I am very bad ass. If by that you mean, the little scrawny guy in school who got beaten up by the bigger guys. I guess that should convey very accurately the kind of terror I can strike into the hearts of baby seals!
So some time back I had gone to Pune on a business errand read job interview. It was an all night journey by bus during which I slept fitfully between some twisted fantasies of clubbing baby seals to death(I can’t stop mentioning baby seals today for some reason). It was early morning when the bus reached and I had to take an auto rickshaw to reach my lodge. So for the first time in my life I decided to actually take the auto right near the bus stand. Big mistake.
When I told the driver the destination, he said it was 40 km away from the bus stand. Now someone else would have called the bluff right away,but not me, I am not very good at geography(not that I am good at many other things apart from getting beaten up). Second big mistake.
As soon as I got into the rickshaw, the driver yells and asks another driver to get in right besides effectively blocking my exit from the auto. At this point(finally), I sense something amiss but I realized I was trapped in my ride to hell. Just to put things in perspective,people regularly keep getting robbed and killed by unscrupulous rickshaw drivers in cities like Pune. I frantically tried calling up my contact in the city, but I guess he was clubbing some seals and was too busy to answer my phone. At this point I decided to put all those years of practice violence to action and I started undoing my trouser belt (stop thinking that this is going to end with me describing some gay anime porn fantasy). I wanted to take the belt and try and strangle the driver while somehow managing to fend off the guy besides me.I did not have a clue as to how it would even be possible to strangle a man in front of me while being attacked from the side, given my ability to take a beating and not give beatings. Anyways,just as I was undoing the belt buckle another idea struck me. I faked a phone call,which meant that I was speaking on the phone while holding the end button down,in case it rings mid speech!!. In my phoney speech(cheap pun intended), I made it clear to them that I was being picked up at the location I was at. This took care of the fact that I needed to get off immediately and that someone knew where I was. I paid the minimum fare and got off. Thankful to be alive and with the satisfaction at seeing the drivers’ ill hidden frustration written in bold on their slimy faces.
