Share Auto

Once I was travelling in a share auto from Saidapet to Ullagaram, it was around 8 P.M. I was sitting in the back seat, two passengers were on the either side of me. The auto was full: meaning the driver seat is also shared by a fellow passenger.

A middle aged woman who was seated in the corner asked the Auto sto stop when we were between NGO Colony and Mount. That was a place wherein you will not get bus at this time of night and the possibility to get a space in auto is also remote.

The woman said, “Look there is standing a girl. How can she get an auto at this point of time! Let her come on this auto.”, she called the girl and said, “come and sit in my lap.”

The girl was in her late teens and she initially was reluctant but on the persistence of this woman sat in her lap. She got down at Mount.

The auto stated moving but it stopped on seeing another girl (of about the same age). The girl looked inside the auto and noticed that it was full and doubtfully looked at the driver for asking her to get in.

“Sit in the woman’s lap”, said the auto driver.

“How dare you say this”, remarked the woman, “I let that girl sit on my lap because the place where she was waiting, she will never get an auto and she looked like my child. And now you are asking this girl to sit in my lap so that you get extra person and extra money? What kind of man are you?”

The girl did not enter the auto and the auto started moving. The girl would have definitely got another share auto in less than a minute. The rest of the journey the woman near me was talking to me about the behavior of this auto driver.

I did not look at the driver’s face but I presume it would have had a smug smile when he had asked the girl from Mount to sit on this woman’s lap.

Let’s take another look at this incident.

This is a share auto driven by a selfish, sarcastic, uncivilized man. There was this woman who opened her heart for a girl (may be because she identified the girl as her child) and did a (small) sacrifice by asking her to sit on her lap. The woman had to pay the price immediately because the selfish driver wanted to take advantage of the situation.

There was also I, one of the passenger, a mere spectator, but had already internalized the belief that your heart should be stone. I had seen several incidents from which I inferred that it makes no sense to be kind and should not do any selfless acts, because there are vultures wandering around just to prey on you.

Looking back at the incident after several years, I’ve come to realize ‘at least in paper’, that it makes sense to do selfless act and suffer rather than acting smart by being a stone. Because, if you do a selfless act and suffer you are at least alive, but if you are tricking yourself to be an insulator then you are just existing.