Let’s Talk about the Cab drivers of Hyderabad #22

There are many people who rely on Uber/Ola for going to office, short trips etc.

In my home town I used to take public transport only. It’s cheap and I have grown up travelling in bus and train. But after coming to a new city, I found that people use cabs more often. Particularly in this part of Hyderabad I see mainly 3 things to rule the highway: autos, bikes and cabs/private cars. Now I don’t need to tell you about the app or the varieties of services from which you need to choose one. Though you are privileged to choose from a wide variety of services, one thing you can not choose for your ride-that is the driver. Yes, this post is dedicated to some of the types of cab drivers I have come across.

#1 Chatter-box drivers!
This is the kind of cab drivers who like to have a chat with the passenger. A warm greeting or asking 1 or 2 questions is fine for me.

But they will not stop asking just 1 or 2 questions. They will keep on asking questions about your life for the whole time.
-Hello! How are you?
-So are you from here?
-Where are you from?
-How’s the weather there?
-How many people are there in your family?
-Where do you work?
-How much (salary) do you get?
-How far have you studied?
-Is it possible to work in two companies at the same time?
-What’s your plan for future?
And the list goes on. This person doesn’t understand that maybe I want to just relax now. He is completely unaware of the fact that he’s securing his place in hell for talking to me while I’m trying to listen to my favorite track. He doesn’t understand that I may not be comfortable to discuss my family with a stranger guy whom I barely know.

#2 Overly committed to GPS
This is the kind of drivers who will not let you to get off the cab because you can see your destination quite close. Rather they will take a round trip including the whole world to reach the same place again following the GPS. They can drive you into the water claiming that GPS told them to do so.
Me: Isn’t it the same location we were one hour ago.
Him: No madam, I followed GPS.

#3 Beyond my understanding
These are the people for whom I am leaving it to you to decide their precise category name. For this I’m telling one experience of mine. I was travelling with 2 of my colleagues by cab. For all of us drop locations were different. As there was only one route that would cover all of the drop locations we asked our driver to follow that. But he simply deny to do that because GPS wanted to drop only two of us and ignore the rest. He had difficulty in communicating in Hindi or English so we insisted our Telugu colleague to be the mediator. In nutshell this is the conversation they had.

My colleague: Why are you not taking the right turn? One of us needs to get off in that route.
He: But GPS is showing U turn.
My colleague: Then where is she (me) supposed to get off, as you did not take that right turn?
He: See madam, father books cab for his daughter. Now if he finds that driver is not following GPS he’ll send the driver to jail.
My colleague: … but we booked cab for ourselves. If we tell you to take a particular route why would you not take that? After all we are paying for our ride!
He: But GPS showed U-turn.
My colleague: *face palm*

Finally, I had to walk 20 minutes to get back to home.
Probably the driver didn’t have any ill intention and just wanted to be “safe”.
#4 Confused and lost
They are the people who don’t understand the importance of GPS to the track the location of customer. They will keep on roaming here and there and insist you to come to their location.

He: Madam, I have reached Amazon rainforest. Can you please come?
Me: Yeah, sure. Wait.

#5 The best of all
This is the kind of driver, who will drop you to your destination without giving you any headache. You can sit back and relax.
As a final note, I must admit that I am incredibly grateful to all the hardworking and sincere cab drivers. And I’m pretty sure these characteristics are not specific or limited to the city of Hyderabad…
Check my next post by clicking here… Thanks for reading! 🙂