CARPOOL DIARIES
Author Jatin Kuberkar talks about his experiences of getting a dozen people together for carpooling
Exasperated with cabs that never turned up on time, software engineer Jatin Kuberkar was at his wits end and desperately needed a solution for his dilemma — he wanted to get to work on time and very much preferred to keep his sanity intact while doing so.
Given that his office in the financial district was 35 km from his residence in Kothapet and taking in account the crazy traffic of the city, Jatin finally came up with an idea: “Why not carpool?”
In 2012, the 34-year-old sent an email to his colleagues and eventually managed to get 11 others on board. But what was scheduled to follow in the next four years was something he had not planned for, leave alone write a book —
Cabbing All The Way — about it.“Getting 12 people together was the easier part, keeping them together was a challenge,” says Jatin, who then hired a car and a driver for the task. “Our monthly expenses were `3,000 — less than a car and almost the same for a bike. Even if one person left the group, there would be an imbalance, from the budgeting point of view.”
And there were also abundant differences among the group comprising four women and eight men. “But then there were many happy memories. Believe it or not, we even had a ‘Cab Constitution’, a rule book for all us,” says Jatin, who recollects the time when looking for a shorter route to work the group landed right in front of Golconda Fort instead. “That’s when we thought let’s just bunk work and enjoy the day off.”
Then there was romance and forging of priceless bonds that took place during the cab rides. “A couple got married and then there was this one guy who could barely speak English, but over the course of time we helped him overcome this difficulty and now he is working in the US.”
Even though Jatin is no longer part of the group, he is happy that others from work have adopted the system. “My priorities changed and I was working till late,” says Jatin, who admits that writing comes quite naturally to him. “I have been writing since a long time and it comes quite naturally. My second book, While I was Waiting, narrates interesting anecdotes that I encountered while I would wait for my cab to work. But my first published work was in 2006 in Deccan Chronicle, when I wrote about a secret route to a temple in Nizamabad,” says Jatin, who is now working on two other books.
Over the course of time, all of us became good friends. One couple got married and we even helped a guy improve his English — he is working in the US now