The strangest people inspire me

It's weird how you can feel like an absolute wipe-out one minute, and like sunny skies soon after. Here's what happened - It was a presumably bad start to another Monday morning; I didn't hear the alarm, for the fourth time that I reset it, and had to run hair un-brushed, buttons undone, all the way uphill to wave down an auto. And if you live in Bangalore, and are accustomed to how autodrivers behave here, you can imagine how long it was before someone actually felt like offering me a ride. Sheesh, seriously. After a twenty minute wait, I got into a rickety old yellow wheezer and looked down at the guy's license plate because it looked so goddamn ancient, and was a bit worried to see that his photograph didn't resemble him one bit.

And near it, I found an old laminated newspaper clipping that read 'Driving in Twilight of Life' - Oh. My. God. This was some famous celebrity auto guy. Amused, I picked it up to read it.

Turns out, Krishna Kamath, the guy whose auto I had got into was one of the oldest auto-drivers in Bangalore. I leaned forward and asked him. 'Bhaiya, yeh aapka interview hai kya? (Is this your interview?'. He nodded and answered shyly, 'Yes. I've been driving for nearly fifty years. I love waking up early everyday and driving my auto.' I asked him if I could shoot a photograph before I paid him off and he agreed.

Some people make late Monday mornings worth the wait.