“Aap ko pasaand nahi ji, ye gaana? Shayad ek aur?”
(Did you not like it, this song? Maybe one more?)
And she sang another song, and got the autorickshaw driver to take her to Charminar, with the meter on.
This is how an American professor officially announced to the world, her tried and tested tactic of using culture to get recalcitrant auto drivers to switch on the meter.
Christine Fair, author and assistant professor of Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University uploaded her one-and-a-half minute video on YouTube on Wednesday night.
When you watch the video (which is very cleverly taken, by the way — she is visible only in the rear view mirror to the left of the auto driver), you can she how she embarrasses the autorickshaw driver into playing by the rules.
Switching on her phone camera she tells the auto driver: “Mein Youtube laga rahi hu. Acha duniya… Yeh autowala hai, yeh apna kaam karne se inkaar kar rahe hai”
(I’m putting on YouTube. Hello world...this auto driver, he is refusing to do his job)
And then she tells the man, that she is, as many Indians say, “jobless”.
“Maine unko samjahaya ki aaj bilkul bekar hu. Aaj meri chutti hai, yahan pe baith sakti hu, is rickshaw me, pure din ke dohran, aur un ke liye zabardast gaana ga sakti hu”
(I explained to him that I’m totally jobless today. Today is my holiday, I can sit right here, in this rickshaw, for the entire day, and sing songs for him)
It’s taken me some 20 years to figure out this technique to get an auto or a taxi driver in India to take me to my destination with the meter on. I need to carry with me some song sheets. Note that I have used this technique now in several cities. It has worked every time. No need to get mad. Just toss away your shame...and wait out the miscreant.
— Prof Christine Fair
Prof Fair is a noted academician who writes on the geo-political situation in South-east Asia.
She is also know to be a vocal critic of Pakistan’s policy of backing terrorist group and has taken on the Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI quite often on social media.
(With inputs from The News Minute)
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