Autos.

This blog is dedicated to this hard working tribe of 'shared' autowallahs, who instead of plying on 'meter' and looting the city of cash, instead do a service by moving on fixed routes with fixed prices and giving us humble citizens what the city buses cannot.

The first striking difference between a 'normal' auto and a shared one is the absence of meter in the latter. It looks rather odd since we have all grown up seeing that good old meter (usually made by Super Meter Works, Hadapsar, Pune) ticking away to glory and placed on that age old position on the frame dividing the driver's area from the passenger's.. in fact, seeing an auto without a meter would make one think it is out of order. Yet, almost everyone has had their own stories of their rendezvous with different types of auto meters. while those in maharashtra region are known to show values that need to be multiplied, divided, subtracted, added, and what-not to eventually land upon the correct legal fare. on the other hand, the autos in hyderabad have always believed in reducing the arithmetic load on people by always getting the meters tuned to the currently running fares. this gives a distinct impression that the meter moves too fast (since every 'tick' is worth 20 paisa). it is indeed palpitating to see the meter go tick tick tick faster than the auto itself (60-80 km/h)

we move on to seating space. all autos proudly write "to seat 3 only", "3 + 1", &c &c. For the metered autos, this rule more or less applies unless the commuters are ready to pay him a tenner to get that fourth friend sitting on somebody's lap instead of getting another auto. BUT, writing "to seat 3 only" on a shared auto is nothing but dry humour. The revenue model itself of a shared auto restricts the minimum number of commuters to 5. This is when creativity jumps in and you have specially designed coffee table-like seats on either side of the auto driver. These are to house two extra people beyond the three already sitting on the driver's seat. Metered autowallahs sometime spend that extra cash they get from plying a firang (Rs 300 only) into decking up the interiors with extra-cushy seats, posters of preity zinta on the left and sridevi on the right, and even a sub-woofer. (it is assumed that every true autowallah has a music system installed as a part of the whole machinery).

It is really good to see an auto with a "3+1" sign containing 6+1 people, with the latest telugu hit songs blaring from below the commuters seats.
Its even more fun to be one of the 6.

(more, later)