Taxi,Taxi!

It was heartening to read in the press that our very own Ambassador was voted the best taxi in the world. Over the years, I have travelled in taxis in several countries right from a Maruti 800 to an obscenely ostentatious Lincoln stretch limo. The experience varied from place to place.

I love getting in to conversation with taxi drivers. Unfortunately, my pseudo "Burra Sahib” ego stops me from sitting in the front passenger seat. However, this does not prevent me from holding unfettered discussions with the cabbie. I suppose that being cooped up in the front seat the whole day, the driver also craves for some banter.

Taxi drivers in Singapore do not encourage idle gossip. The distances are short and they are already looking for the next passenger. They return your change exactly and are on their way. So is the average London cab driver. He is polite but the way the taxi is designed, there is no way one can have a proper dialogue. The private taxis in the UK are slightly different from the London cabs. On my first visit, there was this smart guy in a black suit with a board with my name. I presumed that he was a senior executive or the owner of the taxi company. I later found out that this was the standard uniform for these drivers.

The China cabs are a bit funny. The driver sits inside a fibreglass cage. I was quite puzzled until I was told that it was to protect the driver from a possible car-jack. Apart from this, of course, is the language barrier. At the airport, they help you with a diagram to your destination that you hand over to the driver. So, until the destination there is no conversation.

In the US, things are a bit different. It is not in every city that you get a proper city cab. New York is a good example to chat with drivers as they are invariably from the Punjab (it does not matter from which side of the border).I have had a tête-à-tête in my poor Hindi about Bollywood films, the popular stars and their personal lives.

In Detroit, I had a Pakistani driver. He was a qualified doctor from a proper medical college in Lahore. His was an arranged marriage with a US citizen and so relocated. Poor guy could not practice in his new country. He revealed to me that unlike Asian doctors, the US medics would never come to a quick diagnosis, in spite of clear symptoms, for fear of medical malpractice suits. There were times when the local doctors consulted him for his opinion.

However, in India itself there are varieties of taxis. The most “dented-but-not -painted” ones are in Kolkata. In the seventies right in Park Street, my driver parked his car, got out and joined a morcha that was passing by. I looked silly sitting in the back seat not knowing when I would reach my destination.

One danger of becoming too familiar with the cabbie is that you end up being morally bound to be generous with the tip. Nevertheless, that is a small price to pay in return for some verbal stimulation.