And History repeats itself !

A year back I had written about the travails of travelling by the office cab. Well a lot has happened in that one year. The management finally god fed up of our constant badgering about the downtrodden cab and we got a swanky new cab. Then unfortunately two of my cab mates who had become very good friends changed jobs and the cab journey lost most of its fun. Even more unfortunately three new people joined the cab who I can only describe as The Whiner, The Foren Return and Mr. Punctuality Personified. The whiner whines about everything. She whines when the cab is early, whines when it is late, whines when she has to sit in the front (AC too strong) whines when she has to sit at the back (too bumpy). Mr Foren Return on the other hand has spent four years in Australia and deems that land to be fit only for gods. If the Australian government wishes to redeem its image after the recent racist attacks on Indians, all it has to do is get this guy to act as their PR agent. Every day we endure a new installment on how great Australian infrastructure is, how everyone follows traffic rules and the roads are so clean that `you can eat off them mate`. Mr Punctuality Personified on the other hand is obsessed about reaching office on time. His is the last stop and god forbid if we reach there even a minute late. We are harangued by phone calls asking us where we are, how many minutes it will take us and do we not realize that he can’t afford to waste office time standing on a bus stop.
Any how I digress. What does all this have to do with history repeating itself ? Because today, exactly a year after I wrote this, our cab broke down on exactly the same spot as it had last year on this day. You see, our cab owner went home for navratras and took his swanky new cab with him. The replacement Indica was so decrepit and rickety that even Ratan Tata wouldn’t be seen dead in it. So today morning, I sat in the cab squashed between the whiner and the foren return listening to the whiner complaining about lack of space and the Foren Return pontificating about the spacious cabs in the land down under. Then the unthinkable happened. While the cab was bravely wheezing its way up the Ashram flyover, the engine coughed once, twice and then gave up on its valiant effort to climb the flyover. A policeman already harassed by the rush hour traffic made his way to our cab, extremely irritated by this addition to his work load. He beat his Stick on the bonnet and said arre jaldi hatao kitna jam laga diya. Our driver spewed a stream of paan on the road, swore volubly in haryanavi and asked us get down and push. Now we all reacted in typical fashion –
Whiner – Oh god how can I push, so much traffic , its so hot ……..
Foren Return – (while hardly making any attempts to push) this would never happen in Australia you know. A cab would never break down there man …. Such good traffic man ….
Punctuality Personified – How much time will this take. I really can’t waste time stranded here………..
The cab driver realizing how useless we were in the situation, spotted a few workers on CWG duty and cajoled them to push. Thankfully the car started after a few pushes and we reached office very late and thoroughly irritated.

(8th Oct 2011 – Dare I even think about it! )