Monday, November 06, 2006

Failure to communicate … again!


This time it was the auto rickshaw driver. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, an auto rickshaw is a small, light weight vehicle that is used as a taxi in India. It is a 3-wheeler that is an extremely convenient mode of transportation. Most of these vehicles are being converted to use CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) and hence are eco-friendly. Here’s what one of them looks like this:





If you are interested in learning more about these lovable machines, you can read more about them here.

I set out for work yesterday morning and decided to take an auto rickshaw to work. The driver misunderstood the destination (I said “Lavelle Road” and he heard …. Actually I am not sure what he heard). He took a different route than the one I was used to taking every day. The traffic on MG Road (my usual route) is terrible between 9AM and 10AM. So I assumed that this driver had a better alternate route to the office. Plus the driver was busy listening to music on his MP3 player and seemed to know where he was going. After about 30 minutes, I realized that we were not heading anywhere close to the office and stopped him for clarification. This is when we discovered the little misunderstanding regarding my destination. He literally had to make a U-turn, navigate his way through heavy traffic and return to the original route. It took an hour for us to get back close to the office!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

HI

Anonymous said...

Hi dad
This blog was really funny. You should write a book. I t took you one hour and thirty minutes to get to your office. That is a really long time. I hope you don't have any more misunderstandings.

Love from your dearest daughter,
Ayaana

John Gerard Sapodilla said...

we have this kind of drivers in Italy too. They are called pilfer-taxi