An hour ago, I was heading home along Serangoon Road, after having made a mad dash to Fairprice in City Square to load up on some groceries that we had run out of without noticing.
What I noticed after I filtered my car into the middle lane of Serangoon Road was a red Trans Cab behind me. As the traffic was going dead slow, I also noticed a large Indian man standing outside the temple near the Shell petrol kiosk.
He was waving frantically at the Trans Cab.
Since we hadn’t passed the temple yet and the left-most lane (the bus lane) was free of any vehicles, I had expected the Trans Cab – I could see from my rear-view mirror the taxi had green scrolling numbers on its roof availability indicator — to cut out and take the passenger.
But no. The would-be passenger was left waving to no avail on the kerb while th cab trailed behind me.
Yet a couple of minutes later, after having passed the Shell kiosk, the Trans Cab actually filtered off into the bus lane (nothing wrong with that as it’s a Saturday afternoon). I thought he got pissed off trailing me, as I kept a discreet distance behind the vehicle in front of me, in a long line of slow moving traffic.
Then I saw. Not what I thought. The driver actually went into the empty bus lane to pick up a passenger at the kerb. At least that’s what I assumed the young thing in a short dress was.
I drove on pondering.
If that woman was a passenger, was the Trans Cab driver being racist or sexist or both? To ignore a male Indian fare and pick up a non-Indian female fare….
Since i couldn’t read his mind, I think I would give him the benefit of “whatever”.
After all, the young Chinese/Vietnamese/Korean/Japanese young lady could have been a friend, a family member, an acquaintance or a regular passsenger.
Who knows? Only the Trans Cab driver does :roll:
