Change

of residence from the city that bakes you crisp to the city of baked beans.

Lost in the move – my grandmom’s dosai tiruppi.

And lots of my patience.

Anyhow, hope this city treats me better during this sojourn. And may be this change will be the precursor to the change I am craving inside me.

Demand and supply

This morning I landed at the Chennai Central station at a very early hour. I had travelled alone and was planning to take a pre-paid auto. There were enough people disembarking from the train, so I wasn’t too worried about the darkness.

I went to the pre-paid auto counter and was glad to find a long queue in front of it! There didn’t seem to be too many autos at the stand, but still people were waiting in the queue. May be because it was too early in the morning, people didn’t go looking for other options.

Still there were a few auto drivers who tried luring away passengers from the queue for arbitrary fares. As everyone knows, Chennai auto drivers are notorious for their arbitrary demands and rudeness. So even in my groggy state, I felt glad that many people didn’t budge and awaited their turn to get in to the designated auto.

The auto drivers were creating an artificial scarcity, so to speak. For every few passengers in the line, there would be one lone auto waiting in the stand. You only had to walk a few steps away from the designated ‘prepaid stand’ area to find a long line of autos awaiting helpless passengers – sleepy and saddled with luggage and just wanting to get to their destination. So people were forced in to taking these autos even if they had obtained a ‘prepaid’ slip. The lone guy marshaling the auto drivers in to the stand area was only partially successful in enforcing discipline.

I had to kind of ‘compromise’ too. I had to share an auto with a girl who was going in the same direction as me and both of us had to shell out full fare for the trip. Anyway, both of us thought it was a ‘safer’ option than to travel alone in the darkness.

I’ve used the prepaid auto system at the Bangalore railway station too and find it working much better there. There is also a cop who is there to assist people and make random checks on the autos. Wish Chennai also adopted a more disciplined approach to such things. It would work only if passengers consciously take the trouble of ignoring the errant auto wallas and cooperate with the authorities. As long as people are willing to save a few minutes by choosing to opt out of queues, auto drivers would enjoy taking people for a ‘ride’!