THE CAB DRIVER
THE CAB DRIVER
It was Friday. The clock had struck 7pm. That was the time to go to the basement of our office building and take the cab allocated to you. I loved my company for many reasons and this was one of the top three reasons. My company, “Premier Global Services (PGS)” provided cab service for all the employees, no matter how far they lived from the office. It was a blessing and far more than a perk, as it was crazy to drive or ride through the traffic crammed roads of the city to reach your destination.
So I along with Milind and Amit came downstairs and started searching for our cab. Every Friday a different cab was allocated to the employees, in order to have a rotation for all the cab drivers. We could locate the cab in the far left hand side of the basement. We reached the cab, opened the doors. The driver was sitting inside. Amit and I took the backseat and Milind took the front seat near the driver. The driver was polite enough to greet us. “Good Evening!” “What’s your name?” Milind asked. “Raghunath”, he said. It was good to know his name and we had a short conversation with him. Then we got engaged in our conversations. The cab started and began inching to move out of the basement onto the main road. There were about fifty odd cabs doing the same. Finally our cab hit the main road, but still in the IT park campus, and started moving towards the ‘Exit no 3’. To reach this exit we had to go all the way behind the residential township and exit the gate number three. There was no security beyond this point and the road narrowed down further until it hit the main road junction. Very few cabs would exit this route.
Milind, Amit and I were having a fun conversation about our manager Shreedharan and how he was bowled by the question asked by the junior developer. It was really amusing to watch Shreedharan’s face. We all had a hearty laugh on it and just then the brakes screeched and the cab came to a halt with a huge jerk. We all went into the ping-pong motion for a while and then got back in control of ourselves. Amit and I were safe at the back. Thankfully Milind had worn the seat belt and was unhurt. Raghunath was safe, but his face was nervous and his eyes were wide open. He was sweating profusely. We thought he went into a shock state. We looked out through the windshield and couldn’t believe our eyes. A ‘Scorpio jeep’ had overtaken us and crossed our path forcing our cab to stop. It was just like a movie scene. We all were scared at that point. A tall, hefty, middle aged guy got down from the jeep and started walking towards our cab. “Who is he? What’s happening?” yelled Amit. But there was no response as all were in awe. I am not sure if anyone even heard the question. By then the guy had reached our cab.
He went on to the driver side and knocked on the driver side window. Raghunath definitely didn’t want to open the window. But the knocking became rigorous. The guy was also shouting something, most probably must be abusing. I shook Raghunath and asked him to open the window. Raghunath gathered some courage and opened the window. We could hear clearly now that guy was very upset and abusing Raghunath. He asked Raghunath to step out of the car. Raghunath did unwillingly. As he did so, the guy asked him, “Are you Raghunath Chowdhari from Mulshi?” As soon as Raghunath nodded and gave a mumbling reply, the guy gave a tight slap on Raghunath’s cheek and caught him by his collar. “I have been calling you the whole day today and you have conveniently switched off your phone! Do you think you are smart and can get away from me?” By then the three of us were watching it like a movie and we realized that Raghunath is in deep trouble and possibly because of him we might also get into some kind of trouble. We all gathered some courage and since Milind was on the front seat urged him to ask what the matter is. Milind gave us a look indicating that we two were making him a scapegoat. He bent a little and inched forward and asked in a weak voice, “What is the issue?” and immediately retracted to his original position. We were unsure, as to what would be the consequence of asking this question. But to our surprise the guy stepped in the window frame, leaned a little on the edge of the window, peeping a little and very politely and in fluent English language said to us, “Sir, we are very sorry for the inconvenience that is caused to you. But please do not worry. I assure you that there will be no harm done to you.” That sounded very assuring and we relaxed a bit. He continued to speak. “My name is Vishwanath Shetty. I have my own collection agency and we work privately for banks and financial agencies to help them collect the pending installments on the loans, availed by the customers. We do it only for customers who have defaulted the payments. So Raghunath had taken an auto loan for this cab and has missed paying the installments for the past two months. The bank tried their way of having conversations with Raghunath and making him understand the consequences. Every time Raghunath gave false assurances to the bank. That is why this case has been handed over to our agency. My men spoke to him a week back and he had promised to make the payments today. But since morning I must have made more than thirty calls and he has switched off his mobile. Today when I learned that I will be able to grab him here, I had to take this drastic step. Once again I am sorry, but as you can understand I am only doing my job.”
