I have been driving taxis for the last 18 years. Today I am 38, and have been living in Bengaluru city for almost 25 years now. I used to like the idea of driving a car, so when there was financial trouble at home, a friend taught me driving, and I started driving one of his taxis.
I studied up to class eight. By then all my four brothers and sister were married, but no one was willing to pay my school fees so I couldn’t continue my schooling. My father died when I was in Class 3. I am originally from Ramohalli, which is in Kengeri Hobli, Bangalore South.
I’ve always worked independently; never for a travel agency. If you work for an agency, you have to pay them commission. If you work on your own, your earning is all yours. I bought my own taxi 10 years ago. We have a friends’ circle of about 15 drivers. We share contacts and have regular customers, mostly tourists who head out of Bengaluru regularly.
In the last few years, a lot of people from north India have come and settled here. They have all the big jobs in the city, and all the money, and they love to head out towards Dharmasthala, Ooty and Mysuru over the weekends; sometimes even weekdays. Most of the drivers in Bengaluru are from around Hassan and Mandya.
With the coming in of online booking and app-based taxi agencies within the city, things have gone haywire. The agencies expect a lot from us. If we do a minimum number of bookings within peak hours, we get good incentives.
Some are good to work for and promptly make weekly payments. But with the kind of traffic in Bengaluru it’s almost impossible to meet their targets. Many taxi drivers quit travel agencies they worked for, for many years, to join these networks and are now regretting it.
That’s why it’s safest to be independent. Imagine if over 18,000 taxi drivers are attached to one online taxi booking agency, where will we get so many customers in a day? I use this network judiciously, only when I don’t have my outstation tourist trips.
It’s far better diving out of town. It’s a more stable and steady flow of customers we get, and traffic is far less on highways! I’m able to rent a house within the city; life is fairly comfortable, and my daughter Megha is studying in Class Four.
After the recent rape incident in Delhi, the image of us taxi drivers has worsened. But customers do understand that not all of us are the same; not all of us are bad. But it has made life complicated. We have to get police verification done to be able to work for any agency. I applied for mine over one-and-a-half months ago. I’m still awaiting it; the police recently took verification signatures from my neighbours.
I am is a column that features people who make Bengaluru what it is