The other day we had a late night conference to attend, and we had flown into Mumbai a bit early for the event, leaving my friend and I with some time to spare. We dared the rush hour in Vile Parle to get some work done in Andheri before returning to our hotel. The 'work' was shopping! (I remember a wag saying, "what you like doing is fun, what you don’t is work")
On our way to Andheri, we hired an auto whose driver was in his fifties and had been into that line of work for a considerable length of time-we reckoned this from his laid back attitude. My friend is a junior who works with my ex-boss now. Though we were anxious about managing to get there in time, we were delivered without any hassle to our destination.
We spent some time mixing work with pleasure (just sipped a glass of cold coffee ). On our return we hired another auto whose driver was perhaps not even in his twenties. He drove the auto as if he was on a grand prix circuit. I commented to my my friend that the previous driver was like my ex-boss: experienced and measured in his driving, while this one was like my young colleague, energetic and fast. Thanks to the driver's incomplete knowledge of the major roads we overshot our hotel by about ten kilometers before we took an equally long road back, and finally reached the hotel, late by an hour in our estimate.
All the clichés about the young being inexperienced and careless came to my mind. Somehow, the conference that we attended later that night made us forget the unease we had with the young auto driver.
But the next morning that image of the young brat came to haunt me again as I saw two very young and handsome looking pilots climb up to the cockpit
