As I relocated from US in late 2007 and settled down in Bangalore, I soon realised that my number of outstation trips would go up as part of my job requirement. From once a month, I began to travel two to three times a month.
Travelling was a challenge initially. But then every uncomfortable situation gives you an opportunity to explore, observe, learn and view the world differently.
My company would rent a car to pick me up or drop me or be available for me as long as I needed. Not having had a great experience earlier with autos and taxis, I would always ask the cab to be available 30 minutes before I actually needed it. But this time, it was different. There was never a time the driver turned up late. They were always there 15 to 30 minutes before the scheduled time.
With so many travels a month, I began to see the life of a driver from a different lens. A driver whose only purpose was to drive me to my destination safely and be available all the time to go anywhere I wanted. Over 95 per cent of the drivers would not talk or open up in a conversation. They are also mandated by companies not to talk on the phone when there is a passenger.
And then one day, as I was returning home from the airport in Bangalore, I saw an accident closely. A pedestrian was knocked down by a speeding cab, which had overtaken a few minutes before. It seemed like the pedestrian had died on the spot. There were a group of people around the scene and the cab which had knocked him down had stopped a few metres away. As I looked in horror, I asked my driver to stop to see if we could help, but he refused. I had a horrible feeling in my stomach, a sense of deep guilt and pain.
I asked him why he refused to stop. And he began to narrate his side of the story. He said, "Sir, a couple of months back, I had a similar experience. After I dropped the victim to a hospital, I had a hard time explaining to my company why I had a blood-soaked car. Lots of insurance issues, not to mention the number of times I had to visit the courts and police station to give testimony. It's not that I don't want to help, but I am just a driver. I can't afford to go through all this."
Within minutes, we saw an ambulance pass by towards the site. I wished and prayed that the pedestrian had survived. This was my first real insight into a driver's life.
Over the next several months, I would come across many drivers and each had a unique story to tell. Almost all of them live in far off places. And when they are done with the duty, sometimes as late as 11 pm, they would drive back to the company, leave the car and take a bus or cycle to go home. Sometimes, if it was too late, they would sleep at the company without going home for several days.
In my last visit to Hyderabad, I had a driver, who looked unusually shabby and like he never had a good night's sleep. When I asked him, he wouldn't say anything. On the third day, when I was about to leave for the airport, I had a different driver. I asked him why my earlier driver suddenly left. He told me his mother had been suffering from a heart ailment and was admitted the same day in a hospital due to an emergency. And he was by her bedside. It also turned out that the second driver too was celebrating his marriage anniversary, by picking me up! I paid him a few extra bucks and sent some for the other driver whom I could not meet.
As I look back, I wonder how little we really care for the world around us. A driver only represents a million such people around us who call for each of us to act with a greater sense of responsibility and duty towards others. It calls for each of us to see the world through others. Like Swami Vivekananda said, "The mistake is that we want to tie the whole world down to our own plane of thought and to make our mind the measure of the whole universe."
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