The enigma of the Bengaluru Auto Driver

Since I’ll be leaving this city soon, I thought it’s imperative that I write an ode to the great being of the garden city. The Auto Driver.

The Average Bengaluru Auto Driver is one who knows one and a half languages (one full Kannada and either half English or half Hindi), likes to yell at passing drivers of two wheelers if they come within a certain distance to him, and hates any form of the North Indian species. The Auto driver shows a rather calm countenance if spoken to in Kannada, but tends to have a more aggressive side which is revealed when spoken to in other languages and or denied his evening tea or filter coffee. The Bengaluru Auto Driver is a unique sub-species of the Indian Auto Driver, and while having many similar traits to his cousins in the other major cities of the country, he is usually somewhat of an intellectual on any and all matters.

Jokes aside, I’ve had some of my best, and some of my worst experiences with Auto Drivers in my 18 years in the city. Sometimes it’s a nightmare - meter plus 100 becomes quite a difficulty because you feel like and know that you’re definitely getting fleeced while going back home after a long day of school or work and it’s raining, but don’t have the mental bandwidth to bargain.

There have been a lot of changes in the Bengaluru Auto Driver ecosystem over the years. From the introduction of Ola and Uber to the recent-ish development of Namma Yatri, there have been quite a few changes they have had to contend with. Many of them as a side effect have gotten good at using technology, while some of them staunchly refuse to use any form of technology. The contrast was felt by me randomly while I was normally catching the auto, the driver asked me to enter the maps location on his phone and then told me his price of that. Another time, for the same location the driver instantly knew where it was and started bargaining. Whatever sails the ship works I guess, or in this case whatever gets you past the Bengaluru traffic.

The average Bengaluru Auto Driver is a fickle species. I had a memorable experience with an Auto Driver once, when he proclaimed himself to have visited and prayed in every major temple across Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. His sons were both pretty successful engineers apparently, having done well in CET, gotten into a decent college and then gotten the famed Bengaluru tech job, and they were asking for him to retire. After they were settled, he and wife decided go to on a trip every 2 weeks after Covid in the weekends, and he proudly says that his children fund their trips. He only rides Autos now because, in his words he would be a “bored vegetable” if he just sat home and did nothing.

A lot of people, especially people who have migrated to Bengaluru from different parts of the country for their jobs seem to hate the Auto Drivers. The hate is mutual in most cases as the Auto Drivers dislike the idea that people from not their own culture are settling in Bengaluru en masse. Just because I was curious, I made it a point to speak to the driver of every Auto I got into in the past few months, and most chaps are just nice normal people (after you finish bargaining) wanting to get on with their daily job. Some of them are aggressively pro-Kannada, while others don’t seem to care as long they make their daily keep. They are also really good at the art of judging people, and Auto Drivers are some of the funniest people I’ve ever met. You can laugh at them, with them or at the joke they make, and most of them are glad to have a passenger who seems to have a small bit of interest about who they are.

But then a surprising experiential thing I’ve come to realise is that some of the Auto Drivers are incredibly interesting individuals who have a vast amount of diverse knowledge. An old Auto Driver once smilingly told me - ‘I wake up today, and I think about today. I go to sleep happy if I feel like I kept my conscience clean for today. If I feel guilty about something I did today, then I will fix it tomorrow. There’s not much time left before I go up, so I’ll try be happy every day.’ I failed to realise how incredibly heavy his words were until I thought about it again. But then again, each Auto Driver, as each person, is different and the next time you sit in an Auto, just try to engage with the human in front of you. Maybe I’ll end up missing the Bengaluru Auto rides when I’m not here anymore.

Thank you for reading.

You can find me on Instagram or Twitter by the handle @chimneyhedge or on discord @ignaras.