My previous posts about the city are congruous enough to bring out the charm the city oozes with. The charm doesn’t necessitate being treated like a prince or offering a royal reception when I land here. The charm also lies in the attitude that the city resonates among its residents. That said, what does any City account for without its residents. I was confronted with a couple of episodes that seem worth mentioning.
The first of them occurs no sooner I am in the city. I landed at in the night and I get a pre-paid Taxi booked for myself straight headed to my home in South Calcutta. The prepaid receipt nowadays doesn’t have the taxi number printed, but is just a receipt that can be used in the taxi booth outside where your cab is randomly allocated by a bunch of officials. As I approach the booth with the receipt in my hand, I see this spectacled guy, who walks up to the booth officials asking them to join him for a cuppa. They say no and they give me a Cab number, which I am expected to find from the taxi stand. I get the number and I stroll past this possible cab driver aimlessly looking around for my cab. This specimen then snatches the slip/receipt from me with authority and walks me down the stand and gets me near the my cab, opens the door for me and I get in. Then surprisingly, this looks at me and says ‘Dada thoda teeeepsss dejiye na’ (Give me some tips please). I have this expression of denial as I am perplexed with the audacity behind the ask. I am fortunately physically stable, visually able & I could have easily found my cab in that maze with a little search. I never asked for his assistance and here he is asking for teeeep. That said, He isn’t absolutely wide of the mark in asking a teep as it may be a practice that’s followed for the ‘self proclaimed taxi maze assistance’ that he offered. But the city I know does these favours without requests. I darted back a rude reply and asked the taxi driver to move on. Harsh I may have been, but I wasn’t ready to change my city. And for all my efforts, the city might have already changed. And so much for the charm.
I went doing errands at my place and one of them was to play the telephone bill at the post office. The telephone bill amounted to Rs 475. What would be the natural denomination that you would present? I figured it would be 500 rupee note. I presented the same to the cashier for the paying the bill. And here I was hearing a mouthful from him about the fact that he had paid ‘change’ to five people before me as they didn’t tender the exact amount. For a moment I was about to resist and give it back to him. But then I realized that it is needless to pull up an argument with a low-life as I don’t think I would ever meet him again in this goddamn world. I had a grin on my face for the rest of the harangue he offered about the lack of common sense in me. And I had a good laugh at it in my walk back at home.
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