Watch: A comic artist is blown away by his Uber driver (but does he betray a class bias?)
Sapan Verma was impressed by his swag.
Everyone has a cab story. Tales of sharing a vehicle with intriguing strangers, goof-ups, annoying delays and chatty drivers abound.
And then there’s the amazement when the cab driver turns out not to belong to a stereotype.
Sapan Verma, a member of the comedy group East India Comedy, tells his version of this story in the video above. His driver was a man named Damodar, who, according to Verma, didn’t look the way his “racist” audience might have expected him to on hearing the name.
Damodar turned out to be young, cool with a tattoo on his bicep and a Metallica T-shirt. Juggling two jobs and figuring out that Verma’s pickup location was Starbucks, Damodar casually added that he was there himself some time ago.
This wasn’t a lie, says the comic artist, because the comedian spotted a cup from the coffee shop in the car. He added that he felt like he should have been driving the car for his rather cool cabbie, who had a perfect rating from his customers on the app, instead of the other way round.
Verma observed that the guy shouldn’t have been driving an Uber Black or an Uber Go, but an Uber Swag. He was blown away by his ride and even the music turned out to too hip for his tastes.
The comedian added that if he had a sister, he would have definitely considered telling Damodar, “Chaliye, iss dosti ko rishtedari mein badal dete hai.” (Let’s be relatives instead of just friends).
Verma gets his laughs, but perhaps there’s a smidgen of class bias in the unstated assumption that a cab driver cannot be the socioeconomic equal of the passenger?
