The Day I Took An Auto Driver To Police Station

Auto Drivers In Mumbai

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 Read More

Mumbai Blasts – Collecting Important Info / Help

JULY 13 2011 – 8:11PM

3 Blasts in south mumbai reported. Its less than an hour since I have heard of the news, Twitter is overflowing with info and I think it’s best to have good info at one place. I am collecting some tweets and links here.

Mumbai Help Blog RT @b50: The blog is up: http://j.mp/r5SUaF

#MumbaiBlasts Great spreadsheet with all Help/Contact Nos. RT @notdanwilkerson: http://j.mp/n1HnW8

Round up of people willing to shelter: Nos/twitter handle /areas: pass on to people who need wp.me/pwhKq-er Read More

Asked to prove my connection with Mumbai

While participating in the Best Blog in Mumbai contest by MumbaiBloggers; I (all participants) was asked to explain my association with Mumbai. The question asked was

This mail comes to you with a purpose. As you already know, the competition is only for the Bloggers who had certain association with Mumbai. The association may be staying in Mumbai, Having studied or worked in Mumbai or writing about Mumbai.. So we just wanted to know in what way you are associated with Mumbai..

A copy of my response below:

Namaskar Sajjano

Ham bambai wasi hai bachpan se. Yaha hi pale bade hai.

The blog annkur.com is my personal blog, and having been in Mumbai since childhood I am very much mumbaikar. Such that even MNS cannot refute.

In the last 10 years I have spent over 99.99% of my time in Mumbai. Probably more than Googles Guranteed uptime. (Plz calculate 10yrs – 7 days to get the ratio).

And If you didn’t realise the ultimate proof. You asked for a simple reply and I gave a full डेड शयाना mumbaiya reply 😉

Dirt biking my way to office

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March 2009

I head towards my office one morning just to see that things have changed dramatically overnight. Some water pipeline is being laid and the whole road is being dugged. The constant drilling along with a hot summer can really irritate a peace loving geek.

And a couple of days later I find myself dirt biking my way to office. The rubble laid next to the dugged up road with stones all over …

Though its not too difficult climbing them on my bike, but people on the streets and cycles made things a little tricky. Thankfully the pain of drilling machines all day just under my nose was over in some 10 days, I though it would go on for months… Here are a few shots and a video.

Read More