Video: Bengaluru Auto Driver Screams At Woman Over Fare, Demands She Speak Kannada

In recent times, the Kannada language row in Karnataka has sparked significant debate, particularly in Bengaluru, a city known for its multicultural population. While advocates suggest people learn the language, claiming it's a way of respecting the local culture, critics argue that such a demand is exclusionary in a cosmopolitan setting. Now, a video of a heated argument between a woman and a Bengaluru auto rickshaw driver has reignited the language debate online.
Taking to Instagram, user Anya S shared a video in which the auto driver is seen speaking in Kannada in a visibly aggressive tone. She said that the argument between the two began after the driver demanded Rs 390 for a ride that, according to her Rapido app, was supposed to cost Rs 296.
In the video, Anya repeatedly tells the driver that she will pay what the app says. "Don't scream at me. I'll only pay what the app says," she says. However, as the driver continues to scream at her, she calls over another auto-rickshaw driver, saying, "Aap yahan aao, mujhe darr lag raha hai (Come here, I'm feeling scared)." The driver, on the other hand, becomes aggressive, demanding that she speak Kannada.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Anya S (@anyadamnson)
In the caption, Anya recounted the entire incident. "This isn't about refusing to learn the local language - of course I want to learn Kannada. But when people behave like this, it makes me question myself. It makes me think, why should I make the effort when they don't know how to treat me with basic respect?" she wrote.
"I calmly told him I'd pay what the app showed. Rs 296. That's it. But he began shouting. He stepped in, came close - trying to intimidate me, scare me. He mocked me for speaking Hindi. Told me I had no right to be here if I didn't speak Kannada. But this wasn't about language. This was about entitlement, aggression, and disrespect," Anya continued.
She further made it clear that she wasn't against paying extra when deserved. "I'm someone who happily pays extra when I've had a good ride. But not when someone tries to bully or threaten me into it," she wrote.
"We're part of this city. We live here, we work here, we contribute to its economy. And that means we deserve fairness, dignity, and safety - no matter what language we speak. If you've ever felt unsafe or second-guessed yourself in moments like this - you are not wrong. You are not alone. And you have every right to say no," she concluded.
As the video gained traction online, ride-hailing app Rapido responded, assuring action. "At Rapido, customer safety and dignity are our highest priorities, Anya... the reported captain has been permanently barred from our platform. Additionally, we are working on implementing stronger protocols for our captains to prevent such incidents in the future," the company commented.
Bengaluru locals also responded to the clip. One user wrote, "As a proud Kannadiga, I want to apologize for the unacceptable behavior of some individuals who are tarnishing our reputation and that of South India. I recommend exploring alternative transportation options like Yulu electric scooters, buses, and metros. On behalf of all educated Kannadigas, we extend our sincerest apologies.Hope you're safe and okay."
"Last resort when they get caught is speak in Kannada , these unruly autodrivers don't represent Karnataka and our Kannada . They behave the same with Kannadigas too," commented another.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

India.com

an hour ago

• India.com

Meet Queen Of Ranthambore: Used To Be World's Oldest-Surviving Tigress In Wild, Passed Away At Age Of...

photoDetails english 2919747 Updated:Jun 21, 2025, 09:23 PM IST Why Named Machli? 1 / 7 Machli, in Hindi, means 'fish', and the reason for the tigress' unique name was her fish-shaped mark on the left ear of her face. The Ranthambore National Park website also stated that she inherited this name from her mother. Film On Machli 2 / 7 A film on Machali, 'The World's Most Famous Tiger', won the National Award at the 66th National Film Awards. Other Names 3 / 7 Machli's other names also include- 'Queen of Ranthambore', 'Lady of the Lakes', and 'Crocodile Killer'. Machli's Death 4 / 7 Machli passed away at the age of 20, and this made her the World's Oldest-Surviving Tigress in the wild. Machli Was Famous 5 / 7 Machli was also famous for being the 'most photographed tigress.' She had been the subject of many research papers on wildlife, journals, books, documentaries, short films, and journals. Machli's Cubs 6 / 7 Machli gave birth to three cubs – one female (Sundari – T-17), and two males (Broken Tail and Slant Ear). By April 2002, Machali gave birth to her second litter, the two cubs named Jhumru (male) and Jhumri (female). She also mothered several other cubs. Credits 7 / 7 Photo Credit: Ranthambore National Park Website

