One Evening in the Cab

Best cab stories

When I got my first job in NCR, travelling from Delhi to Gurgaon was a big hustle. So I set on hunting for a regular cab on the internet. Every Sunday would get spent in talking, debating and haggling with cab drivers and service company owners.

Luck struck when I finally found one. The owner was ready to send me the shuttle from next day onwards and shared the details of the driver.

As a matter of a comic history, the names of drivers of my hired cabs so far have always been peculiar. This time it was ‘Bobby’. On the first day of trial, the weather was cloudy. I boarded the Santro which was already late by twenty minutes but I didn’t take the risk of chiding the driver in first place.

A girl on the back seat with long curly hair greeted me with a warm smile. She must be in her early twenties as it appeared from the agility on her face. Her features were ordinary which paid no regards to the dusky complexion. It was a coincidence that the company she worked in was adjacent to my office. Yet we never crossed paths. Along the journey, we shared basic information and exchanged numbers.

As we reclined back after a brief spell, I noticed the retro song playing on the music system, ‘hum tum ek kamre mein band ho, aur chabi kho jaaye’. I murmured the upcoming line in an undertone, ‘tere naino ki bhool bhulaiya mein Bobby kho jaaye’.

The line played leaving both me and Shivani laughing in our guts as we peeped in the rear view mirror at the embarrassed driver with the same name.

Wading through the humungous traffic of Gurgaon, we finally reached our destination not without getting late.

In the evening, the overcast dark clouds were ready to burst as we boarded the cab. Inching along the expressway jammed with cars, we started talking once again. But this time, the conversation was more casual and less formal. We discussed about our day’s events and chatted upon our perceptions, likes and dislikes.

It started to rain heavily which blocked the already slow-moving traffic. The sound of the music was superseded by the shrill noise of cacophonous horns blazing all around us. Heavy rainfall and approaching winters made it dark at 7:00 PM. Yet we were far from our place. But we were tattling on loose topics to pass time. While my topics were confined to plain natter keeping in mind the presence of the third person, Shivani was presumptuous.

From interests and hobbies, she slipped on to cheesy talks like that about boozing. I swear no one could even expect the thin innocent-looking girl to be so juvenile and audacious. She dazed us (driver included) when she told about her habit of drinking on regular basis, at home. Adding to the surprise, she revealed that not only her mom knows about it, she also at times joins her for a bottle of whiskey.

I peeped again into the rear-view mirror, hoping the driver not getting influenced by the rain, the darkness and her bold talks altogether.

His face lacked expression but how could his ears not hear the talks. I digressed from the topic many a times, but this girl was lost in her world. She went on telling about her visiting the nightclubs and reaching home late, which was a casual affair to her family.

It continued for two long hours during which we went through the paths which were cluttered with traffic and also which were desolate, dark and empty. Fortunately, ‘Bobby’ turned out to be a decent fellow who sat as a silent figure in the front seat all the time. He dropped me first and then the other girl. I called her back and confirmed that she too reached her place.

But deep down, I imagined what if the driver got provoked by the chilly revelations of the girl and was not decent enough to care about the consequences of turning it into a vicious deed. During that spell of time, our destiny depended upon his decision whether or not he wished to take advantage of a delicate situation like that.

I am not in the favor of defending the sinner if the case were so or calling the man ‘generous’ for not victimizing my friend or me. But, the girl’s ease of talking about certain things which were inappropriate for that place and time had put a heavy weight on the situation. She was in all her senses heating up a stimulus for a stranger by sending wrong signals.

That day I realized that restricting the most personal kind of talks in a shared space is not a barrier to your freedom but just a sign of maturity. Keeping that in mind, one can avoid many unwanted situations, who knows.