There is a world in which nice people meet nicer people on a ride-share and start dating each other and produce multiple pink-cheeked children. This is not that world. Forget dating, a raging cab-pool trend worldwide (people wrote reams of articles wondering if cab-pool was the new Tinder) — no one has those expectations — but in India, the very concept of sharing a cab with a stranger was always going to be problematic, because it means we have to be mindful of the another person’s time, always a thing that came with difficulty to us. However, with rates as attractive as ₹49 for anywhere, my middle-class mind was forced to try cab sharing or pool. ‘How bad can it be?’ I thought, and clicked on confirm.
I found out. I was going for a movie about 10 km away from my house and I left 10 minutes earlier than I would’ve to account for any delays that might be caused by sharing. About halfway into my journey, my cabbie started taking a U turn — naturally, I questioned this move. He said he got another passenger on a road we had left, a really congested Delhi road that is hard to get out of even on a weekend. I fumed a little bit, reminding him that we should only pick up people on our way and not go back in circles, but I realised it wasn’t going to help, so I sucked it up and quietly fretted about missing my movie. We stood at a traffic signal for 10 minutes before we realised that the gent who had booked this cab was at another traffic signal entirely, out of the way, and had no idea where he was or how to get to us. At this point, my cabbie said leisurely, “Doesn’t matter; let us wait”. I was like, “Eh? No no, let us not wait; let us go,” but he didn’t budge. We were in the middle of nowhere on a road where traffic doesn’t stop, so I wouldn’t have got any other transport — so I sat there threatening, cajoling, requesting, and shouting at him, but no go. I missed my movie, plus I had to call the cops for him to move out of there. All this took 20 minutes more and the gent ultimately never showed up.
Rule no 1: If you have a time-bound assignment, do not book a pool cab.
The next time I dared to share a cab was a good three or four years later, having forgotten my wounds. I had to go very far away, and was feeling miserable at the cost of the full-fare cab. I decided to take a chance, got pooled with a lady who had to go a short distance away, was glad… until I realised that the short distance away was an urban village with a maze of roads and the lady didn’t know her way. She was new to the city, and young. I couldn’t just dump her inside this village with burly moustachioed men milling about, and her not knowing where she had to go. We went 10 km up and down narrow roads until she finally spotted a temple that looked familiar to her and got off. I was delayed by 1.5 hours, and of course in a sour mood by the time I reached my destination. I wrote long emails to the cab service, demanding to know their rules on the upper limit of time and distance one can go on a cab-share, but they had no answer beyond “It’s in our system.”
Rule no 2: Never take a cab-pool.
On a more serious note, if you have very far to go, don’t take a pooled cab service, else you can get multiple pick-ups along the way. Cab sharing only works if you are going short distances and don’t care what time you reach. They also only work if you have the patience to deal with all this. My friend was once picked up from his house and returned to his own block after going a fair distance — two boys had booked a cab-share for ‘fun’ to go to the nearest metro stop (under a km).
This is not to say other people are always trying to annoy you or delay you — they are just using a service without taking into consideration that other people also use the same service. Until that is sorted, it’s better to pay the extra bucks. Think of it as buying some peace of mind.
