Deceived by the rickshaw-wallah

It would take ten minutes to bring me to the nursing home, and the rickshaw-wallah was supposed to wait for me. I booked the drivers for two hours. One day I took a rickshaw to the nursing home, and before I went upstairs, I said to the driver, “Please stay here.”

The driver said, “Definitely I will wait.”

I saw my sister, and we talked and talked for half an hour. Then the nurses said that they had to bathe her. I said, “Then let me go out, and afterwards I will come back.”

The weather was so unbearably hot. It was the coldest season, they said, but for me it was so hot. When I went down, there was no rickshaw. I walked for about half a mile in the hot sun looking for a rickshaw, and eventually I found another one, so I got in. I said, “Now drive me to a place where I can get something to eat.”

On this trip I did not eat at home. My cousins were so sad and upset. I said it was difficult for me to eat at home because my sister was not there. I used to take idli or masala dosa and tea at a particular restaurant. The driver was taking me there. After we had covered practically a mile and a half, the driver that first brought me saw us and started screaming, “I am your driver. I am coming back to get you.”

I said, “Now, look here, already a mile and a half I have covered. What were you doing?”

The man said, “I was hungry. I went to eat.”

I said, “You were not supposed to be there waiting for me?”

Instead of replying, the first driver began screaming at the second, asking him to leave so that I could go into the first rickshaw. I said, “I am not going into your rickshaw. You have fooled me.”

There was a real fight between the two. Then the first one said, “Now you have to give me ten rupees, since I brought you to the nursing home.”

I got so mad. I said, “I am going to give you five rupees. You brought me, but it was only a ten-minute ride, so I am giving you five rupees.” I was so mad that I had to walk so far in that heat.

I gave him the five rupees. We did not go even twenty metres, before the first driver came again, saying, “It is false, false! It is no good, no good.” He gave me back my five rupees.

I said, “All right,” and I gave him another five rupees. I threw away the ‘false’ coin that he had returned. Then the driver came down from his rickshaw and collected the first coin.

I said, “I knew it was not false. You wanted to have ten rupees. For God’s sake, take your ten rupees!”