On apps and cabs and rickshaws and the authenticity of it all..

On apps and cabs and rickshaws and the authenticity of it all..

It is a high tech world where one gets apartments for rent at the drop of a hat. It is a world where you go online for everything that you want, from grocery to rentals to furniture to clothes to curtains. It is a world where you book a cab online and are told it is safe to do so.  It is a world where outside it, everyone praises Ola cabs, and it is a world where a few like me who roam across a wide diameter within 5 days using Ola, are now wondering about the madness of it all. I am talking of a  world, NO-a country called Whitefield in Bangalore.   Excerpts from my diary :

Day 1 :  All is well. I go from Whitefield to Prestige Shantiniketan, then to Forum Value Mall and then back to Whitefield. Again  in the afternoon from Whitefield to Shantiniketan and then back again to Whitefield using Ola. All is well.  I am charged a normal fare, and I give the drivers 5 star ratings each time.

Day 2 : Unable to get a cab in the peak time in the morning at 9 am so I go out of my hotel room at Whitefield and ask an auto to take  me to Knightsbridge. He says 200 or no rickshaw. I look for an Ola rickshaw on the app, but none of the rickshaws accept the request.  Am forced to use the normal rickshaw. On the way back I get an Ola cab that charges me half the price of what the rickshaw did. The same day in the evening I type the name of an upscale locality I was in as the start point, and am charged a 2.2 X rate in the afternoon at 3 pm, which I am told , is not peak time in Bangalore. Not just that, the driver further takes me for a ride via a longer route  and so I rate the driver a low one or two star, and there starts my ordeal .

Day 3; each time I rate a driver poorly for not coming on time, or for being rude, or for taking a longer route, I am forced to take a 1.4 X or a 2.2 X ride. Makes one wonder- how is Ola any different from the rickshaw drivers who charge a flat 150 or 200 INR  fee for something that costs hardly 40  to 50 INR  on the meter  ?

Day 4 : I am wiser now. Fresh from a google thorough search, I ask an auto-rickshaw to take me to Marathahalli, a local market in town.  I tell the  driver to drive via  “Silk Board Route”; he nods his head vigourously, and somewhere along the way- within a split of a second (for he knows I am watching him drive past the landmarks I have looked up)  takes a U turn, turns into a gulley and lands up at a “silk store”. On being asked why he stopped, he says “Muh-dum....you told me Silk Store muh-dam”.   He refuses to even acknowledge that he had heard it right the first time, and starts shouting in the local language. I am forced to get off the rickshaw, pay 150 INR, and still be stranded in an unknown place, yet to get a cab to go to my destination.

My learnings are not new to travellers- but I write them here in the hope that people who visit Bangalore for the first time (like me) are not conned into believing that Ola  (or for that matter, other cabs) will do everything for them, or that the rickshaws will be any better.

Learning 1 :  before you get onto an auto or a cab- make the driver  repeat your destination 3 to 4 times, and get him to ensure that he heard you right.   Otherwise they have a habit of taking turns to wrong places and then claiming that you never told them the correct destination in the first place!   My “Forum Value Mall”  was changed by an auto-driver to “Formula1” store at the drop of a hat by one driver.

Learning 2 : Ola may ask you to say Ola to your driver, but at times- that’s about as pleasant as it can get. The app is designed to detect up-scale localities and to force a 2.2 X rate on you in times other than peak times. Not just that- when you rate their drivers poorly, the app throws 1 1.4 X or a 2.2 X or a 1.6 X rate at you constantly- giving you no choice but to accept the rate. This too I can vouch for- because for 2 days I rated their drivers a 5 star rating all the time- and I kept getting normal rates- EVEN in peak times.

Learning 3 : Not all Ola drivers are polite or courteous. They will pretend that they don’t understand Hindi or English, and will first ask you “which route do you want to go by Muh-dum” ?  If you can not throw landmarks at them, or route/road names, they will for sure take you via a longer route- since Ola charges by meter.

Learning 4:  In spite of checking the route out  on google- these people may still take you for a ride, since they think that money earned by white collared people is exclusively meant for driving around Bangalore at atrocious and ridiculous rates.

Having said this, I wish to end on a hopeful and positive note by saying that not all drivers are con-men. Some of them turned out to be extra helpful when they realized we were outsiders not knowing the local language. One rickshaw driver went so far as to actually point out a shorter route to a destination once we reached there, telling me that I could use the short cut the next time. I presume there are the good ones and the bad ones in the same egg basket, whether you say Ola or meru or.. whatever app name comes to your head.   Happy journeying to our very own Bengaluru !!