A few weeks back, on a fine Sunday afternoon I was seen tweeting about help required around Goregaon / Malad (Mumbai) to take a fraudulent Auto-rickshaw driver to a nearby Police Station. I had promised to share more details on my blog and here we go!

Yesterday Mumbai saw a flash strike by auto rickshaw drivers which apparently wasn’t called by their union. Newspapers are reporting hundreds of rigged auto meters lying at workshops as auto-walas panic to get them ‘un-tampered’ given the recent RTO drive against them. As my friend Sandeep RTs above … Only in India you can dare to go on a strike, justifying an act of cheating.

What happened that Sunday was a simple story. I took an auto from Andheri highway to Goregaon Oberoi Mall. The auto driver wasn’t in uniform and while that was least of my concern, as we reached the destination (Oberoi Mall, Goregaon) I realised he was trying to overcharge me. The meter reading was 4.80 and the auto-driver asked me for Rs 64.

I happened to knew the formula for calculating the auto-fare after the recent change in tariffs (Thanks M4Mum/Raxit). So when the auto rickshaw driver asked mr for Rs 64, I got a little suspicious and casually hit the calculator on my mobile. For the ones who want to note, the formula is x13 -2 (multiply the meter reading by 13 and subract 2 from the total.)

The calculation in my case came to 60.4 and not 64. A small difference. I confronted the auto wala and he showed me a fare card. It was certainly a fake one, for fares above Rs 80 his tariff card showed amounts higher by Rs 10 or more. I told him that he is cheating & he suggested me to forget the 4 rupee difference as a loan and asked me to go. Yes, WTF.

I took the fare card and told him to take me towards the mall on the opposite side, where there were quite a few police vans given it was near about independence day. The auto-wala realized that I am not going to relent and snatched the fake fare card from me. He agreed to go on the opposite side but insisted on holding the rate card with him. I had to choose, either hold on to the tariff card or protect the iPad in my hand.

I allowed him to hold the tariff card, but remained seated in the auto. As he took a U-turn towards the mall, he hit the right lane and went towards the highway, ignoring all instructions to stop at the mall. I panicked and called a Murtaza (a young entrepreneur) who was going to meet me at the mall. He was holding on to the rate card  until we crossed the mall but it had disappeared by the time we reached the highway. I quizzed and he told me its in his pocket.

Luckily I found a traffic constable at the highway right where we stopped and shouted for him to help. As the constable took stock of things, suddenly two original rate cards came out of the auto-walas pocket and the story changed to me not having enough money to pay him. I couldn’t believe that such inauthenticity is happening right in front of me. I called in my friend Murtaza to the highway and asked him and a friend accompanying him to look for the rate card that he might have thrown on the road near the mall. While I argued with the auto-wala, Murtaza and his friend returned 10 mins later with the fake rate card in their hands. Bingo, we had the proof now and we were 3 vs 1.

The auto-wala still remained arrogant and denied the charge. We insisted the constable to take him to the police station and were surprised when he just took his license and gave it to us, asking us to take him to the Police Station ourselves (the auto wala was expected to drive us down.) A couple of mins later the constable suggested that we leave him as he will get f****d at the police station. He even made the auto-wala apologize. I insisted on booking him.

We three took a seat inside the auto and asked him to head towards the police station. He moved a little ahead on the highway and started pleading us to leave him. Offered to take no money for the ride from Andheri and a little later even offered to pay Rs 200 to us. We told him in no unclear terms that we are all headed to the police station. He didn’t comply, took a U-turn on the highway and tried to drop us at Oberoi Mall.

Luckily we again ran into a couple of cops (this time not the traffic ones) and asked them for help. They gave the auto-driver some good gaalis, questioned him about the missing uniform and handed his badge to us (his license was already with us.) He asked us to be firm and take him to the Police station. And there we go again. The auto-wala tried his best on the way asking for forgiveness, stopped a couple of times, but it took a little polite gyaan that ‘the more he wastes our time, the more he will suffer’ for us to reach the police station.

At the police station one of the cops just asked us to drop him there, leave my contact details and go away. No report, no paper work, nothing! We knew nothing about the regulations. They said he would be fined. We insisted on knowing what action they are taking and after spending some 20 mins at the police station, we left. Last we saw was the fact that he had been taken inside and they were in process of charging him. We were told that he would be made to wait there for several hours and it makes no sense for us to wait there. Guess we had enough for the day already …

The total incident lasted little over an hour, was intense and I was scared on multiple occasions.  If it was so much effort to just take a certainly corrupt auto rickshaw driver to Police Station, I wonder what happens in bigger cases. God bless the system.

Special thanks to Murtaza and his friend (guess Gaurav) for the support.

Things happened in a hurry and this is the only photo I could manage to click in between the chaos. After we reached the police station, I was out of time to click any more.

