Au-tuktuk

I admit that I was a very over protected child. Maybe it comes from being a single child but my parents were very hesitant to send me out alone. Even in a cab or an auto.

But alas for them, the time had come. I started coaching for entrance exams. My father wasn't available to drop me every weekend. So one day I installed Uber on my phone and booked an auto.

My mom came downstairs and dropped me to the auto. Just like my first bus experience (see: Wheels on the Bus) I got extremely lucky with this too. The driver was a nice jolly guy with great conversations. He said that he had studied tech and does driving as a side hustle.

I didn't feel scared or threatened once. Maybe the openess of the auto reassured me, but I felt okay. Once again, I'm grateful that I had a good driver for my first auto ride alone.

An early memory relating to autos dates back to when I was around 7 years old. We had taken an overnight bus back and took an auto to go home. It was early in the morning during winter season, and the breeze from the auto ride was so strong that I was sat behind my parents just so I could breathe. I fell sick the next day. But I loved the speed at which we flew on the roads and how empty it was back then.

Now my auto rides have mostly become shared rides. Rides with my friends after a day out or with family when they visit. There's something so familiar about autos becoming a staple of Indian roads.

A tuktuk is another name for it. One that I really like. It's very fitting for the way it goes tuk-tuk-tuk as we sit in it. A play on these names led me to title this chapter as 'Au-tuktuk'.

Want to know something funny? I'm typing this story out in an auto.