Indian Express

3 hours ago

• Indian Express

JoSAA Counselling 2025 Round 1: Seat acceptance deadline on June 22

JoSAA Counselling 2025 Round 1 Deadline: The Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) is set to conclude the extended the deadline for Round 1 online reporting for the 2025 counselling cycle. Candidates who have been allotted a seat in Round 1 are required to complete all required steps, including submission of willingness (Freeze/Float/Slide), document upload, and seat acceptance fee payment, by 5 pm tomorrow, June 22, 2025 (Sunday) through the official website at JoSAA Counselling 2025 Round 1 reporting deadline extended, revised dates here This reporting process is mandatory for candidates seeking admission to institutions such as IITs, NITs, IIITs, and GFTIs. JoSAA has clearly stated that failure to complete any of the steps by the deadline will result in cancellation of the provisionally allotted seat, and the candidate will not be eligible for seat allocation in subsequent rounds. To complete the online reporting, candidates should: Step 1: Visit the official website at Step 2: Click on the Candidate Login section Step 3: Enter your registration number and password Step 4: Select the seat acceptance fee payment option Step 5: Complete the transaction and download the confirmation page For candidates who have already paid the seat acceptance fee using the pre-payment option, it is still necessary to log in, submit their willingness, and upload all required documents. Simply paying the fee without completing these steps will result in seat cancellation. Candidates belonging to SC/ST/PwD categories are required to pay Rs 15,000, while others must pay Rs 30,000. This amount includes a non-refundable processing fee of Rs 5,000, and the balance will be adjusted against the admission fee during final college enrollment. Candidates are advised to complete all formalities before the June 22 deadline to secure their seat and remain eligible for upcoming counselling rounds.

Scroll.in

5 hours ago

• Scroll.in

‘Dukh ki Duniya Bhitar Hai': In writer Jey Sushil's memoir, an intimate republic and a sense of loss

