7:15 pm

Dusk set in sooner than I expected. It might rain today. It has been raining in Hyderabad for a few days now. Every evening, I ply down the road splashing water, taking a lot of care for pedestrians and their clean dresses. We cabbies have a reputation of being ruthless, it passed down through generations and even now, it is a tag we carry along.

I’ve not gotten a single ride today. I need to buy milk on my way back. I’m in front of Kacheguda railway station. People are bundled with a lot of luggage, I can see them hugging each other… and saying painful good byes. Being here troubles me a lot, it is one place packed with emotions. Plenty of it. It is seven ten now. I feel lazy already. I think I should lean back on my seat. It is 7:15, I push my seat back and as I prepare to rest my phone blinks and beeps.

I’ve finally gotten a ride, when I was just about to relax. I think twice before accepting it, but I do at last. It is a woman. I go the entrance of the station, that is where she has pinned her location. I reach there. There is no one with a phone. There is this expression on people’s faces when they are waiting for a cab, most of the time it is exasperation. I see no such face around. Maybe I should call this woman. Her phone rings, elaborately. Is she also debating whether to take this ride? I do not know, I still can’t spot her. She picks up after a couple of rings, her voice disturbs me. She is speaking in muffles, and her voice is overpowered by the announcements in the station. I just hear the part where she tells me she will be here in a few seconds. I conclude she must have been nearby.

She comes towards my vehicle, double checks my number plate and gets in. she sits in the front seat, quite obviously not wanting to share the back seat with other riders. Again, along with being ruthless, cabbies are known for rash driving and taking lone women to shady places to fulfill their needs. I belong to the community, so I can’t blame her for taking a pool ride at this hour.

She sits quietly, closes the door in no hurry. I start driving. Did she say anything at that moment? I felt I missed something she said, again the honkings of vehicles smothered her voice. In a few seconds she looked away. She was a regular traveler I felt. She kept staring at the world outside the window.

It started raining. Mildly first and then a deluge.

I looked towards her, she was still looking away. Her hands moved up to her face at regular intervals, she was crying. One tear after the other, she kept wiping them. It disturbed me to sit next to her. We got stuck in a traffic jam, she looked into her phone as if to find something important, and put it off right away.

Why was she in tears? All along there was not a word spoken in between us. She gave me no directions, never even wondering whether I’m taking her where I’m supposed to. She was not checking the map like most women who take Uber rides. How could she be like this. I had a lot of questions.

I sped up the vehicle. I felt the need to reach her as soon as I could. Half of me wanted to get rid of the constant sniffing sounds and this unearthly silence from my vehicle, the other half wanted to ask her reasons.

I meet at least ten people a day, some grumble a lot even when I reach them on time, some strike up unnecessary conversations and tell me all about their lives, as if I need to know those. For a five-star rating on the app, I pretend throughout the journey like I’m all ears, and nod whenever they pause, that is when they are asking for a response and well I give them one.

This one does no such thing, and I feel I need to listen to her. It is 7:30, she is sobbing. Then again she never stopped. What was there to be so sad about? I came up with a couple of speculations myself. She had no luggage on her, and I had picked her from a station, facts concluded that she had come to drop someone. And a good reader that I am, I knew that this was someone important to her.

She gave out a long sniff. I hated it. She put on her phone and typed something. Please don’t get me wrong, I am not staring at her every minute. It is just that the vehicle is closed, eerily silent and I can hear her keypad tone as she types. From the corner of my eye, I can see that she lingers on the phone for a while and then puts it off again.

Its 7:40, we’ll be reaching in a minute or two. She wiped her face again, we reached a gate, a college gate. Oh! She is a student. The guards stop us at the gate, I lower my window, she leans and tells them “student”. She musters a smile, and they let us pass. Her voice is thick and coarse from the 45 minutes of crying, nothing like what I heard through the phone.

She looks straight now, at the road.

“Right.” She tells me. I do not reply. I take a right turn.

“Straight, left.” The coarse thick voice gives me directions.

“Stop.” She fetches money from her wallet, and hands it over. She doesn’t wait for me to tell the amount. She opens the door, steps out and thanks me. I linger for a moment; she doesn’t go into the building in front of which I stopped. Instead she takes solace in darkness and thinks no one can see her wiping her face incessantly.

It is drizzling, I take a U turn and return the way I came. All this while, I don’t know how she looks.

I hated this trip, maybe I like people chattering away than this woman who left me with a bunch of questions.

My phone beeps and blinks again, I’ve got another ride, I refuse. I’m done for the day; the silence has sucked the life in me.

I need to buy milk before going home, or else Kamini is going to put up another fight. Milk, milk, milk… I remind myself.

Somewhere I feel she will write about this one day, make me the ruthless driver there.

Milk, milk, milk….