Cars and drivers

After I got home from brunch with Ravi, I finished packing and my hosts called a taxi -- a real taxicab, not an autocab. This is a good time to explain the whole thing, which I have alluded to before during the week, of having a car and driver. Most Americans who are here with an American company are given, as a perk, a dedicated car and driver. My hosts' arrangement may be typical: they have use of the car and driver 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, and they can shift the guy's schedule according to their needs. For example, when they picked me up from the airport*, they had arranged for the guy to work late on Saturday night (and it was really late -- after midnight -- when his day finally ended.) The driver is on call throughout his workday, which usually starts when he picks you up in the morning to take you to work. In the case of my hosts, the guy gives Charles a ride to work in the morning, then is on call throughout the day for him or his partner Debbie for errands and shopping. That's how, for example, we got to Malleswaram the first two times I went.

You can also get a taxi to perform the same function. Besides taking me to the airport late in the evening, there were several errands my hosts wanted to do, including going to a place called the Cash Pharmacy, where you can buy more than you might expect over the counter. Here's me and Debbie waiting outside while they fill the order.

Having a car (air-conditioned!) and driver is extremely convenient, even posh. And it may strike an American as being somewhat ostentatious. But you get over that pretty quickly.

How can companies afford it? I don't know the economics, but as my host pointed out, in countries like India with large pools of poor people, there is a bias toward choosing the more labor-intensive solution from the available options. (The opposite is true of many developed countries, which is why almost everyone who does menial labor in the U.S. is an illegal laborer from another country.) As for the taxi, it cost something like 2200 Rs. for 8 hours -- that's like $57. And as with the dedicated driver (who had the day off), when we went into a shop or restaurant, the guys just waits for you around the corner or across the street.

What do the drivers do when waiting? Charles' photo shows them playing an improvised game of chance.

* If you've been following my posts, you might not have seen that one, which I wrote after I arrived but did not get a chance to post until last night.