Earlier this month, Delhi saw another senseless murder. The victim, a 51-year-old Uber cab driver, was shot dead by two boys aged 16 and 17. They were passengers in his cab. During the ride, as they began making fun of his hometown, an argument broke out and they killed him. It was his first day as an Uber driver.
The incident took me back a few months, to the story of another Uber driver: Shahnawaz Khan, 24 but wise in his words beyond his years. "Swallow your pride. Keep your head low. And, just focus on driving," he had said. "Not all passengers are nice. Some are rude and abusive. Some stagger in drunk. But at the end of the ride, they are the ones who rate me. So that's what I do, swallow my pride and drive on."
Khan was, when I spoke with him, Delhi's most celebrated cab driver. Just at a time when Uber was fighting a perception battle, after chilling incidents of rape and assaults by its drivers, he had briefly turned its image around.
On a cold December night, he was ferrying three women, one of them heavily pregnant and minutes away from giving birth. Before they could complete the journey from a Delhi village to the Safdarjung hospital through the city's impenetrable traffic, the woman went into labour. He did all he could to help and the baby was delivered in his cab. Khan then rushed the mother and the child to the hospital and found them a doctor. When the grateful family asked him to name the baby - an honour reserved for the most revered by a family - he simply said: "Call him Uber."
Today, somewhere in Delhi, the child is growing up with that unusual name. Uber couldn't have asked for a better brand endorsement.
The incident gave Khan his 15 minutes of fame. He had every reason to be ecstatic but when I spoke with him he was rather stoic, perhaps even somewhat sad.
"What is there to be happy about," he said. The days are long, the drives unpredictable and safety is always a concern. He made me look at his world in a whole new light. If passengers feel unsafe, so do cab drivers.
The conversation with Khan hasn't entirely allayed my fears but it has made me think about the world of suspicion we inhabit. It has made me wonder about the lives of the people who drive us to our destinations and the mistrust they routinely encounter.
My husband and I rely on a combination of our car and public transport, out of choice and not because Arvind Kejriwal has forced this decision on us. Having cab services like Uber and Ola helps. Sometimes, I now look at the faces of the drivers that flash on the phone on booking a cab. I peer at their faces and their names - Akaash, Shahid, Rakesh, Manoj, Kuljeet…- in the hope that they will tell me something about them, about their lives and their dreams. But I never end up wiser.
Khan did tell me about his dreams. He studied till Class XII but his wife had a master's degree in commerce. She is studying for her BEd. Someday, they hope, she will find a job as a teacher. And that he, in the not too distant a future, would have saved enough money to buy a cab of his own. He currently drives one for someone else.
But to get there, he knows, he has to keep his head low and swallow his pride and just think about earning a living.
Khan represents that world of a big city in which staying focused on a dream is a struggle. It is a world most of us cannot relate to. It is a world we depend on but despise; a world we fear and yet, is our own creation.
Khan made me realise that in our suspicion, fed by fearful stories like those rapes, we forget that like each one of us, the man taking us to our destination is also trying to keep his balance. He is, as Tevye said in the 1971 musical drama, "a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck".
veenu.sandhu@bsmail.in
The incident took me back a few months, to the story of another Uber driver: Shahnawaz Khan, 24 but wise in his words beyond his years. "Swallow your pride. Keep your head low. And, just focus on driving," he had said. "Not all passengers are nice. Some are rude and abusive. Some stagger in drunk. But at the end of the ride, they are the ones who rate me. So that's what I do, swallow my pride and drive on."
Khan was, when I spoke with him, Delhi's most celebrated cab driver. Just at a time when Uber was fighting a perception battle, after chilling incidents of rape and assaults by its drivers, he had briefly turned its image around.
On a cold December night, he was ferrying three women, one of them heavily pregnant and minutes away from giving birth. Before they could complete the journey from a Delhi village to the Safdarjung hospital through the city's impenetrable traffic, the woman went into labour. He did all he could to help and the baby was delivered in his cab. Khan then rushed the mother and the child to the hospital and found them a doctor. When the grateful family asked him to name the baby - an honour reserved for the most revered by a family - he simply said: "Call him Uber."
Today, somewhere in Delhi, the child is growing up with that unusual name. Uber couldn't have asked for a better brand endorsement.
The incident gave Khan his 15 minutes of fame. He had every reason to be ecstatic but when I spoke with him he was rather stoic, perhaps even somewhat sad.
"What is there to be happy about," he said. The days are long, the drives unpredictable and safety is always a concern. He made me look at his world in a whole new light. If passengers feel unsafe, so do cab drivers.
The conversation with Khan hasn't entirely allayed my fears but it has made me think about the world of suspicion we inhabit. It has made me wonder about the lives of the people who drive us to our destinations and the mistrust they routinely encounter.
My husband and I rely on a combination of our car and public transport, out of choice and not because Arvind Kejriwal has forced this decision on us. Having cab services like Uber and Ola helps. Sometimes, I now look at the faces of the drivers that flash on the phone on booking a cab. I peer at their faces and their names - Akaash, Shahid, Rakesh, Manoj, Kuljeet…- in the hope that they will tell me something about them, about their lives and their dreams. But I never end up wiser.
Khan did tell me about his dreams. He studied till Class XII but his wife had a master's degree in commerce. She is studying for her BEd. Someday, they hope, she will find a job as a teacher. And that he, in the not too distant a future, would have saved enough money to buy a cab of his own. He currently drives one for someone else.
But to get there, he knows, he has to keep his head low and swallow his pride and just think about earning a living.
Khan represents that world of a big city in which staying focused on a dream is a struggle. It is a world most of us cannot relate to. It is a world we depend on but despise; a world we fear and yet, is our own creation.
Khan made me realise that in our suspicion, fed by fearful stories like those rapes, we forget that like each one of us, the man taking us to our destination is also trying to keep his balance. He is, as Tevye said in the 1971 musical drama, "a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck".
veenu.sandhu@bsmail.in