Well we patiently listened to him, as if there was any option. “Ok, we understand. But what do we do now?” asked Amit. Shetty said, “Sir, you can come out of the cab and leave. We will take care of things.” That didn’t sound quite promising. We were pretty sure that they will beat up Raghunath bad after we leave. Poor Raghunath was badly trapped in the situation. Just then Raghunath, with tears rolling down his cheek and a blubbering voice pleaded, “Sir, please don’t do that. If I don’t drop these employees to their home, I will lose my contract with the company. I will lose an opportunity to make money and return your dues. Please Sir, please understand my condition. I have not deliberately missed on the payments. My elder brother met with an accident and was hospitalized for a month. I had to use the money for his treatment. Hence missed on paying. Please Sir!! Please understand. I will return your money. But now I need to drop them to their home. Please let me go.”
Shetty was not at all moved by this story as he would be listening to thousands of such stories every day. He was not sure if it would be possible to trace Raghunath again, if he lets him go now. He thought for a while and said, “Raghu, I don’t care what your story is. I need my money as promised, today itself. But I also understand that in order to retain your job you would have to complete your task. So let’s do one thing. You do your job, drop the three of them to their respective homes. My car will follow you until you are done and then we will take the discussion further. Also I don’t trust you. So one of my men will be seated in your cab all the while till you finish your job. He will ensure that you don’t try to play any games with us. Understand! Good!” Shetty signaled one of the guys from the jeep to come over. The guy came running. Then Shetty again came back to us and taking the same posture said, “Sir, we have decided that we will not leave you stranded here. So Raghu will drop you to your respective home. Now since we have shown so much of consideration, I would also need a favor from you.” We again got a bit tense. “I will have one of my guys, sitting in the cab along with you, just to keep an eye on Raghu.
But don’t worry, he will not bother you. You can relax and go home. Is that alright?” The three of us looked at each other and gestured that it was alright. Shetty must have laughed in his head at this point about us really thinking that we had an option then.
Immediately the guy came near the rear door of the cab. Opened it. Implied that we scoot in. We did. Raghu got back behind the steering wheel. His face was all muddle up. Shetty went back to his jeep and sat near the driver. The ignition was turned on. Shetty, like a traffic cop, asked Raghu to come forward and move on. We hit the main road. Raghu was catching up on speed, adjusting the rear view mirror to spot the jeep. He started to look a little composed. We were on our way. The traffic was as usual heavy but moving. Friday night had put some load on the roads.
There was an awkward silence in the cab. Only a few looks were getting exchanged between Amit, Milind and me. The guy who sat next to me was poker faced. It seems he was only following the orders. I was thinking about what would be going on in Raghunath’s head? What would he be thinking? For us, at least the story would be ending with us going home safe and sound, hopefully! But how would it end for Raghunath? He would be so scared right now. It was quite evident that Raghunath was driving the car mechanically and his head occupied with so many thoughts. There was indeed an awkward silence in the cab. I am sure so many thoughts would be running in Amit and Milind’s mind as well. We were riding in the cab like an inert gas, colorless, odorless, and tasteless.
The signal was bright red. We were the first car at the signal, behind the zebra crossing. The signal turned orange and then green. As soon as it turned green, Raghunath went full throttle and raced through. He went for about a mile and took a sharp turn inside a building on the way. The tires made a shrieking sound this time and we all once again felt like being whisked inside a cocktail shaker. There was a lot of honking from the cars coming from behind. It was so sudden I am sure the car drivers would have gone into shock. We could hear the brakes hitting, tires squealing. And before we could understand what’s happening, swiftly in a moment Raghunath opened the door and rushed inside the building. The guy sitting next to use tried yelling and shouting during this stint but all in vain. As Raghunath ran away, the guy next to me also opened the door. For a while I thought we would be witnessing some chase now. But to our astonishment, the guy ran in the opposite direction of the building outside the gate. We were highly perplexed at this moment. Why would this guy who was supposed to watch Raghunath run away from him? The jeep that was following our cab also stopped outside the gate. I could see Shetty from the side mirror. But none of them stepped down from the jeep. All this was quite contrary to what had happened earlier. Nothing made sense. We decided to step out to check out what is happening. All three of us stepped out and we looked at the building. Oh my God!! It all started making sense now. Raghunath had very smartly pulled his cab into a police station. He had rushed into the police station as that was the safest place for him at that point. Shetty’s jeep crossed the gate and carried on with its drive. A police station is not a good place to be, we realized. We took our laptop bags from the cab and stepped out of the police station. We decided to take separate modes of transport to reach home. I called for another cab and got inside it. Amit and Milind had left by then. I started thinking to myself, what was that. Was that a movie I saw or a real life experience I had?
© - Rahul Shinde 02/JUN/2020
It was Friday. The clock had struck 7pm. That was the time to go to the basement of our office building and take the cab allocated to you. I loved my company for many reasons and this was one of the top three reasons. My company, “Premier Global Services (PGS)” provided cab service for all the employees, no matter how far they lived from the office. It was a blessing and far more than a perk, as it was crazy to drive or ride through the traffic crammed roads of the city to reach your destination.
