The long (short) ride home…

As I stepped into the Sumo for the ride home in the company provided drop facility, I greeted my fellow travelers with joy, as I hadn’t been meeting them regularly. After making sure that all of us were seated comfortably, the driver got in and started the journey with a powerful roar of the engine.

As we sped towards a turn I wished aloud that he would slow down once he tackled the turn in the road. But to my dismay the turn was taken at the same speed, though he did slow down to let us get off and buy some ice cream to cool ourselves off in the dead, still, summer night. After buying our ice creams we stopped at a signal – when the light changed to green our car shot ahead with a gust of speed – trust me if we were traveling vertically, we would have reached the outer layers of the Earth’s atmosphere! We all grabbed onto our seats and wondered what was wrong with the driver. The drive became more of a rollercoaster ride as the driver sped in between rickshaws and other smaller cars, prompting my colleague to say that the driver assumed he was riding a bike rather than navigating a huge car like the Sumo!

As we turned towards the highway, our car almost kissed a truck coming from the other side.. this led us to speculate as to why the driver was in such a hurry!! I wondered aloud if there was some person (read girl) that he was to meet and was in a hurry to drop us off so that he could get the extra 5 mins with her. A colleague of mine, with a naughty smile said, “Well either it is of two things – one that he really, really needs to go to the bathroom to relieve himself or that he is really constipated and his stomach hurts!!” As we joked about the ride home, we noticed that as he approached the roads of south Mumbai he became slightly less rash on the main roads. Hence, it took us by surprise when after dropping a passenger off, he suddenly got taken over by the speed bug and started driving with a vengeance once again!! What was it with narrow streets and speed?? I mean what thrills was he getting in maneuvering the huge car through parked cars, pedestrians and narrow roads??

As we speculated about this strange night and the stranger ride home, another night ride came to my mind. This was also a night drop from office to home, wherein the driver had just come from gaon (out of town) and was driving on Mumbai roads for the first time! We guided him all the way to town and as we were entering south Mumbai, he suddenly realized that he was out of diesel.. We stopped at a petrol pump and after filling the tank, the car suddenly refused to start! The two guys with me along with the driver started pushing the car (on a slope I might add) without much help when a mechanic from the petrol pump walked across to us, opened the bonnet of the car, jiggled a part around and all of a sudden the car worked! As we resumed our journey we suddenly heard the driver murmuring something under his breath, and after every two lines of murmuring he would look at us – this totally creeped us out until one of us asked what the problem was and with a very straight and innocent look the driver confessed that he was praying for good luck as a few streets ago, a black cat had passed the car’s path!!

Though tonight wasn’t as creepy as that night, the driver still kept us on the edge and off our seats with the way he drove. I have reached home safely in one piece and am glad that I am able to write to you about my long (short) ride home and tomorrow someone at the office will hear about the driver!