The gruesome tale of an cab driver and his GPS ride to the cemetery :)
Bangalore roads are full of Ola, Uber and TaxiforSure cabs all accessible through a simple app, you just open your app sync your location and then choose the type of the cab and book, depending on how well the GPS behaves for the driver who would usually be at your door step within 10 minutes (if Bangalore traffic is not a issue).
On one rainy night, my daughter insisted she wants to have an "death" by chocolate ice cream at "corner house" an iconic ice cream bar in Bangalore. I said okey, fine, lets get ready and let me book a cab.
The plethora of choices that I had, I fired up <name hidden> app and made sure the GPS on my screen shows my locality, selected a type of cab and entered "book now". I had a text message already beeping up in my messages folder with the drivers and cab number at the same time showing up on my App.
Next minutes a call came in, which I assumed was a call from the driver whose name just flashed on my phone, usually they call you to figure out if you indeed need a cab as off late I'm told people book cabs and don't turn up, which was not my intention. So, I picked the call, answered and on the other side the cab driver in broken english said "Sir, you booked the cab?, I'm from <Name Hidden> cabs ", I said "yes, thats right where are you now", he said " Sir I'm at this location, and it will take me 15 minutes to come over to whatever location that is showing on my phone", I said yes thats right "come near this cross and give me a call, I will guide you" , usually another cab provider has their maps perfectly tuned and the drivers do not call up until they come near my house, as I couldn't find any cabs in that app I had to book this one.
Again, in 5 minutes the same driver calls up and asks "Sir, location is right right?" I was little impatient and said "Yes, boss it is right" why don't you just come to the location that is showing up on your map? - I asked. The driver figured I was irritated and cut the call. Again, in another 5 minutes the call tone rang and the same drivers number flashed, I was irritated, and lifted the call was and was about express my displeasure, the driver on the other side of the call said "Sir, please don't feel bad, I have had pretty bad experience just yesterday and just want to confirm if the address is fine, I'm just 5 minutes away as per the map".
I controlled my anger and said "Yes, that's the correct place you are in, now take a left come to the dead end, and left again, near the temple is where my apartment is". He said okey and cut the call.
Me and my family got down into the basement of our apartment and as I saw my daughter was growing impatient as her ice cream was getting delayed. Finally another call came in from the same guy, and he said "Sir, I'm near the temple now, where should I come?", just to avoid any further confusion due to the high dependency of GPS now a days, I said "Please wait I will come over near the temple and you can pick us up".
As we were near the cab and I opened the door to get in he immediately said "Sorry Sir, to call you so many times, but I didn't want to have the same episode repeated as it it happened yesterday midnight".
This made me curious to ask him on what happened, so as soon as all of us go into the cab, he asked "Where to Sir? ", I said we need to go to Indiranagar and a ice cream bar named "Corner House", he said okey and didn't ask the direction as most people know this place if they have spent considerable amount of time in Bangalore city.
I calculated with all the traffic that we had to evade, and the distance we had to cover, roughly had around 20 minutes or so in this cab, So I decided to take the risk of asking the driver "what happened, what was your experience?" thinking he must have had a bad customer.
He looked at his rare view mirror,and looked at my face ( I was sitting in the back) and said, "Sir, I will never trust these mobile bookings, again, I had a terrible experience yesterday midnight" I said " Go on"
He said "Yesterday around 11.30 PM I got a booking and accepted it, I was about close my duty after this ride, and I had to go and grab late dinner and I was like okey now this gives me extra incentives and I can reach my daily targets", I went into this area, which seemed like badly lit and had not many houses around, I was getting into a a area with thick trees and absoultely no streetlights at all, the map on my phone started showing 3 minutes and turned me into a left turn on a narrow road, after which my map had showed a reduced time of 1 minutes and I went through huge gates which were open and stopped right where my map said "Destination arrived"
The late night tiredness I was in; I had not looked at the area I was around much and put my head out of the window to see where I was.
"You wouldn't believe me Sir", he paused for a minute, grabbed his breath and said, " it was cemetery stones all around me and time on my clock was exactly 12.00 AM bang on midnight, it took me couple of minutes to realize that I was in the middle of all those tombstones and inside the cemetery, every stone staring at me and it was pitch dark outside expect my head lamps"
"Sir, I was scared like hell", "all I did was to start putting the gear in reverse, which somehow at the moment seemed like didn't work at all , and the last thing that should have happened, luckily I was able to get gear lever in its place, and Sir, you have no idea how fast I reversed the gear and at an acceleration which I still now don't remember "reversed" my way out of the cemetery, and "holy god" I would have probably left my car their in night and ran away from their if the gear wouldn't have worked"
He continued, " just the thought of that scene, my car, with dim headlights on, and the app showing destination reached, and all the white and black tombstones, those long trees still give shivers to me" that's the reason Sir, I said I don't any more trust the directions I'm given by this phone in my entire life, I later realized when the guy who booked cab called me and said his house is around 300 Meters away from that cemetery that this is not a ghostly act" .
Myself, My wife, and my Daughter (who finally got her ice cream after, this interesting ride), had a ROFL moment and still have a good laugh talking about it and the way technology can take you to places, sometimes to those places where you don't want to go :)
