– Suresh Subrahmanyan is a Bengaluru-based former advertising professional

No one hails a taxi anymore. Shades of coming out of a cinema or concert hall, standing on the edge of a pavement and waving your hand frantically yelling ‘Taxi’ as another one whizzes past without bothering to stop. Those days are gone. What you see in most cities is people milling around street corners, glued to their mobile phones, trying to call up one of a myriad number of cab hire services. When the vehicle does arrive somewhere close, you and a dozen others rush to peer at the number plate to see if it is the cab you had booked. It can get quite frantic.

Nevertheless, once you are safely and comfortably ensconced in the back seat, you can begin to strike up a conversation with the driver. As a rule, most drivers are not averse to a spot of chit-chat, particularly if the drive promises to be long with plenty of traffic jams along the way. Some drivers can be painfully garrulous. There are some drivers who are reticent and prefer to keep their own counsel. Which is fine so long as they are well-versed in the local topography, and possess more than a rudimentary idea of where the short cuts are.

Then comes the interesting challenge of which language to employ while conversing with the driver. In Delhi, Chennai or Calcutta, you can be reasonably sure that Hindi, Tamil and Bengali respectively will be the preferred tongue of choice though most of them can speak at least one other language. In Bengaluru, a linguistic melting pot where people from all over the country converge looking for employment, the name of the driver alone does not definitively signify his mother tongue.

A cheerful driver enlivens the drive and keeps you in good spirits. While such a one is unfailingly polite, he will not fight shy of letting his window down and discharging a volley of colourful oaths if a neighbouring car attempted to cut across dangerously in front of him. Having got the invective in the chosen vernacular off his chest, he will roll up his window and profusely apologise for his intemperate language, particularly if there are ladies present in the car. ‘Sorry Sir, Madam, but that fellow was breaking traffic rules and might have caused an accident. This is the only language these fellows understand.’

Allow me to get a quick word in on car horns. Most drivers have one palm semi-permanently placed on the horn. The resultant din is calculated to break all sound barrier laws, which in any case are observed strictly in the breach. What do our drivers hope to achieve by blaring away at a large family of bovine creatures blocking the road? This is Bharat. Learn to live with it.

Once, I got talking cricket with one of my drivers. ‘Tell me Raju, you must be a T20 fan. I am sure you have no time for Test matches.’ Bashir (or Joseph) surprised me with his prompt response. ‘Sir, this T20 is masala cricket, just hitting every ball for six or four. No skill involved. I pity the bowlers who get to bowl only four overs and get slammed all over the park. Give me Test cricket any day. Five days of thinking, strategizing, two innings and the winner would have truly deserved it.’ I am, of course, translating and paraphrasing Venkat’s (or Karim’s) views loosely, but his mature and sophisticated take on the game took me by surprise.

If it is election time, who better than the taxi driver to give us his seat-of-the-pants prediction on the likely results. With his uncanny pulse on current affairs, his predictions are usually right on the money! I will take his word against any jumped-up television psephologist.

Often you call for the same driver multiple times because by now the driver is almost a friend, and you encourage this association, unaware of a looming threat. Finally, it happens. He touches you for a not insubstantial loan. His father is going in for a bypass surgery. Tears well up in his eyes. He has managed to mop up most of the money but is short of 25k. By now you are choking up as well for your dear taxi driver friend and proceed to cough up the dough. He thanks you and promises the loan will be repaid with interest inside three months. You wave your hand grandly and waive the interest. You feel good about yourself for having done a noble deed. Expectedly, no sign of the blighter thereafter. Does not respond to your calls, probably changed his sim card. Bye, bye, 25K.

Shakespeare, through his character Polonius in Hamlet, has this to say about treating friends: “Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried / Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.” If Shakespeare had been aware of them during his time, he would have made an exception and drawn the line at taxi drivers. Not all taxi drivers are devious, I grant you, but some of them are. If you are not on your guard, they can take you for a ride.