Netizens of Mumbai unite to beat strike blues

When the real world ties itself up in knots, some choose to untangle it through the Web. This is what happened on Tuesday when social networking site Twitter became ground zero for office goers to form carpools and hitch rides to overcome the auto and taxi strike. The website was buzzing through the day with updates on offers of lifts, along with information about bus numbers and routes.

Arvind Maru, an IT professional from Marol was dreading the bus ride from his home to the railway station. “I left 30 minutes earlier as I expected long queues for buses. When I tweeted about my plight, I got several offers from my followers to form a carpool.
There were three of us on the same route and we shared the expense to reach our workplace,” he said. Interestingly, Maru had never met them before. “It couldn’t have happened at a better time.
Now, we are thinking of carpooling frequently as it is more comfortable than taking a rickshaw.”

Another regular tweeter, Darryl D’Cunha, harnessed tweeple power when he hitched a bike ride with a ‘friend’ he had never met before. “I was ranting about the strike on Twitter since morning. Surprisingly another tweeter who was taking his bike to work offered me a pillion ride,” said the 26-year-old PR executive from Khar.

For those who couldn’t get a ride, advice on bus routes and train routes kept pouring in. “I couldn’t join a carpool, but got plenty of advice on bus routes and frequency of buses plying in the area. It saved me a lot of trouble,” said Rutuja Poojari, an MBA student from Matunga.