by Dave Prager
An expat can determine how much his company values him by the make of the car and the English proficiency of the driver they provide. If good ol’ Dharmender expertly narrates the sights as the expat glides silently past Qutub Minar in his Honda City, the firm is obviously expecting the lucky expat to inject life into the quarterly numbers. But if surly Ajit jerks his Tata Indica to the roadside to spit paan juice and ask the fifty-paise paniwallah the way to Gurgaon, the less lucky expat should begin to wonder if his boss shipped him to India only because firing him would have taken too much paperwork. At red lights in his Honda City, the lucky expat’s worth as a corporate cog is validated by the buffer other drivers give his vehicle for fear of scratching it. (No one takes risks around cars that could conceivably contain politicians, the most feared of all Delhi’s threats to life and limb.) Meanwhile, in his Tata Indica, with motorcyclists knocking his side mirror as they jockey for position, the less lucky expat will wonder if the smell of gasoline that fills the air when the car isn’t moving is the more insidious part of his ex-boss’s master plan.
I had neither a shining City nor a rusty Indica, for I was a luckless expat. My company provided me with no transportation at all, a fact that surely says something about my value to the company, although I dare not dwell on what. (I can’t complain too much, though—at least I had a lucky expat’s salary to feel guilty about when my coworkers would buy me a round of chai.) While Jenny and I didn’t own a car in New York either, that city’s comprehensive public transportation meant we didn’t need it. But during our time in Delhi, the Metro was still under construction south of Raisina Hill and the buses were crowded, slow, and not at all tourist-friendly. We would have loved to have bicycled in Delhi (we were avid bicyclists in New York, and Delhi’s flat streets and unpaved gullies hold the promise of a great bicycling city once bike paths are built, sewage is rerouted, and traffic is calmed), but bicycling seemed suicidal even before taking into account the traffic fumes.
So with no car, no motorcycle, no Metro, no buses and no bicycles, Jenny and I relied mostly on two forms of personal transportation: taxicabs and autorickshaws.
An autorickshaw (which Delhiites call an “auto”; every time we told a story involving a “rickshaw,” our Delhi friends assumed we were talking about the bicycle variety) is a ubiquitous, utilitarian three-wheeled open-air vehicle, with a green metal body, yellow canvas roof, and just enough horsepower to chug up a Delhi flyover without requiring the driver to get out and push. They’re the cheapest and most convenient way to get around, assuming the definition of “convenient” does not extend to air conditioning or shock absorbers or windows to roll up in the face of bus fumes. All the autos in Delhi are identical, which means either they all come from the same manufacturer or, if there is indeed competition in the industry, all the factories making them are working off the same blueprint. Variation comes only in accruements added by aesthetically minded drivers: Shah Rukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor looking sultry in heart-shaped stickers on either side of the rear-view mirror, or life-sized cut-outs of midriff-baring Bollywood heroines tucked behind the clear vinyl covering the inside panels. More than once I’ve been scared silly by the sudden appearance of a face when I turned my head: a starlet I didn’t initially notice purses her lips back at me, positioned there to keep the driver company when he sleeps, as drivers often do, stretched out on the back seat, his bare feet sticking out the window as he snores in preparation for the morning rush.
About 50,000 autos ply the streets of Delhi, driven in shifts by an estimated 100,000 drivers,1 most of whom can be recognized by their matching button-down shirts and pants that vary in hue from dull blue to dull gray. Beware those drivers wearing clothes that deviate too much towards middle-class fashion: khaki pants, a button-down shirt and a garishly patterned sweater on a driver revving his auto outside a tourist attraction imply a ride in which he’ll speak perfect English, gain our sympathies by describing his daughter’s college fees, charge 150 rupees for a forty-rupee ride, and ignore our requests not to stop at his “uncle’s” paper factory so he can get a commission if we buy their crafts.
