The adventure called “going to office”

So, of the many ways available to go to office every morning, I use the cycle rickshaw. Why so? Some of you may wonder, while making mental notes about bringing it up with me the next time I put lecture on cruelty against animals due to animal carts and retort with “Technically speaking, man is also an animal and you use cycle rickshaw. You Cruel Hypocritical Monster!!!” Yes – I know - It is not a pretty sight.

But coming back to - “why so?”, the answer, apart from the fact that I want to feel like Pierce Bronsan in the Visa ad, is that – my office is in Gurgaon. The other available means of transport are walking and driving to office. The six wheeled dugdugi, thankfully, does not ply on my office road. I do not walk to office since I do not have a particularly great brown wardrobe to compliment my brown shoes and brown hair (shoes of any colour would end up brown if you walk in Gurgaon at the time junta drives to office. The same applies to hair) and so I choose this option only for going back home.

I do not drive because

1. Too much traffic and cycle rickshaws are clearly faster than cars – especially on footpaths and sideways.

2. Since spending quality time inside a car with yourself while head banging to the Punjabi songs with English lyrics on Delhi FM stations and looking around at assorted junta in larger assortments of cars doing the same is bad enough; repeating the same exercise again in the basement parking would be, well, worse.

3. And, slightly more pertinently, I don’t have a car.

This is how the action begins – I find an empty rickshaw guy who is lazing around and tell him “Cyber Green”. He then stares back at me as if nothing has happened. In the beginning I repeated the destination giving him more details about where exactly I need to go, thinking that he has not heard it, but I was mistaken. While gazing blankly at you, he is computing the shortest path to your destination from where ever you are. The shortest path, is literally - the shortest path. It is the straight line joining where you are now to where you want to go. Sometimes, this path includes a part of a real road – but that is purely a coincidence. And some more times, it includes a large part of a real road which is a one way with the general direction of traffic being in your opposite direction. Such as this –

and -















But these are only minor inconveniences, and are thwarted away by the rickshaw walla with the same practiced ease a teetotaler, such as myself, would thwart the possible choice of drinks a waiter at watering hole would suggest - “Yes, in that case – One fresh lime soda sweet and salt with extra sweet please”. A “One Way” in Gurgaon is almost like a feel good thing for the rickshaw guys, not really a rule.

But there are rules the rickshaw wallas do follow – such as “If the space between two cars is sufficiently large for the front tire to squeeze through, the remainder of the rickshaw will follow” – well it may not sound like a rule to you, didn’t to me either – but given the way its followed, it made me to believe that must be one. Another important one - “He who shouts loudest has the right of way, unless of course, “he” is one of the many friendly neighbourhood bulls generally chilling out on the highway like “he” does during most peak traffic hours – in which case “he” ( as in the bull ) *always* has right of way”. And many more of which I am sure to find out during my stay here in Gurgaon.

One of the best things about Rickshaws, which I forgot to mention till now, is that it makes many people’s dreams come true. Ok, I am exaggerating a bit there, may not be many people – but it did make Mihir’s dream come true – at least a small part of it. My dear colleague and flat mate had always wanted to be a terrorist. After doing an MBA, he realized that it did not score very highly as a career option. So he became a Sales and Marketing guy. But the little child in him was very dejected because he didn’t end up as a terrorist (just like the little child in me is dejected because I didn’t end up as the opening bowler, batsmen and best one day captain India ever produced who takes India to 4 World Cup wins, 3 of them against Australia - but that’s a different story altogether). That’s until he came to Gurgaon and discovered the rickshaws. He realized that if he used them to work everyday, given the pollution, dust, etc - he could dress up like the terrorist he always wanted to be, and not be mistaken for a real one.

One of these days, he tells me, he will be buying one of those real looking AK – 47s. The rickshaw guys should really get some PR done to highlight these efforts – they are otherwise mistaken by most junta as guys who ferry fellow junta from one place to another.