As always, most commenting on the post is on FB. You can see it here

]]> http://annkur.com/2011/09/the-day-i-took-an-auto-driver-to-police-station/feed/ 6 http://annkur.com/2011/09/startup-weekend-cambridge-to-hyderabad-the-experience/ http://annkur.com/2011/09/startup-weekend-cambridge-to-hyderabad-the-experience/#comments Mon, 05 Sep 2011 12:04:01 +0000 Annkur http://annkur.com/?p=1011

Back in March (2011) I disappeared for a month to UK and while I spent a month there, there are only two significant things I did. The First being a visit to Stone Henge (picture below) and the other being ‘Startup Weekend Cambridge.’

Startup Weekend is this 54 hours madness that brings together business folks, developers, designers and jack of all trades like me to build a startup over a weekend. Ones with an idea pitch it, voting follows and teams are formed organically. These teams have to come back with a product / prototype / demo / whatever by Sunday evening and present to the judging panel. In march, Startup Weekend, which has as of today done over 100 cities and 250 action packed weekends, came to India.

My friend Pankaj Jain was (he still is) passionately spearheading the India leg of SW and I decided to jump in and help organize Delhi and Bangalore. Events were planned, dates final, lots of pre-event work done and then UK happened at the same time as SW Bangalore and Delhi. And right then, Pjain pointed me to Startup Weekend Cambridge and I signed up for it immediately. So as the folks in India were organizing Bangalore, I participated in Cambridge. Left home with a view of seeing startup action in UK, getting a feel of the event, floating around multiple teams and chilling over the weekend.

What happened was crazy. I pitched an idea in UK, got enough votes, failed to make a team. Another interesting fun gaming idea by Fabian got enough votes and I followed Joe to join that team. Before even we got started with the idea on Friday night, the model failed during our discussions and we came up with a new idea: a geo-social network it was. Didn’t go back to London and worked at the awesome St Johns innovation center to make this a reality with a fabulous team. Pitched it on Sunday evening… no we didn’t win. But the madness was an experience of its own.

Fast forward to Hyderabad, September 2011, I am again with Pjain and gang, organizing Startup Weekend Hyderabad. Jumped forward, bought a ticket, participated. Pitched an idea, didn’t get votes, no team. Joined a simple yet determined guy Sundaram for his ideas around Kirana stores and remodeled it to make it a reality. In Cambridge we were 5 geeks sitting on a PC, designing, coding, conceptualizing and making a ppt. In Hyderabad, we were 3 in all, 1 developer and 2 business folks. We spent almost all our time travelling, taking to street vendors, hawkers and trying to understand the ‘grass root’ level of entrepreneurship. Finding easy ways of automating things, understanding how society sustains thousands of these small entrepreneurs everyday.

We made a delicious pitch. Decorated the hall with mosambis, lady fingers and did a live demo of a tool empowering hawkers. Shot a documentary style video and showed it in-between our 5 min pitch. Below is the video, the viability of the project was tough, business model was difficult and not a big surprise that we didn’t win. But yet again I went to a Startup Weekend, expecting to chill-out, sit on the fence and co-ordinate work with my team in Mumbai… well that didn’t happen. Startup Weekend somehow always manages to put me in action, brings the best out of me and I am glad I joined Sundaram and did this with him and Sanghi (our champion dev for the weekend.)

Across Cambridge and Hyderabad, I have met and worked with some amazing folks and at this point it is so very likely that I might not meet a lot of these people every again in my life. Yet they are a part of me, whenever I want a little dose of energy, I just remember the moments spent in Cambridge and Hyderabad. Looking forward to many more such weekends!

Video Link

I am wondering what I should do to get back those wonderful thoughts that made some really memorable posts here. Any suggestions?

One of the ideas I might explore is to integrate a photo blog here; but the writings for now are rare

Btw the post is titled office office, as I have just got started with a new office routine. Though not the first office for me, but a first with a good 5 member team and a hectic 12 hour office schedule almost everyday. And yes, I am loving it! Leaving you with a few pictures below:

So I started writing this post while listening to this, and I am originally supposed to put this on facebook, but i am too lazy to switch tabs and do that. (Update: this is this). Now as I write, I see that my sweet little sis is complaining that I havn’t posted anything psyco (did I spell that correctly?) (cares who.. jaane do), like this since a long time. (Update: This this is this, or perhaps something else) Yes I am now a little sleepy aswell. So what happened at Barcamp? Well I stole this T-Shirt from @sengupta, took 2 under tree sessions along with @priyankawriting and @vivekk (or rather stuck my foot in their undertree sessions),

btw the food was yummy. Imagine what would have happened if I would have okayed that food from the SPJIMR MESS (@vivekk saved you’all the horror). I also hijacked 2 sessions  or rather hijacked one for 2 mins with permission, helped @farrhad hijack one and stuck my foot / or ws it my tongue? in @monikkinom’s super cool session. OOPS this was about me at barcamp, so what happened at barcamp6 actually? Well when you are on my page, you better look for me and what i did, not bcm6  – shame on you. OK silly. Whtever!

If you cant see the video click here

More BCP2 videos soon

We went to the highest point on the terrace entering via a small window.

