The Upright Rikshawalah

I love to travel on rikshaws, especially the ones driven by paddles; the hand-driven ones give the impression that you endorse slavery.  However, the fun in sitting on a rikshaw, the one with a high seating, is that you have the whole panoramic view of the society around you.  You actually feel like you are sitting on the Aladin's kaleen, flying over the streets, treating your eyes to the spectacle around.  Whenever I can't start for my daily coaching classes early enough, I take a rikshaw to the mainroad.  And if, on the way, I sight a bus zooming in from behind, I wave at the driver, alight from the rikshaw, hurriedly pay the fare to rikshawallah and mount the bus (Kolkata bus drivers come directly from heaven - always very kind to stop and wait for you - however irritating it may be for the other passengers).  More often than not, I end up paying a few coins more to the rikshawalah, than the fare he blurts out; I am in too much of a hurry to keep the bus waiting for that long; what if the driver is not so divine after all!?  But I never regret the loss of a few coins.  Paying more is always better than paying less in a hurry; and if I can spend hundreds, at one go, in a mall, why cringe for a coin or two in an urgent moment like this! (I am addicted to being punctual, however late I start from home).  This happened twice with the same rikshawallah.  I didn't think much of it.  He may have thought of me as an extravagant girl, weak in maths, careless, whatever.  But the strangest thing was that he found a way to balance the scale.  I happened to find him near my home more often.  I  amusingly thought, that he just wanted to make a quick buck.  So I never went up to him unless one day when I was sure of being late if I didn't take the rikshaw.  And so, there I was, mounted on the top of the world, flying on my kaleen, looking around for any bus. None was in sight yet, and thus we went all the way to the crossroads.  When I alighted, and asked him the fare, he deliberately said 'nau rupay' instead of the usual 'barah'.  I was dumbfounded.  I gave him a ten rupee note, with my forehead wrinkled, and waited as he returned a one-rupee coin.