So I along with Milind and Amit came downstairs and started searching for our cab. Every Friday a different cab was allocated to the employees, in order to have a rotation for all the cab drivers. We could locate the cab in the far left hand side of the basement. We reached the cab, opened the doors. The driver was sitting inside. Amit and I took the backseat and Milind took the front seat near the driver. The driver was polite enough to greet us. “Good Evening!” “What’s your name?” Milind asked. “Raghunath”, he said. It was good to know his name and we had a short conversation with him. Then we got engaged in our conversations. The cab started and began inching to move out of the basement onto the main road. There were about fifty odd cabs doing the same. Finally our cab hit the main road, but still in the IT park campus, and started moving towards the ‘Exit no 3’. To reach this exit we had to go all the way behind the residential township and exit the gate number three. There was no security beyond this point and the road narrowed down further until it hit the main road junction. Very few cabs would exit this route.
Milind, Amit and I were having a fun conversation about our manager Shreedharan and how he was bowled by the question asked by the junior developer. It was really amusing to watch Shreedharan’s face. We all had a hearty laugh on it and just then the brakes screeched and the cab came to a halt with a huge jerk. We all went into the ping-pong motion for a while and then got back in control of ourselves. Amit and I were safe at the back. Thankfully Milind had worn the seat belt and was unhurt. Raghunath was safe, but his face was nervous and his eyes were wide open. He was sweating profusely. We thought he went into a shock state. We looked out through the windshield and couldn’t believe our eyes. A ‘Scorpio jeep’ had overtaken us and crossed our path forcing our cab to stop. It was just like a movie scene. We all were scared at that point. A tall, hefty, middle aged guy got down from the jeep and started walking towards our cab. “Who is he? What’s happening?” yelled Amit. But there was no response as all were in awe. I am not sure if anyone even heard the question. By then the guy had reached our cab.
He went on to the driver side and knocked on the driver side window. Raghunath definitely didn’t want to open the window. But the knocking became rigorous. The guy was also shouting something, most probably must be abusing. I shook Raghunath and asked him to open the window. Raghunath gathered some courage and opened the window. We could hear clearly now that guy was very upset and abusing Raghunath. He asked Raghunath to step out of the car. Raghunath did unwillingly. As he did so, the guy asked him, “Are you Raghunath Chowdhari from Mulshi?” As soon as Raghunath nodded and gave a mumbling reply, the guy gave a tight slap on Raghunath’s cheek and caught him by his collar. “I have been calling you the whole day today and you have conveniently switched off your phone! Do you think you are smart and can get away from me?” By then the three of us were watching it like a movie and we realized that Raghunath is in deep trouble and possibly because of him we might also get into some kind of trouble. We all gathered some courage and since Milind was on the front seat urged him to ask what the matter is. Milind gave us a look indicating that we two were making him a scapegoat. He bent a little and inched forward and asked in a weak voice, “What is the issue?” and immediately retracted to his original position. We were unsure, as to what would be the consequence of asking this question. But to our surprise the guy stepped in the window frame, leaned a little on the edge of the window, peeping a little and very politely and in fluent English language said to us, “Sir, we are very sorry for the inconvenience that is caused to you. But please do not worry. I assure you that there will be no harm done to you.” That sounded very assuring and we relaxed a bit. He continued to speak. “My name is Vishwanath Shetty. I have my own collection agency and we work privately for banks and financial agencies to help them collect the pending installments on the loans, availed by the customers. We do it only for customers who have defaulted the payments. So Raghunath had taken an auto loan for this cab and has missed paying the installments for the past two months. The bank tried their way of having conversations with Raghunath and making him understand the consequences. Every time Raghunath gave false assurances to the bank. That is why this case has been handed over to our agency. My men spoke to him a week back and he had promised to make the payments today. But since morning I must have made more than thirty calls and he has switched off his mobile. Today when I learned that I will be able to grab him here, I had to take this drastic step. Once again I am sorry, but as you can understand I am only doing my job.”
Well we patiently listened to him, as if there was any option. “Ok, we understand. But what do we do now?” asked Amit. Shetty said, “Sir, you can come out of the cab and leave. We will take care of things.” That didn’t sound quite promising. We were pretty sure that they will beat up Raghunath bad after we leave. Poor Raghunath was badly trapped in the situation. Just then Raghunath, with tears rolling down his cheek and a blubbering voice pleaded, “Sir, please don’t do that. If I don’t drop these employees to their home, I will lose my contract with the company. I will lose an opportunity to make money and return your dues. Please Sir, please understand my condition. I have not deliberately missed on the payments. My elder brother met with an accident and was hospitalized for a month. I had to use the money for his treatment. Hence missed on paying. Please Sir!! Please understand. I will return your money. But now I need to drop them to their home. Please let me go.”
