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Tuk-tuk calling!

February 3rd, 2010  |  Published in Humour, India & Around, Living, Sports & Adventure, Travel  |  14 Comments

This guy’s going to be get­ting a lot of calls for sure.

Meet Sam­son, an auto dri­ver from Chen­nai, who has his own web­site, and incred­i­bly (yes, yes!) also turns on the meter!

When I think Chen­nai and auto dri­ver, my mind wan­ders to a jour­ney we under­took a few years ago — my sis­ter and I. We were just vis­it­ing South India then and decided that Chen­nai would form a part of our tour plan. We made the mis­take of try­ing to bar­gain with a auto dri­ver who was intent on rob­bing us. We paid him a per­fectly decent amount.

What he did next, left us scarred for­ever. Despite my abil­ity to com­pletely for­get small details, I still remem­ber this inci­dent. He threw the money out of the rick­shaw and abused us. I thank God that we didn’t under­stand a word of Tamil. Phew! After that, I approach all auto dri­vers in Chen­nai with some amount of fear.

Sam­son there­fore comes as a breath of fresh air.

A Japan­ese tourist set up an email ID for him, a Brit tourist set up his web­site and a Dutch client gave him a lap­top! Only going to prove that nice things hap­pen to nice people!

Okay, so I know who I’m call­ing on my next visit to Chen­nai. Though I have a feel­ing Samson’s cal­en­dar might be a lit­tle full.

(And here’s another inter­est­ing auto dri­ver from Mum­bai via Twit­ter — he offers a 10% dis­count to newly mar­ried cou­ples and has a first aid kit in his auto!).

I hope auto dri­vers in Ban­ga­lore, who don’t want to go any­where (and I mean, any­where except where you want to go) take a hint!

Responses

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  1. Devakishor says:

    February 4th, 2010 at 5:13 pm (#)

    Every­one has a web­site these days!!

    Check out this Bar­ber… http://www.foradamsonly.com/index.php

    This dude even has a Twit­ter account!!!

  2. snippetsnscribbles says:

    February 4th, 2010 at 9:06 pm (#)

    Wow! that is really impressive!

    And they have twit­ter accounts and all? wow!

  3. anita says:

    February 4th, 2010 at 10:56 pm (#)

    @ devak­ishor: heh, not bad! but there’s not a men­tion of where his salon is located! :-)

    @ snip­pet­snscrib­bles: impres­sive yes! but not sure if they have twit­ter accounts!

  4. Sid says:

    February 5th, 2010 at 11:08 pm (#)

    Wow, that is one smart Auto-dude.
    Def­i­nitely call­ing him up the next time I’m there. But I agree with you com­pletely that Chen­nai autos are some of the worst in the coun­try. I can bear even the Dilli-wallas in front of them. And this after know­ing Tamil!

  5. OUTOFDREAM says:

    February 10th, 2010 at 11:14 am (#)

    Funny Indian News chan­nel
    Some one for­got to men­tion the cam­eras were still rolling
    http://www.outofdream.com/2010/02/funny-indian-news-channel-10-pics.html

  6. Ms.N says:

    February 14th, 2010 at 1:56 pm (#)

    seems like the tuk­tas­tic guy is doing his rounds on the www. I don’t know about the web­site and all that, but i sure would love an auto that runs by the meter in chennai!

  7. Thomas says:

    February 14th, 2010 at 5:32 pm (#)

    A Chen­nai auto dri­ver with a web­site ! WOW its incredible.

  8. Lavanya says:

    February 15th, 2010 at 3:02 pm (#)

    I hear that the CallAuto ser­vice that has been launched in Ban­ga­lore is reli­able. Non-tampered dig­i­tal meters I hear. Haven’t a first hand expe­ri­ence though.

  9. vasudevan says:

    February 17th, 2010 at 11:42 pm (#)

    hey,

    remem­ber that blog about a place which dint serve you on time ???
    miller’s 46?

    i remem­bered that when i read about kiruba’s story.

    vasu

  10. Michelle Mitton at Scribbit says:

    February 27th, 2010 at 7:52 am (#)

    Loved his site–I’ll have to look out for him when I go to Chen­nai next month. :)

    I’m plan­ning my first trip to India to visit my par­ents who live in Ban­ga­lore and I’m thrilled to find your blog. How won­der­ful is the internet?

  11. mamatha says:

    March 2nd, 2010 at 9:47 pm (#)

    this is fan­tas­tic! i wish i had a resource for a taxi though, with my 5 mem­ber fam­ily! any word on that? :)

  12. Donna says:

    March 24th, 2010 at 5:37 pm (#)

    Hi Anita, great info — and i am amazed — will surely con­tact Sam­son if i plan to tour chennai

  13. Praveen says:

    March 27th, 2010 at 3:34 am (#)

    Your blog rocks Ani­taji. Really well writ­ten with a great pos­i­tive vibe all around. And yes, nice things hap­pen to nice people :)

  14. yreadthis says:

    April 25th, 2010 at 10:47 pm (#)

    really nice to hear this…keep going on…i to have started…but yours is rock­ing i think so while look­ing at the com­ments on your site…

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This web­site is main­tained by Anita Bora. If you want to know more, there’s a detailed page here. You’re wel­come to leave a com­ment. For any other queries, you can get in touch with me on anitabora5 at red­iff­mail dot com. I started blog­ging way back in 2001 and this blog doc­u­ments my trav­els and tra­vails through the years.

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