Guess who prays for techies’ failure!
Fifty plus Anir Sing is fretting and fuming. He is unapologetic and blames his superiors for not giving proper directions. In the bargain, he was late by 45 minutes to pick us up from the hotel to our destination. Reason: He cannot read Google Maps, and he cannot read English. Above all, his last meal was the previous night, and his stomach was empty. He was almost barely 20 meters away on the flyover from his car; the hotel name was prominently visible. Ultimately, timely assistance of a nearby car mechanic’s Gujarati translation rescued Anir.
***
From a distance of 100 meters, his thin frame was visible with the onrushing vehicles _ trucks, tempos, cars, and buses — backlighting. He was flexing his muscles: he was bending down to touch his toes with his fingertips and rotating his hands, clock, and anti-clockwise. It was half-past six in the morning; the sun had not risen on the eastern horizon though daybreak was imminent. The capped man was standing on National Highway 48, outside Transport Nagar in Aslali, Bareja, 30 km away from Ahmedabad, and engaged in physical activities. The noise of tires kissing the tarmac on the highway linking Vadodara with Ahmedabad in Gujarat was a sight to behold. I stood transfixed and mesmerized.
“Why do you exercise standing on the highway? It’s not safe. Why not move into the service lane and exercise?” I asked him. The senior citizen laughed at the suggestion.
“You think I was exercising. No. I was passing time,” said the capped gentry.
What?
“Yes, I am a guide waiting for business,” said he.
Guide? To whom? What purpose? Questions swirled.
Sensing my credulous look, he responded quickly. “I guide outstation truck driver looking for the route to delivery points in this area,” he explained.
Such guides on Indian highways are standard. Reasons: Indian truck drivers are still not comfortable reading maps — google or otherwise. Secondly, they may know the highway routes well, but not the inner city-specific locations. Outstation drivers readily seek guides who are locals, knowing the neighborhood’s geography and paying a fee for such services. Our exerciser-on-highways is one such guide. These guides are a quintessential element of the Indian transport ecosystem. Without them, drivers may be lost trying to locate delivery points until they learn map-reading on their handphones.
Our exerciser-on-highways is happy that truck drivers have not mastered map-reading. “The day they know how to (read maps), this man’s business will be khatam (finished),” thus revealing his name for the first time and the current state of his business. One’s weakness is another’s strength. Right?
Sombhai Parmar Aslali is an Aslali village resident and conducting the guide business for 20 years, earning an average daily income of Rs.1,000. The arrival of online aggregators has impacted his business.
Concurs Narinderbhai, another guide we meet at a roadside tea stall: “Tough life,” before he rushes out to a guide-seeking driver 10 feet away.
The commercial traffic seems to be heavy even in the early morning hours, signaling that India is succeeding in taming the pandemic and restoring economic normalcy. Sombhai disagrees. “Today, I go home with Rs.400 after working from six in the moring to four in the evening,” points out he. What’s the point of economic revival if his earnings are poorly impacted, he tries to convey.
Sombhai would be pleased with the Almighty with the likes of Anir Sing and pray for the explosion of drivers with the disability of map-reading and the most significant contribution of Her Majesty and Thomas Babington Macaulay in particular for promoting their mother tongue: English in India. “Nahi lagta hai, mera sapna poora ho jayega. Aaj kal to, pade likhe log driver ban rahe hai,” (My dreams may not come true because today better educated people are entering the driving career) laments the highways guide who refused to accept payment for the chai, and instead he paid.
What a world? On one side, techies are flooding the market with apps and praying to God to “guide” drivers to download their merchandise because of poor acceptance. On the other hand, the highway guides are praying to the same Supreme Power to halt the technological invasion into trucking post haste!