The literature of mourning is a curious subgenre. It can easily slip into sentimentality, but the best examples rise above that to reflect on bigger things, society, time, and the fragile bonds that hold families together. Dukh Ki Duniya Bhitar Hai, a memoir in Hindi by journalist and writer Jey Sushil, belongs to that rare kind. It is both a deeply personal story of a son grieving his father and a wider reflection on a disappearing way of life in postcolonial India. This way of life was shaped by ideas of collective work, the respect tied to public sector jobs, political dreams, and simple, honest hopes. It once shaped the lives of millions in India's industrial towns. As India shifted towards a market-driven and individualistic culture, that world began to fade not through breaking news, but in quiet living rooms and long silences. Sushil's memoir is one of the few literary attempts in recent memory to document that quiet erosion. The memoir, written with startling clarity and emotional restraint, revolves around Sushil's late father, a man born in a small village in north Bihar, who spent much of his working life in the uranium mines of Jadugoda, now in Jharkhand part of the industrial belt that once symbolised India's postcolonial ambition. His life was shaped by the hopes of Nehruvian socialism and the dignity of unionised labour, only to end in the quiet disappointment that many experienced in liberalised India. His story, rendered with care and restraint, reflects a generation of working-class men who helped build the Indian republic but were rarely written about. In this way, Sushil's memoir joins a quiet but significant tradition of sons writing to understand their fathers. Akhil Sharma's Family Life explores a boy's fraught relationship with his parents amid grief and migration; Aatish Taseer's Stranger to History traces a son's search for an absent father across borders, ideologies, and silences. Saikat Majumdar's The Firebird captures the delicate act of observing a parent's gradual unravelling from a child's eye. Even in VS Naipaul's Miguel Street, the narrator tries to make sense of his father's slow decline and the quiet failures of an ordinary man. Like Naipaul's characters, Sushil's father is ordinary; he is not a writer, leader or thinker, but through this memoir, he becomes unforgettable, a symbol of middle India's lost dreams and fading dignity. The inner world of grief Sushil begins his story not with grand declarations but with an awkward phone call, a simple SMS that triggers a landslide of memory. This is refreshing. Indian memoirs often tend to adopt a heroic tone, as if the narrator had always been aware of the literary weight of his own story, scripting his life in hindsight. Sushil, in contrast, writes from the middle of confusion, from within the fog of unresolved emotions. His grief is not performative; it is searching, unadorned, and honest. It grows gradually, like a slow monsoon over parched ground and as it deepens, so too do our sympathies, not just for the storyteller, but for the father whose absence animates every page. What opens is a moving recollection of childhood in Jadugoda, not just a place on the industrial map of India, but a dream built with brick, uranium, and belief. Sushil writes with tender clarity about his mother, his brothers, sisters-in-law, and the nephew who is now grown; later, his artist-wife and infant son quietly enter the story, threading the past with the present. Created during the zenith of India's post-independence industrial push, Jadugoda, as Sushil reveals, was a city held together not by policy but by people – the technicians, clerks, drivers, and mine workers who believed in the republic's promise, even when that belief asked for everything and gave very little in return. At the heart of this fragile promise stood Sushil's father, a unionist, a principled man, at times rigid, often misunderstood, but never cynical. He believed in the dignity of labour, read Hindi magazines like Dharmyug and Saptahik Hindustan, wrote letters with care, and took pride in his small kitchen garden. To understand the son, we must first understand the father. Sushil, a journalist who once flirted with being an artist, carries a quiet urge to observe, record, and belong. This seems to come from his father, whose life was filled with handwritten notes, old pamphlets, union records, and minutes of political meetings. While reading, we find that Sushil's prose is gentler, more intimate. He writes less like a polemicist and more like a witness to both public change and private loss. His grief is not tidy or stylised; it meanders, returning to the domestic; the memory of onions growing by the kitchen, a half-read Dharmyug magazine, the sound of a transistor crackling in the summer heat. In these moments, Sushil achieves what few writers do; he brings together the sentimental and the structural, capturing both a father's silence and a generation's fading script. The place and the migration One of the memoir's greatest strengths is its deep-rootedness in place. Jadugoda, Darbhanga, and the small towns of eastern India are not mere settings, they are living, breathing characters. Sushil describes these spaces with a gaze that is clear-eyed yet affectionate. He includes the emotional geography of small-town life, where distances are not measured in kilometres but in rituals, reputations, and shared memories. Migration, in Sushil's telling, is a quiet, cyclical process of leaving, returning, and never fully belonging again. His father's move from the ancestral village to the industrial township of Jadugoda, and Sushil's own journey from Jharkhand to Delhi and eventually to the United States, are narrated not as escapes or achievements, but as part of a slow dislocation. The further he moves from home, the more he clings to memory. In this way, the memoir is not only an elegy for a father or a time, but also for the fragile threads that tie us to where we come from, even when we can no longer return. Dukh Ki Duniya Bhitar Hai is not a conventional memoir. It does not have a linear plot, nor does it offer easy closure. What it does provide, however, is a rare honesty. It speaks of disappointment, of misunderstanding, of silences that accumulate over the years. As a reader's questions may arise in our thoughts, like, What do we owe our parents? Or, what parts of their stories do we carry forward, and what do we leave behind? Sushil does not offer definitive answers, but rather invites us to sit with these questions, in the long shadow of memory, in the in-between spaces of love and regret. In its quiet, unassuming way, this memoir becomes a gentle act of remembrance, and perhaps, of reconciliation. In an age obsessed with spectacle, where public memory is curated through soundbites and hashtags, Sushil's memoir is an act of quiet resistance. It reminds us that grief is not a performance; it is a conversation, often with people who are no longer there to respond. If literature has a civic role, it is to recover these lost conversations. In doing so, it helps build a more honest archive of the nation's inner life. Dukh Ki Duniya Bhitar Hai does precisely that and with grace, depth, and lasting dignity. Ashutosh Kumar Thakur curates the Benaras Literature Festival.