According to Delhi lore and confirmed by a story from the BBC, all of Delhi’s auto drivers are male, but one—a woman named Sunita Chaudhary.2 Against literal 100,000-to-1 odds, Jenny actually rode with her once, agreeing to a rate twenty rupees higher than what any other driver would have charged to support Sunita’s fight against patriarchy. Even though Sunita wore the same colorless uniform as her male counterparts, she revealed herself to be the most aggressive auto driver on the road. And so terrifying was Sunita’s style even to a veteran auto passenger like Jenny that when, as improbable as it sounds, she actually chanced upon Sunita a second time, Jenny chose to give her nerves a break, toe the patriarchal line, and go with the male driver Sunita was literally elbowing out of the transaction.
The most important advice we could give to those traveling by auto was to ignore the Lonely Planet’s suggestion to patronize only those that use the meter. The official meter rate, fixed when we lived in Delhi at “4.5 rupees for every kilometer after the first,”3 is less than half of what we would reasonably expect to pay. In fact, any driver who agreed to go by the meter was probably planning a route from GK-I to GK-II via the Taj Mahal.
Because opting for the meter was asking for trouble, every autorickshaw journey began for us with fare negotiations. It was easy to negotiate if we knew where we were, where we were going, and the market rate for getting there. But, for our first week of rides in Delhi, being ignorant as we were of the geography and everything else, the fairness of our fare was entirely up to the honor of our driver, and how adept we were at fooling him into thinking we knew what we were doing.
We realized eventually that no auto ride should ever cost us more than 100 rupees, provided we were sticking to south or central Delhi. I was not armed with that knowledge on my second day in Delhi, when I put my fledgling bargaining skills to the test and negotiated a ride from Connaught Place back to GK-II for 180 rupees—well over twice what I should have paid—and basked in pride for having talked the guy down from the 200 he quoted. Of course, any auto driver who finds a tourist that ignorant of market rates is going to try to push him for all his worth. When we reached my destination, I handed the driver two bills and asked for change. The driver turned around in his seat and started begging me to let him keep the remainder. And I mean begging—pleading, moaning, eyes tearing, hands clasped in front of him as he invoked his gods and his children and his poverty and my wealth, all for that extra twenty rupees. But I set my jaw firm, and I saw the twenty rupees change he reluctantly placed in my palm as glowing validation that I was a clever traveler who knew how to drive a hard bargain.
So I can’t blame him. The average auto driver is not a tourist-swindler by practice, but simply a pragmatic opportunist who seizes a chance when he spots it. After all, he typically earns barely 200 rupees per day once he’s done paying rent for his vehicle4 (few drivers own their vehicle; most rent them from exploitative financers in a situation that one charity likened to “bonded labor”5); so if he can find a rich foreigner who might add fifty percent to his daily take, he’d be foolish not to give it a shot.
Once we knew that we should never pay more than 100 rupees, the fare we’d negotiate for any trip depended simply on balancing the variables: the distance we wished to travel, the time of day (autos are entitled to apply a ‘night charge’ of twenty-five percent after 11 p.m., although most start claiming it around sundown), the availability of alternative autos (if we had no other options, we had no bargaining leverage), the proximity of our destination to other potential fares, the necessity to cross main roads and take U-turns, the number of people in our party, the sweatiness of our shirts (as a measure of our desperation for a ride), and the color of our skin (foreigners always pay more).
Negotiating with autos could often be a frustrating experience. In our worst times, it could be so enraging as to make us dread leaving the
house. Negotiating can make tourists bitter and angry and distrustful of everyone they meet in the country. For some tourists we spoke to, the fact that they always had to negotiate—and always felt constant paranoia about being cheated—actually ruined their experience in India.
The way to avoid all that is to see fare negotiation for what it truly is: a pantomime. A game. A source of fun.
We predicated our philosophy of auto negotiation on the assumption that no self-respecting driver will pass up an opportunity to squeeze a few extra rupees out of a dumb foreigner. Our strategy, then, was simply to make it clear that we’re not dumb foreigners. So we weren’t negotiating to pay forty-nine rupees when he wanted fifty—our efforts were simply to prove that he couldn’t fool us, so he might as well not even try.
Negotiating with autos is a game. And when we had fun playing it, we won.
