A Price-full journey

Everybody in this world may be ignorant of many things but for people, who are visiting Coimbatore, they need not know the demography or geography of the place but they ought to know about the three tyre taxi called “Auto rickshaw”.


Once, a friend of mine wished to see me at my hometown and I told him the route to my house. He told me that I need not pick him up and that he will manage by himself to reach my house. So I thought he may not be new to Coimbatore. He came by a morning train and took an auto rickshaw en route to my house from railway station.

The auto rickshaw driver in his first sight identified that the person was an outsider and told him that he knew the location and asked my friend to get in. It was a long journey with heavy traffic, roads with big potholes and the auto rickshaw driver took all possible routes as if he was in a F1 race. For him there was no “no-entry”, no “no-free left”. Finally the auto rickshaw reached the destination. The distance from railway station to my house is hardly 5km.The auto driver charged my friend Rs.200.My friend was wonder struck at the fare and finally he had to give him as he was new to the place. He gave him a 500 rupee note and got back the balance.


After the auto rickshaw left, as he was keeping his balance in his purse, he noted a small piece of white paper inside his purse. He took it and it was the train ticket of the morning’s journey from Ernakulum to Coimbatore. He was unmoved for sometime as he noted that the fare was just Rs.60!!!!