When demonetisation struck us all cashless, I, who had previously resisted app-cabs, went over to the Uber side. Before that I'd always been a votary of Bombay's kaali-peeli auto-taxis, but, all too soon I got used to the air-conditioned business of arriving at a destination with hair in place.

Then, the other day, too rushed to wait for Uber's false promises in which 6 minutes always become 26, I took an auto over a long, sweaty distance. Suddenly I remembered everything I'd forgotten for the last so many months about longer auto travel. It is too noisy to make phone calls, too rattly to text or tweet or even read (especially, when some people — didn't say it's me — are in denial about needing reading glasses). So you do what people alone in autos do — either drift away or look at people in all the other autos alongside.