Sometimes the game was played by shouting and waving our arms and gesturing angrily at the road as the driver shouted and waved and gestured right back. Sometimes it was played with polite propositions and sad smiles and weary refusals. Sometimes it was played by turning a crowd of drivers against each other, getting them to beat each other’s best price. Sometimes it was played by taking one driver aside and quietly coming to agreement so he wouldn’t lose face in front of his peers. Sometimes it was played with laughter and smiles and a good time all around. But at almost no time did we play it with genuine anger. Any antagonism showed by either party was usually feigned on both parts; the façade would drop the moment agreement was reached. A negotiation may have been fraught with frowns and scowls and groans and wild hand-waving, but with a single formal head bobble of acceptance, the veil of false emotion would be lifted and we’d all be happily on our mutual way.
This is one of the most striking aspects about traveling in India. During our year and a half, people regularly tried to overcharge us because that’s how the game is played; but once we showed that we were too smart for them, the pantomime ended and the other party showed genuine interest in our presence and pleasure at our company. Compare that to our experience in Egypt, where taxi drivers and trinket vendors were pleasant to us only as far as our tourist dollars would take them. Resentment clearly bubbled under the surface of every transaction. One trinket vendor in Cairo’s Khan el-Khalili market let his anger boil over as I negotiated with him for a brass reproduction of the Sphinx in the spring of 2004. “I hate George W. Bush!” he suddenly burst out as I counter-offered with half the price he quoted, just as the Lonely Planet Egypt suggested I should. “I hate the whole fucking American army!” I quickly put down the Sphinx and took my negotiating skills elsewhere.
Such antagonism was never displayed in India. The closest we came to feeling hated was when we took a picture of a bunch of men in a Pune neighborhood that turned out to be the city’s red-light district: the steely gazes fixed upon us in that photo make it pretty clear that none of these guys wanted documentation of their presence in that location. Even then, though, no outward anger was actually displayed.
By the time we left India, we were skilled at bringing the negotiation ritual to fruition as quickly as possible. Once we established a driver was negotiating in good faith (if a driver quoted above 150 rupees, we’d laugh politely and walk to the next one), we’d propose a fare with the knowledge that most drivers find the pantomime satisfactorily fulfilled when they’re able to raise our offer by ten or twenty rupees. So if we wanted to pay fifty, we’d suggest forty. He’d respond with sixty, and then we’d split the difference with a friendly “Theek hai?” and off we’d head into the exhaust clouds.
The game was easier to play once we understood a little Hindi, knew the market rates, and developed the courage to walk away even when no other autos were in the area. Walking away was, in fact, perhaps the strongest negotiation technique. In cases when our price was fair but our driver wasn’t, turning and leaving usually accomplished what staying and arguing could not. The driver would call after us or drive up next to us with a gracious final offer that we’d humbly accept.
The game was also easier to play when we kept it in perspective. Sometimes there was no point of arguing over ten rupees with a man who may be wearing the only shirt he owns.
Our jovial approach to auto negotiation was not the only method. We spent a few days during our last week in Delhi living with our friends Tom and Michael, and our proximity gave us an opportunity to study Tom’s system. His approach seemed based on an assumption exactly the opposite of ours: that every driver in the city was out to cheat him. Tom’s strategy was to pre-empt the driver’s inflated fare by refusing to negotiate, period. He would simply get in the auto and tell the driver where to go without discussing the price at all. And off they would go, with the driver fantasizing about how much he’d get paid by this gora who didn’t seem concerned with money while Tom steeled himself against a confrontation when they arrived. As the driver would pull to the curb and imagine buying himself something indulgent, Tom would shove some money into his hand and begin to walk away. The driver would count the bills and feel his imagined fortune shatter around him.
An argument over the fare would almost inevitably ensue. But this one, unlike the arguments Jenny and I experienced, involved genuine antagonism. “No,” declares Tom, arms crossing, voice dripping, eyes narrowing. “Forty rupees is the fare.” The driver protests. Tom repeats himself, slower, as if speaking to a child: “No, forty rupees. Is. The. Fare.” The argument continues and profanities fly in multiple languages until two angry people finally part ways.
