The auto-rickshaw that refused everyone

The driver was unfailingly polite. He greeted each prospective rider with a small nod, listened to the destination, considered it for a moment with a slight inclination of the head, and then declined — with regret, with a small not today, sir, with a courtesy that was, in its own way, more frustrating than any refusal had any right to be.

The meter ran the entire time. The auto did not move.

By the second week, the regulars on Brigade Road had begun to circle him with a certain professional curiosity. The juice-stall man hypothesised a vow. The newspaper-stall man hypothesised an appointment. The lottery-ticket boy hypothesised a woman, which was, the lottery-ticket boy held, the explanation for most things.

By the third week, a small, quiet competition had begun. Riders would arrive with progressively unreasonable destinations — the airport, the next state, the moon — to see which one would, finally, crack him.

None of them did. He nodded, listened, considered, declined.

On the twenty-second day he was gone. The auto was gone. The meter was gone. The spot, on Brigade Road, was occupied, by lunchtime, by a parked scooter, as though nothing had ever happened.

The lottery-ticket boy, for the rest of his life, would claim it had been a woman.