Oh to be a driver !!!

Oh to be a Driver !!!!

One tribe I love with my whole heart is that of Drivers, professional drivers. Be it a cab driver, Chauffer, Taxi driver they are a breed apart. They are admired by all and sundry because of long hours they put in staying away from family and friends. That is probably the only reason even lord Krishna chose to be a charioteer for Arjun in Mahabharat !

Whenever I hire a taxi, anywhere in the world, I try to raise a conversation with the driver. This apart from helping me o develop the much needed rapport helps me to send my time usefully during the drive to elicit necessary information about local gossip, political trend, news about all & sundry, at times even tips on local stock market !

We were on a conducted tour in KL, Malaysia a few years back. The driver of the minivan acted as a tourist guide. That was the time Don staring Sharukh Khan was released. After initial warming up our driver cum guide had all of us bursting with laughter giving snippets of his encounter with Sharukh & Priyanka Chopra. We got to the brands cigarettes smoked by them and what not !

I was working with a MNC head quartered in Mumbai. The Managing Director of the company was driven around in a Toyota Corolla those days. The joke in the Head Office was after the MD the next powerful man in the organization chart was the Driver of his car as he knew more about the company than any Vice President et. al.

I was sometime back constrained to travel too frequently to Ahmadabad in Gujarat from Hyderabad. As a unit was coming up for our company the travel was inevitable. Mostly I used to take the early morning flight from Hyderabad. To make the pick-up and drop a routine regular activity I had tied up with a local cab operator. He was very resourceful person and call him at anytime he was around to reach you in ten fifteen minutes maximum.

The interesting thing with him was he used to give juicy gossip every time you take a ride in his taxi. Once he was cursing loudly the evils of modern life style related denigration in social values etc. As he was only in his thirties then I told him in chase Hyderabadi what was wrong with him and how come he aged so fast in a span of two or three weeks as only the previous week I had used his taxi. He told me that only a few days back he was hired by a middle aged woman from the airport. As he was entering the city to drop her in to the hotel where she was supposed to check in she asked him about the availability of drugs in Hyderabad and if he was in the knowledge of any reliable supplier.

Our friend lost his breathing and quickly disposed he off at the hotel and refused to entertain her phones the next day stating that he was busy and tied up !!

The height of best driver I have ever had was this one from Ahmadabad. This gentle man was sent through our regular car hire. He was on time to pick me up from the hotel. He was driving as if the road was his private property cursing two wheeler drivers, pedestrians, fellow car drivers in his choicest cuss words. I had to make him to stop the car and give him a piece of my mind.

He then reduced his curses but was driving at break neck speed. Then on the way to thaw the ice he was interviewing me about my background, professional experiences, mission of the trip etc. Then I asked him politely whether he was playing the role of Human Resource Manager part time in some company. He burst into laughter and told me indeed he was a human resource personnel who got retrenched from a big power supplier in Gandhinagar.     

Then he started narrating his life story. Where he studied , when he got married, number of children etc. By then we reached the factory. On seeing the crowd of personnel hanging for interview he became a HR Manager again. He told me he would short list the candidates according to age, experience, domicile etc. and send short listed candidates for the final interview by me. Thus my days job became all the more simple, but in order to be sure I had to ask the chosen / short listed candidates whether any money exchanged hands !!!