Taxi Lives

Trip distance: 36.79km Earnings: 1724.25 LKR It was another Saturday. The first two hires for the day was just taking me around my residential area itself. I expected this to be a regular, or even possibly more boring, day. The fourth hire for the day directed me to pick someone from a new hotel that came up in Colombo. The name indicated someone from our neighbouring country. While I was on the way to pick him up, I got a call from him.

The week had been quite good so far. I had kind of figured out how the drive patterns work and what time of the day and what places in the city have reasonably profitable customers. When I got this booking from one of those areas somewhat quite early in to the night, I thought this was going to be just another routine hire like that. The gentleman I picked up was quite elderly. However having said that, I am sure that my father is at least two decades older than him, but this one gave off the vibe of being working for a very long time. Unlike many solo male riders, he chose to take the backseat. The trip was about 20km away. A good hire for some Uber drivers because it is a long hire. It was a better hire for me because it went somewhere close to my home. After a short inquiry of which route to take, we started chatting. "You know son, I work for the embassy", that's how the conversation started. I managed to contain my groan to one just inside my head. "Ah t...