Mumbai cha Taxiwala Jaipur cha Rikshaw wala (The Jaipur Blog- Part 1)

“Travel is the greatest educator of all”. I had heard this phrase before, but some days ago I actually got to experience it firsthand. Few days ago I got a chance to reside in Jaipur at my brother’s residence and also to explore the city for nearly a week. Added that with the train journeys to and fro of 18 hours, each was an experience of a lifetime. I met a lot of people during this and got to know their opinions on varied matters etc. This is just an attempt to share such experiences and express my thoughts on some of them.

This is part one of it: Mumbai’s Taxiwala & Jaipur’s Rikshawala

13th November 2022, Sunday:
We got the train to Jaipur from Mumbai Central railway station at 07:00 pm. So we started our journey to Mumbai at the Swargate bus stand. We tried to avoid getting on a “Shivneri” just hearing the rates of it. But standing there looking at buses leaving made it inevitable to travel from Shivneri. Though it was a Volvo bus same to the “2013 Sarthak” traveled in, the experience was quite the opposite or one could say “Not Volvo-esque”. What was a heavenly experience back then turned out to be a disastrous one. those noisy ACs were just doing noise and not cooling as supposedly they ought to.
As we touched the Mumbai ground at Dadar Shivneri bus stop (Which I think is quite a display of ingenuity), our first protagonist of the story entered. Mumbai cha Taxiwala. A middle-aged man, probably from UP or other alike Hindi heartland state. During the journey of around 5-6 km, he explained to us all the famous spots which fell in between. Like Lalbaug cha Raja Ganapati, All of the non-operational cotton mills, Rani chi baug and suggested two more eating options when asked for directions to “Sardar Pavbhaji”. “Mat jao waha pe, bahut mehnga hai, Isse acchha Wadapav khao waha corner pe”, He said. We didn’t go to both places instead we ate without salt Veg Biryani (Or Veg Pulao as may you like to call it) at the IRCTC canteen. His personality and behavior was just as we hear about how Mumbai people are. Very cooperative and very understanding in nature. He knows that we both are similar, both came from different cities in this Mayanagari. It feels like a fiduciary duty to help others. And he knows if he doesn’t play by the rules, there are thousands of replacements waiting to snatch this opportunity. So just said thanks to the free market and went ahead!

14th November 2022, Monday:
We arrived at Durgapura station (one station before Jaipur junction). We had to take out all of the luggage in time less than 2 minutes. We managed to achieve that and came outside the station, and here was waiting for our second protagonist of the story. Jaipur cha Rikshaw wala! I thought he was taking us to his taxi, but it was a rickshaw. We shouldn’t have gone into that but considering the sunk cost of efforts we anyways went for it.
During that journey from the station to the brother’s colony I asked Rikshawala to take the rikshaw from Patrika Gate to feel like I’ve earned something to consol my earlier betrayal of taxi and rikshaw. But the lowest point of our interaction came when he demanded ₹650 for a mere distance of 6 km. Which was unreasonably unreasonable. We tried and tried to negotiate and bring the amount down. We finally settled for an amount that was also unreasonable but it was nearly impossible to further bring it down. So we just conceded defeat at this point.
Due to this incident, our impression of Jaipur got hampered severely. We just hoped that future experiences should be good ones. (Spoiler alert: they were good with very rare exceptions including this one)

Continuing in part 2!

PS:- Main motive behind this post is just to make an internet imprint of one of my first non-devotional travel. Medium of a blog just felt right than exchanging it during casual talks!