In the instances we rode with Tom, the fares he paid were fair. They were exactly what Jenny and I would have negotiated to pay, and exactly what the driver would have happily accepted had he not spent the duration of the ride fantasizing about all the money he was about to earn. Though the driver hadn’t necessarily been cheated, he felt like he had. The antagonism flowed. So did Tom’s anger. Tom’s expectation of fighting a swindler became a self-fulfilling prophecy, a vicious circle, a bumpy auto ride to hell.
Tom isn’t a jerk. Far from it. And his strategy isn’t born out of misanthropy. Rather, it springs from supply and demand and Tom’s unforgiving misfortune of living on a street rarely taken. His neighborhood had a low supply of autos, which any auto driver passing through would exploit in negotiations to his full advantage, knowing that Tom wouldn’t refuse his offer because he had no other choice. Tom surely had dozens of trips in which he seethed over a fifty-rupee premium extorted by a canny driver; his strategy evolved out of unfortunate necessity.
Which isn’t to say cheating doesn’t happen. It does, and it’s certainly happened to us. Some auto drivers stopped for gas on the way home and asked us to pay. Some auto drivers dropped us in Nizamuddin East and said it was Nizamuddin West. Some auto drivers drove us to their “uncle’s” crafts factory instead of our destination. And some auto drivers demanded more money than we’d agreed upon, telling us they said “eighty” when we heard “thirty” and then refusing to accept the bills we held out for them. In these cases, we discovered that the best strategy was to throw the money with exaggerated rage on his seat or in his lap and then stomp away while cursing to the heavens. Then we’d dash around the corner and giggle about how well we’d just won the game.
(Very rarely, though, that rage wouldn’t be completely feigned. Sometimes our frustration at being taken for a sucker got the best of us, and we’d shout things that made the whole street turn and stare.)
Aside from the rare instances when it was reprised at the end of the journey, the negotiation game ended and the pantomime ceased the moment the fare was agreed upon. But when the negotiations concluded, the terror began: our lives were now fully entrusted to a man who’s sole goal was to deliver us to our destination with his two costs—time and fuel—minimized. While we wanted to arrive at our destination quickly as well, we also placed a certain premium on getting there alive.
This is where our incentives and those of the auto driver come into con
flict.
The prevalence of autos on the road may explain the millions of gods in the Hindu pantheon. Because even we non-Hindus found ourselves invoking every deity we’d ever heard of and making up more on the spot as our auto drivers, relaxed in their seat with one bare foot casually hooked over their knee, leaned on their horns and steered into openings in traffic hidden from our vantage points by the looming headlights of oncoming buses. We imagined a god of seat belts who would wrap his divine arms around our waists to keep us ensconced in the vehicle as we careened around corners. We drew up elaborate plans for a shrine to the god who reached down from the sky to perform the split-second act of Tetris necessary to allow four lanes of traffic traveling four different directions to pass safely through the same intersection without regard for the traffic light. We swore to reject all worldly trappings, drape ourselves in orange robes, head up to the Himalayas, and spend the rest of our days meditating on the divine goodness of whichever deity ensured that the careening BMW full of rich kids who’d spent their evening drinking imported scotch and abusing waiters at Urban Pind missed us by a comfortable three inches. Thanks be to our newly invented gods who watched over us! We arrived at every destination with our pants mostly unsoiled, the driver oblivious to our terror and eager to get us on the sidewalk so he could terrify someone else in his quest for good gas mileage.
We were surprised to realize that of his two chief assets, the auto driver values his fuel more than his time. This observation seemed counter-intuitive until the third or fourth dozen time a driver deliberately chose a route through packed alleys, over dirt roads adjoining Metro construction, or down the eternally jammed Bus Rapid Transit corridor. There were certainly faster routes they could have taken in these instances—proceeding to the next boulevard beyond the BRT line, perhaps, or sticking to the main roads even if they were slightly longer—but the drivers always chose the gas-maximizing route, even at the cost of time they could have been using to drive another passenger.