They are ubiquitous in Mumbai’s fabric. They are as intrinsic to the Mumbai landscape as the Marine Drive, the chowpatty and the Ganesh festival. They are, in a sense, the movers and shakers of this maximum city that keeps running from dawn to dusk in a seemingly eternal cycle. You cannot miss them, you cannot ignore them and, of course, you cannot do without them. They are the taxi-cabs of Mumbai.
While the suburban trains occupy the pride of place in the connectivity media available in Mumbai for obvious reasons (sigh), the yellow-black cabs are your messiahs if you want to avoid the ruthless ecosystem of the local trains, or if you just want to take a leisurely drive with your spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend or someone like that. Traditionally typified by the archaic sedan – the Premier Padmini – the cabs have now partly graduated to more contemporary cousins like the Santro, Alto, Eeco and WagonR. The taxi meters have also found digital alternatives to the “Don’t tech me” Meter-Down blackboxes. However, though the cabs all look similar on the outside, they have a world of their own once you get inside, done up to the whims and fancy of their owners. So, while some are rickety, dusty and have coir fibres bulging through gaping holes in the upholstery, others look like the sets of Tamil movies – gaudy seat covers, fluorescent tubelights, big woofer speakers for the audio system, festoons of all kinds, photos of movestars; I have even come across a cab with a mini chandelier hanging in the middle of the cab! Heady fare, I tell you…
But more interesting and intriguing than the cabs themselves are the characters that drive these cabs. As Saif Khan explained in “Hum Tum”, every time you hail a cab your life intertwines with that of the driver’s for a brief interval of time. And, if you look closely, each driver has a story to tell – verbally or otherwise. Some drivers are diffident woody characters who wouldn’t do anything else except drive the cab and telling you how much to pay at the end. Some are on the other end of the spectrum, humming songs, picking up stray bits of conversation now and then, whether you like it or not (it goes like, “Arre sahab, aapka shirt ekdum rapchick hai, aap fashion street se liya hoenga, udhar sab mast maal milta hai…”) and inciting the mothers and sisters of every driver who dares to overtake them. Most of the drivers are from the part of India the Shiv Sena hates, and you can make that out from the typical slow, deliberate, musical accent they speak in.
The cab drivers have a tough life in many respects, spending about 18 hours a day sitting cramped behind the wheel, driving around people of all types to all corners of the city, through traffic, heat and sweat, all for a loaf of bread. All this hardship often finds expression in the personality of the cab drivers. There’ll be old men who’d tell you all about their exploitative owner and his antics, even though you didn’t ask. There’ll be policy makers who’ll tell you all the places the government needs to build flyovers or diversions urgently (and they’ll be right most of the time). There’ll be haggard fellows who’ll recount all the routes they had driven to on that particular day, cursing the Gujarati who left without paying the full fare and the cop who fined him for driving without a seatbelt. Then there’ll be men with flowing beards & skullcaps who’ll rue the fact that Mumbai is now ghettoized and far-removed from communal harmony. Some’ll have a flair for the language, and when asked, “arre bhaiya Thane chaloge?” will reply with, “arre sahab aap margdarshan karenge to chaand par bhi chale jayenge”. One particular man, on coming to know that I had lived in his hometown Varanasi, treated me to a cutting-chaai and omellette paav and said he missed home in this unforgiving city. The kaleidoscope is endless, and you do get to know Mumbai better through the eyes of these people.
Well, I am sure that if you are a Mumbaikar or have visited Mumbai, you would have taken a ride on one of these taxi-cabs. And if you have, you have a high probability of having a colourful memory of the ride. After all, Mumbai wouldn’t be the same without these yellow-black sentinels, ready to take you to your destination like Aladin’s carpet with a clink of the meter.
