Diaper McRae

Blame it on video games or the fact that I'm a detail man, but either way these proclivities have endowed me with an uncanny tendency to pick up potential threats hidden in plain sight and weave it all into a Rube Goldberg-esque chain of events that ultimately precipitate in a gruesome end.

The sort that would give the makers of Final Destination films a raging boner.

It's this very talent (or paranoia, as my friends put it) that made me reconsider hailing a cab one morning. You see, the tyres on this taxi were balder than the cabbie and the hole in the bodywork, brought upon by decades of neglect and corrosion, was almost as big as the gigantic mole on his cheek.

But strangely, I wasn’t experiencing Final Destination-esque visions of a car crash on account of the poor roadworthiness of the vehicle.

What had me more concerned was the advanced age and rather conspicuous senility of the cabbie. One look at him would've explained why the validity of a driving licence is inversely proportional to the holder's age. Let's just say that, in a perfect world, he would've been mandated to attend a refresher course every Monday.

However, all this concern for safety was moot because desperate times called for desperate measures. And I sure as hell was desperate after being refused by a dozen-odd cabbies in a row.

You see, the mere mention of Lower Parel during the rush hour prompts a look of indignation from cabbies. The kind one reserves for someone offering your wife and mother lead roles in the feature length adaptation of everyone’s favourite Brazilian opus—2 Girls 1 Cup.

At this juncture, I had gotten so accustomed to being unceremoniously refused, that it was actually reassuring when my query, "Lower Parel jaoge?" (can you drive me to Lower Parel), elicited no audible response from the senile old man.

Well, at least he hadn't rejected my appeal outright.

Worryingly, there was neither a nod, nor any acknowledgement through as much as a twitch of the facial muscles. I say that with conviction because, now that I was closer, I realised that the huge mole on his cheek was actually a large fruit fly. And it hadn't stirred for what seemed to be an eternity as I awaited his response.

Was he dead?

Would I end up missing my appointment now that I had become a material witness?

All these thoughts took flight along with the mole/fly when the old man moaned incoherently while motioning at me to board the cab. Clearly, both the fly and I had been fooled.

The cabbie was very much alive and kicking. As a matter of fact, kicking hard into the loud pedal with the zeal and naiveté of a teenager driving for the first time, after years of stabbing away at the arrow keys in NFS: Most Wanted.

And just like that, my concern presently shifted from being detained as a material witness, to becoming one of those humanoid figures forensic experts chalk around nasty bloodstains.

You see, the cabbie was driving faster and more recklessly than I did while power sliding into a group of pedestrians for a multi-kill combo. Except that was me as a 12-year old playing Carmageddon—a game that wouldn’t see the light of the day in these PC times—and this was him pulling even riskier moves.

In the real fucking world.

"When in doubt, flat out," is what Colin McRae was quoted famously. This suicidal madman actually put that motto in practice. And going by the speed at which we were hurtling through traffic, he seemed to be more doubtful than Dawkins and Hitchens combined.

Interestingly, even as I took a Braille reading of the taxi's interiors with my skull, I noticed that we somehow hadn't been transformed into a twisted puzzle of metal and burning flesh despite ten minutes of non-stop traffic violations.

There was a method to this madness.

Even as the taxi twisted and skid on bald cross-ply tyres, it certainly didn't go about the business with the clumsiness of Keshto Mukherjee on a skating rink. On the contrary, it slipped through the traffic with the grace and vigour of a lioness tearing into the herd of gazelles, and the confidence of an alley cat prowling its familiar hunting grounds.

Shockingly, the cabbie had been maintaining the same blank expression of unmitigated senility through all this.

If one were to take away all the crazy that was happening around him, you couldn't tell if he was swerving around recklessly in a tonne of metal, or engaged in a thousand-yard stare whilst seated in a comfy armchair within a retirement home.

The cabbie exhibited the same control, skill, and psychological makeup of a rally driver, who are known to be just as relaxed whilst breaking the very laws of physics at terminal velocities.

But that makes no sense at all.

How can a senile old man, who takes minutes to register a simple query, possess the capability of a champion rally driver?

You see, skill and operational prudence are virtues you either imbue naturally, or they can be drilled into you with practice and diligence. Discipline perfects skills, and repetition transforms them into muscle memory.

Perform a task over and over again for decades, like Diaper McRae here, and the skill set gets etched permanently into the part of the cerebral cortex that your brain reserves for essential tasks like breathing and procreation.

In essence, the cabbie could zoom around with the finesse of a rally driver even when he has, in all probability, forgotten how to wipe his ass. And going by how he smelled, I’m not even sure if that qualifies as a hyperbole.

But I digress.

What we have here is a perfect zombie driver. Highly capable and with absolutely no concept of self-preservation, or the fear of death.

Although I was sore and probably carrying some poo in my pants, I had reached my destination well ahead of time. I alighted the cab, kissed the ground, and asked him to keep the change. I'm not sure if he was still acquainted with the concept of mathematics or currency for that matter, but that's inconsequential as he had done his job impeccably.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that I intend to let him chauffeur me around ever again.

Cover Image: Dougie Wallace 's entry to the Retina Photography Festival .