An auto ride conversation.

Yesterday, booked an auto (Namma Yatri) from Koramangala to Marathalli. Auto driver maybe in his Mid 30’s a Telugite settled in Bangalore.

I was trying to give instructions in Mix of English/Hindi/Telugu on where I am and he understood I am a Telugu speaking guy he switched to Telugu. Once I boarded the auto, he started a casual conversation in Telugu asking me about my whereabouts, what I do and from how long I have been in Bangalore. For which, I replied it’s nearly a year. Then he was quick to respond “Samvastaram avthundi vachi Kannada nerchukoled” (It’s been year and You haven’t learnt Kannada). I said, you are right I should have learnt Kannada and I will learn (at least learn basic words we use in our day to day life).

Then we moved from discussing Kannada to Andhra politics why Chandrababu Naidu was arrested, Pawan Kalyan and who will win the elections, he was praising late Rajashekar reddy and criticising his son Jagan .

While we were discussing, I opened my phone and started watching IndvsPak match on my phone and he observed this and started talking about how mobiles are impacting lives for good and bad. He told me about his college and school days, how the new years were celebrated, gifting the greeting card with the favourite actors/actress photos on them, how the gang used to go for a movie, celebrate by cutting cake at midnight. As I write this, I am remembering all those birthday parties, those cake and thumps up near year celebrations in my school days. Now , this has changed to sending a happy new year sticker on WhatsApp.

Came the destination I got off the auto and picked up my phone, saw a status about my friends birthday. I opened WhatsApp to text him wishes, instead I called him and we spoke for half an hour.