Shetty was not at all moved by this story as he would be listening to thousands of such stories every day. He was not sure if it would be possible to trace Raghunath again, if he lets him go now. He thought for a while and said, “Raghu, I don’t care what your story is. I need my money as promised, today itself. But I also understand that in order to retain your job you would have to complete your task. So let’s do one thing. You do your job, drop the three of them to their respective homes. My car will follow you until you are done and then we will take the discussion further. Also I don’t trust you. So one of my men will be seated in your cab all the while till you finish your job. He will ensure that you don’t try to play any games with us. Understand! Good!” Shetty signaled one of the guys from the jeep to come over. The guy came running. Then Shetty again came back to us and taking the same posture said, “Sir, we have decided that we will not leave you stranded here. So Raghu will drop you to your respective home. Now since we have shown so much of consideration, I would also need a favor from you.” We again got a bit tense. “I will have one of my guys, sitting in the cab along with you, just to keep an eye on Raghu.
But don’t worry, he will not bother you. You can relax and go home. Is that alright?” The three of us looked at each other and gestured that it was alright. Shetty must have laughed in his head at this point about us really thinking that we had an option then.
Immediately the guy came near the rear door of the cab. Opened it. Implied that we scoot in. We did. Raghu got back behind the steering wheel. His face was all muddle up. Shetty went back to his jeep and sat near the driver. The ignition was turned on. Shetty, like a traffic cop, asked Raghu to come forward and move on. We hit the main road. Raghu was catching up on speed, adjusting the rear view mirror to spot the jeep. He started to look a little composed. We were on our way. The traffic was as usual heavy but moving. Friday night had put some load on the roads.
There was an awkward silence in the cab. Only a few looks were getting exchanged between Amit, Milind and me. The guy who sat next to me was poker faced. It seems he was only following the orders. I was thinking about what would be going on in Raghunath’s head? What would he be thinking? For us, at least the story would be ending with us going home safe and sound, hopefully! But how would it end for Raghunath? He would be so scared right now. It was quite evident that Raghunath was driving the car mechanically and his head occupied with so many thoughts. There was indeed an awkward silence in the cab. I am sure so many thoughts would be running in Amit and Milind’s mind as well. We were riding in the cab like an inert gas, colorless, odorless, and tasteless.
The signal was bright red. We were the first car at the signal, behind the zebra crossing. The signal turned orange and then green. As soon as it turned green, Raghunath went full throttle and raced through. He went for about a mile and took a sharp turn inside a building on the way. The tires made a shrieking sound this time and we all once again felt like being whisked inside a cocktail shaker. There was a lot of honking from the cars coming from behind. It was so sudden I am sure the car drivers would have gone into shock. We could hear the brakes hitting, tires squealing. And before we could understand what’s happening, swiftly in a moment Raghunath opened the door and rushed inside the building. The guy sitting next to use tried yelling and shouting during this stint but all in vain. As Raghunath ran away, the guy next to me also opened the door. For a while I thought we would be witnessing some chase now. But to our astonishment, the guy ran in the opposite direction of the building outside the gate. We were highly perplexed at this moment. Why would this guy who was supposed to watch Raghunath run away from him? The jeep that was following our cab also stopped outside the gate. I could see Shetty from the side mirror. But none of them stepped down from the jeep. All this was quite contrary to what had happened earlier. Nothing made sense. We decided to step out to check out what is happening. All three of us stepped out and we looked at the building. Oh my God!! It all started making sense now. Raghunath had very smartly pulled his cab into a police station. He had rushed into the police station as that was the safest place for him at that point. Shetty’s jeep crossed the gate and carried on with its drive. A police station is not a good place to be, we realized. We took our laptop bags from the cab and stepped out of the police station. We decided to take separate modes of transport to reach home. I called for another cab and got inside it. Amit and Milind had left by then. I started thinking to myself, what was that. Was that a movie I saw or a real life experience I had?
What a brilliant presence of mind! I started questioning myself, is this something that I would have thought of in such a dire situation? Would I have been able to gather myself back so soon and think of resolution? For me Raghunath was the hero for that evening. It was so easy for him to give up. I had given up so easily so many times in my life earlier. It was so damn easy! Raghunath had taught me a wonderful lesson that evening. There is always one potential solution unexplored, before you give up. My cab stopped. My destination arrived. I got down from the cab, thanked the driver, took my bag and kept repeating to myself on the way, “Explore the possibilities! Explore the possibilities!”
© - Rahul Shinde 02/JUN/2020
Explore possibilities..! Amazing 👌
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