If you have ever lived in Chennai, you must have surely travelled in an Auto rickshaw at least once - unless you are an extremely rich dude/chick with a fleet of cars at your disposal. Not that you are missing anything, but you can try this once for an adventure ride or something, when you don’t have the time to fly to Disneyland.
Now, if you need to survive the daily travel in the said vehicle either you need to have Zen like patience or have skin as thick as an Elephant or Rhinoceros or whichever animal it is that has the thickest skin. Since I possess neither, I have accepted it must be my life’s objective to give away half of my earnings to the Chennai Rickshaw guys. According to these men, 90% of the roads in Chennai are ‘one-way’ roads and there is heavy traffic on the roads at all times, even at 5 am on a Sunday morning.
This got me wondering whether many of the country’s problems may be resolved if we can get these men to do our dealings. Imagine our Chennai Velu with one of the Ambanis while they are negotiating:
“Gas price has gone up”
“The deal said $2.34”
“No, due to the naval technicalities the gas from Bay of Bengal has to routed through the Arabian Sea so it will cost minimum $15”
“The deal said $2.34”
“You can either take this now at this table or the government will come in claiming the gas to be theirs and you won’t get any”
“OK, but $15 is too much I can pay maximum of $5, or let us take it to the court”
“OK, Deal! $5 it is!”
I think I might have stumbled upon an excellent idea to make money – start an Auto Rickshaw Driver’s Management school (It can be called as Muthuswamy Manickavaasagam School of Haggling Management or some such name) to train the diplomats and others the professional art of haggling! Now that would be one successful bunch of people, I say!
