I myself and many of my acquaintances have had numerous such bad experiences. I am narrating a few here:
Recently one of my friends had been to nearby restaurant on Jeevan Beema Nagar main road and was walking back home as he stayed in LIC Colony there. He was walking on the foot-path and there were some construction material put there, so he had just stepped down the foot-path and an auto-rickshaw came and hit him very hard from his back. He was hit so badly that he rolled over from one side of the road to another and could not get up. So people around helped to to get up. His wrist had got fractured.
On getting up he realized that after hitting him, the auto-rickshaw has overturned when its wheen had come over the edge of the foot-path. Much to his surprise, he finds the driver (the devil) who is fully drunk come up to him and demanding money from my friend for repairing his auto. Just then a local guy intervenes and shouts at the driver saying he had seen through the incident and there is not reason why my friend should pay money to the driver and threatens to call the J B Nagar police. To this the driver says that he knows everyone there and that guy can very well call the police. Then the driver starts calling up his association people so that they can come and beat up the guy.
To this, one of the elderly gentlemen standing and watching the driver told my friend that the driver is calling his association people to beat up the guy so before they arrive he must escape, so that he does not indulge in any problem as those people are mostly rowdies. To this my friend already having fractured his wrist had no other go but to leave the place.
Similar incident have happened to me and my wife where in an auto driver stops the auto at 9 PM near Vishweshwaraiah college and says that he wants extra money to take us to the destination and will not go on meter basis as his meter has broken down all of a sudden. When I said that I will get down from the auto and pay him whatever had come in the meter by that time, he shouted and verbally abused me. Not knowing how to handle the situation and what to do, we finally took another auto (which fortunately happened to pass by) and returned home helpless.
There have been other incident with colleagues and other acquaintances of mine where in once when the friend of my colleague argued with the auto driver for unexpectedly asking more money on reaching the destination for no reason, the auto driver flicked out a knife and stabbed the person on the thigh. There also have been an incident when these rogues do not spare even the ladies or the elders. Once an acquaintance of mine (a lady) was asked for more money than what the meter showed on reaching the destination. So she denied paying the extra amount to the driver. So for that reason as she was getting down from the auto-rickshaw, the driver puposely started speeding and she fell down from the auto-rickshaw and the rear wheel some how ran over her feet and she fractured it.
Having narrated a few of these incidents I will now put an end to the narration here because already we know now, to what extent these rogues, rowdies, devils or driver whatever you call them can go.
But the point of concern here is that, have we all (much larger number of people than the auto-drivers) succumbed to the atrocities and abominableness of these rogues who have supposedly gained for themlesves the name of 'auto-driver' in Bangalore?
Have we got nothing to do at all but just sit quiet and watch these incidents happen to us over and over again?
Would it not be great if all come together and find out ways to tackle the situation? For example we can together form a group and then find out ways of how to react and whom to approach and what to do to next when we face such a situation. If anyone of us has some acquaintainces with some higher officials in the Traffic Police Dept or other regulatory bodies we can approach them as well.
Many of us may think that why to get into all this. But imagine where we are heading... aren't we heading for a Bangalore where every decision of ours will be under the infuence of rogues in some form or the other. Is it bad to expect that these auto-drivers demand what is just and also they behave properly with us? Don't we have any social responsibility for the society we live in? What kind of society we are leaving behind us for the generations to come?
Together we can make a difference....
To give all, a few leads in this direction, please visit the following website:
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