But weather played a spoil sport… Though we did felt complete darkness of the Eclipse, we missed the sun which was not visible in the cloudy climate. While many of you would term it a #Fail, we are satisfied that we gave this once in a life time opportunity a fair try (with super adventurous driving to Surat over rocky roads and rains). To give you an idea of how dark it became during the eclipse, here is a before and after pic!

Click the image to enlarge

To get such stunning shots (and this aswell), we do need to be a little crazy… I am proud that we (I +@ankeshk @thakkar and @netra) went ahead with this trip!!!

More pics from the pic coming up on my Picasa album

Evangelizing twitter on juhu beach

Now since @iMBA is such a lazy busy ass, I would have to make this blog entry. One of my most memorable outings was this little Road Trip along with Mitesh, Amit and Rahul. The original trip starts from Belapur when Mitesh (@iMba) and Rahul take Amit (@abeoye) for Mumbai darshan. The first halt being Andheri where I connect with them and we head towards Juhu.

It was just a casual walk back to office after lunchtime when I decide to join these guys and I never knew that I would return home only 36hours later after loads of fun, action, drama, adventure, tweetup … you name it – we did it!

— incomplete — View the pics for now

The @asfaq lookalike

(If you are wondering what @imba @annkur and @abeyoye means … They are our Twitter IDs)

the car we rented actually had a breakdown and we had to push start it .. #adventure

So what happened @ Blog Camp Pune 2? Reading reactions all over the web, I have realised that I like to read one liners – So my reactions in one liners-

————

• incomplete ….
• Meetu kicked off the Blog Camp (@Thakkar happily gave his slot to her). She managed to engage the crowd really well. This was followed by @ankeshk and myself.
• Navin spoke on what blogs can learn from newspapers. Though I missed it, I was lucky to catch up with Navin while traveling to the tweetup later that day.
• Thakkar took over the entire camp … rather the popular demand for Thakkar took over the entire camp.
• Was nice meeting Jim Karter …  Myself and @farrhad caught up with him the day after the Camp and were treated with a wonderful dinner and gyaan sharing session.
• I share similar feeling as @manan does. Unconference should be structured, else #fail. Making it structured allows people to plan what they want to attend and what not. (leaving some small open sessions in between is also good)
• I stayed back till monday afternoon at @farrhad‘s home in Pune. Trip back to Mumbai was lonely, I caught up with some much needed sleep.

————

After 6 months of attending BarCamps, BlogCamps, StartupSaturdays etc, I decided to take a session at BlogCampPune 2. My talk was revolved around the mistakes that beginners make while starting up as a blogger (mainly my experience blogging and observing others around me). I had to rush with my talk as I was allotted very limited time, but some fireworks were seen as I termed bloggers concentrating on social media early on as a mistake.

I hope to get the videos I recorded at the event online asap.

Since I am one of the last ones to write about BCP2, here are the links to some popular reactions to the same:

• Deepxp’s concern and pointers
• Ideasmith’s Roundup of Pune trip (She has my elephant joke there without credits )
• Why Dhananjay was disappointed
• Mahendra’s Reflections
• Thakkar Jr’s Blog entry on the Camp and the Tweetup that followed
• Anant’s Compilation of reactions
• Guess I am missing a few … do buzz me

Photos I took taken from my cam at the event are live here

Update: Video snippet of my talk is here

An upcoming Blog Camp in Pune is something I am really looking forward to. Its IMO the biggest meet of Bloggers in West India. Scheduled for 27th June. Also coming up on 26th is the Aperitweat in Mumbai.

So all in all I want to say though I am composing a few posts on mobile, I doubt if there would be many from me this month. Guest Posts most welcome (almost anything goes on my blog)…  :)

Btw: hope to see you at HeadStart this saturday (june 10th) – Buy the tickets here! A peek-a-boo at the conference hall below

Guest post by my lovely sister: Anchal

Our journey to Delhi (coming back from Agra) was adventurous. Highly frustrated with the long wait at the Agra Railway Station…OMG our train was over an hour late. Bearing the heat was the biggest fear. We managed to find a seat in an air conditioned waiting room. I doubt if the AC was switched on. Anyways, after a long wait, we went to the platform to discover a non Indian chap even more frustrated. Hehe and Annkur couldn’t have missed clicking him; and, why not? They make movies on Indian slums, we just got a picture.

And then the conversation began… Mr. Ohio truly inspired by “Jab We Met”  (that was the last Hindi movie he saw ) booked a train ticket to the capital without realizing the difference between an AC coach and a General Coach. But then, the sight of 200 people traveling together in the same coach in this heat scared him. And annkur inspired by Aamir Khan helped him get out of this. Hmm… negotiations with the TC fetched Mathew a seat… point to be noted: I and annkur had to share a seat. Mathew somehow managed to fit into that berth…I don’t know if he was too giant or the berth was too small.

Nice guy he was, studying films in Bangalore… This gave us a point to discuss; movies ranging from Jab We Met to Dev D and Deepa Mehta to Mira Nairji.

I hope that he has got his camera repaired by now. Lets see if he meets Annkur on the 19^th of this month when he lands in Mumbai.