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ShareForget the keys to a city its mayor might give you: a loquacious taxi driver can take you to the symbolic heart of a city. Get you to hear its heartbeat at any rate. Think of it this way. For a taxiwallah ferrying a Bollywood-struck star-aspirant from Jharkhand or a socialite of Malabar Hill whose driver has done an AWOL -- not to forget putting his meter down for a chhota don or two -- is all in a day's work.
It was the day before the elections. The minute I got into the taxi on Warden Road, the young man from Jharkhand began to vent his anger about the "harami" policemen who were stopping any taxi driver who was chewing something. They were apparently on the lookout for gutkha-or-tobacco-chewing drivers. Our man was pulled aside, and the policeman started writing out a challan without even bothering to ask him to open his mouth, which incidentally contained remnants of a glucose biscuit.
From this point on to Colaba, the man from Jharkhand waxed eloquent about the relationship between the police and taxi drivers in Mumbai. The bhaiyas from North India who man most of the black and yellow cabs in the city are not exactly favourites of the city's traffic cops. It was the old outsider versus son-of-the-soil thing.
We all know this. But what took me by surprise was his lucid analysis of the exact nature of the precarious balance between the police (a large majority of them Maharashtrian) and the men from UP and Bihar. The bullying is reserved for them. According to him the traffic police only fear the Parsis and the Sikhs.
"Dekho, there are two kinds of people they are wary about: Parsis and Sikhs." (He clarifies that he is referring to Parsi drivers of private cars and Parsi passengers.) "The Parsis are kanooni -- they will apologise if they are wrong or take you to court. They won't let go if they feel they are in the right." As for the Sikhs: their muscle-and-shouting-power is deterrent enough.
My cabbie relates an incident to illustrate this: "Many of us were parked on the Western Highway. The police arrived and started challaning them. The sardarji next to me told me to stick close to him. When the policeman reached us he saw the sardarji and waved him away. He then looked at my licence, thought for moment and then let me off as well. Luckily, my name is Santosh Singh."
Since the traffic was dense, the journey to Colaba took quite long, and given the fact that this was the day before Mumbai went to the polls, my cabbie started a lecture on the power of the non-vote. A few years ago the mukhiya of his village in Jharkhand had decreed that not a single person would vote. Fed up of politicians who perennially promised the world and delivered nothing he had decided that they would all boycott the elections.
Alarmed by this symbolic rejection of the electoral system, local politicians promised the mukhiya that the demands of his village would be met the next time. He relented, but with a threat: If they did not get a rail line and a road they would send the elected politician "upstairs" -- to the other world.
The entire village turned out to vote. And sure enough the road and the railway line materialised. Nor did the elected politico lose his head -- yet. The words of the cabbie keep playing out in my head as I now head out to vote: I can't allow laziness and the harsh Delhi sun to prevent me from exercising my right.
Ah, my talkative taxi driver has proved, once again, that Singh is king.
