heels of my favourite pair of slippers broke and the man didn't even flinch. Though he removed his feet, I might as well have been a fly). Anyways after getting pushed off and threatened by the lady to take him to the police station, the man sat contentedly feeling himself up. So there we all were staring at him in disbelief. I can tell you there was a concerted rush to get out of the auto when it came to a stop.

=> Two young things, a gal and a guy were sitting in the back seat of the shareauto. We generally try to not let a 4th person sit, when 3 could sit more comfortably. But these YT all twined up together kept asking people to sit next to them. I was staring at them puzzled until i realised that it gave them a good reason to be pasted to each other. They were so entwined that the guy had to put his arm all around the girl, just to scratch his other arm.
Well! He has his arm around her shoulder and the rest as they is History. I should probably have averted my eyes .. Yeah right!!!! I sure had the satisfaction of seeing a rom-com movie until they got down one stop before me.

=> The softest hand that ever touched me was that of a 1.5 or so YO child. A lady got in with her school going kid and this child. Just a look at the kid and you could see he was a special child. He was attracted to my bright kurti sleeves and my handbag handle that kept moving with the autos movement.His hands were only as big as a newly born baby and so soft and tender. I let him play to his heart's content. But it hurt to think of the future in store for him and his family.

=> oh! The other day I got into this shareauto and I should have known better. Generally the seat next to the driver is occupied by men and there was a girl sitting there.It sent my antenna quivering but I was too sick to notice. As expected, it turned out to be the driver's girl friend and the auto kept getting stopped now and then, so they both could feed each other pop corn or coo at each other. By the time my stop came I was ready to break my laptop on both their heads.. sigh!!!

More to come...in meanwhile, feel free to add any experiences you might have had travelling.
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3 comments:

RS said...

You seem to watch 30min movies everyday... shot live...

Sanjana said...

If I don't have anything special happening during one of my travel, I start feeling deprived :-)

ArchFULLY said...

OMG...How much good stuff I have missed out in your blog...!!
How are u doing H?