Drivers in Delhi are dealing with significant challenges. They don’t work in shifts; they have no guaranteed rest periods, no lunch breaks, or holidays. They are on-call 24/7, fortunate to grab a nap—in the driver’s seat—between trips, which does not necessarily improve the smell in the car. A privileged driver can rent a room to live in, the rest live in makeshift huts and sleep on dingy Charpai bed on the roadside. Fashioned out of tarpaulins, these huts often trap the suffocating heat of summer inside, leaving some drivers no option except to drag their beds, or just a blanket to lie on, next to the roadside for a bit of shut-eye. As one driver wryly commented: “at least the traffic whizzing by created a bit of airflow and a tiny bit of cooling. They call it  nature’s air conditioning — which appears to also help in keeping the mosquitoes away.

Upon my grand arrival in Delhi in 2010, amid the chaos of three daughters and a cascade of luggage, Gopi emerged as my knight in shining armour. With zero words in common, our initial conversations were more about sign-language than dialogue. Over time, we bridged the language divide, and he transformed from just a driver to an indispensable guide and guardian, unveiling the layers of Indian life with every turn we took.

Before Gopi became my permanent driver, my naivety once led me into a scam, guided by a less scrupulous driver to a shop where my purchase (of something I’ve since forgotten) surely contributed more to his income than my souvenir collection. It was a lesson learned; not all who drive are knights, some are cunning merchants in disguise. But can you blame them?

This experience clarified for me the great importance of a trustworthy driver. For women, this can be doubly critical as some drivers use the ride as a sort of speed date, some hoping for a quick hookup, others hoping to transcend their caste with a good match. One of my colleagues started receiving good-morning and good-night messages from a driver after a trip; he escalated to Facebook messages with increasingly personal content and didn’t stop until my colleague asked a male friend to intervene on her behalf.