Funny rickshaw drivers and delayed flights

It’s been quite some time that I am staying at Bangalore and from routine observation I feel that rickshaw drivers are the most amazing people you will meet here.

I think at most of the places you will find that once you ask any rickshaw driver for a ride they will obliged and will take you to your destination, you may fight for fare but that’s ok. Now the Bangalore rickshaw drivers are little different. Right in the morning you go ask them for a ride and they would bluntly deny. Its beyond my understanding, how can you deny a ride. If you are lucky they would take you, but you will have to pay heavy price for it. Again they will bluntly ask for double fare or one half fares. But I find this very funny, I enjoy their denial. They are using our need to full extent and making good money in the city which has become little costly to live in. in this scenario where you have no choice but to pay more and ride, we had totally exciting experience. We were 7 friends and we were coming from late dinner party, we thought we would need two rickshaws and will have to pay double the fare. But surprisingly this rickshaw driver came with an offer which we could not deny. He said I will take you all but with double fare. It was beneficial to both the parties. We had a really good laugh about it.

My flight experience is also very exciting. Recently I was going back to my hometown for Diwali, and I was traveling by Spicejet, a low fare airlines. From my past experience I knew that this flight would be delayed as usual and I will reach very late. So I was ready for delay. I was all prepared for delayed journey. But Spcicejet guys added little humour and gave many passengers a new experience. One week before the journey, they started sending smses announcing that scheduled flight has be pre poned by 10minutes, so make a note of it. As 6 smses were not enough, they sent an email, also I got to calls with prerecorded messages, my parents got a call at home, and then they called me to convey the message. After all this jugglery ultimately flight was delayed as I had thought and it started one and half hour after the new scheduled time.

As Indian aviation business is booming, and it will grow even more, this things are expected. But I should give all credit to the airline staff who handles the passengers with lot of patience and respect. There are situations where flights have been cancelled or delayed by several hours that are the time when airline staff have to really face the angry customers. But they handle it quite nicely.

But I enjoy these journey negotiations. I get good laugh out of this. I like such situations as I don’t have to do much but plan dynamically and wait. The good part is that I get to observe people with different emotions.