Sometimes, you are inside an autorikshaw. The auto makes its way through immensely dense traffic. Traffic that is a motley multitude of everything on wheels. The auto snakes its way through the massively crowded street. A street so packed with vehicles, it’d make the number of hair on Anil Kapoor’s body look like a mere number. The driver wields the archaic handlebar like a fairy waves her magic wand. He dismisses the tremendous traffic around him with a flourish of the said handlebar. He cuts through lanes in a manner that reminds you of a hot knife cutting through butter. Effortless! You gape at his consummate skills. Here is a man at the peak of his prowess, not unlike one Mr. Michael Schumacher. The auto wafts through the street with characteristic intrepidity, much like the heady scent radiating from the beautiful lady riding that Scooty in the next lane. Poetry in Motion! The auto lets out a throaty roar, provoked by a gentle twitch of the hand that controls the accelerator. Soon, it has left mere mortals behind, spurred on by the unending power that the mighty engine delivers. As the auto makes a clean getaway, everything else is relegated to being mere dots in the rear view mirror. Soon we (you are one with the driver and the auto now, its subliminal) are coasting along a scenic road, completely devoid of everything else with an internal combustion engine.

Sometimes you are outside an autorikshaw. Your car stands like a lone warrior, surrounded by nothing but autos; so many of them, they’d make the number of hair on Anil Kapoor’s body look like a mere number; as far as the eye can see, stretching away far into the horizon. They are all the same, trying to snake their way through the terrifying traffic. All of them in a hurry to get to the same place – nowhere. Cutting lanes as if there were no tomorrow, further complicating an already convoluted conundrum. The situation is getting worse, each auto trying to waft its way through the traffic, much like the odour that emanates from the pile of uncleaned garbage a few feet away on the same street. All the drivers are trying to wrestle with their accelerators, coercing their autos to break the shackles and leave the traffic behind. All of them are met with as much success as India found at Athens not so long back. The autos let out a collective moan accompanied by a black blast of carbon monoxide clouds; they move but a few inches. You are left honking your horn till it shouts itself hoarse, all of it to no avail. After what seems like a few millennia, the mess has cleared up a bit. And then you find yourself on a road devoid of everything else with an internal combustion engine, everything but a solitary auto. The auto is coasting along as if the road was leased out to the driver’s great grand uncle by the ever-munificent Brihanmumbai Mahanagar Palika.

As a string of the choicest exotic expletives finds its way out of your mouth, you can’t help but think – sometimes you are inside an autorikshaw.