The selfless cab driver who returns the valuables some schmo left in his car is an urban archetype that never seems to grow old. It’s the sort of embodiment of working-class dignity that civic and business leaders draw on to signify that for all the hubbub and ambient edginess of city life, everything (and everyone) is ultimately in its right place. And in a context where, as is the case in most large American cities, taxi workers tend to be immigrants, every instance when a cabbie can be celebrated for doing the right thing represents that much more balm with which to assuage not only class but also ethnic anxieties.
This week brought two such cases, spanning the North American continent from sea to shining sea, and the heroes in both cases are desi: Indian taxi driver Vinod Mago from Lynnwood, near Seattle, who returned a customer’s wallet with $5,950 in cash, and Bangladeshi driver Osman Chowdhury (pictured) here in New York, whose customer, a jeweler from Dallas, left a suitcase that was found to contain 31 diamond rings rings.
As you may have read, the Chowdhury story comes with the additional piquant detail that the Dallas lady had tipped him only 30 cents on a $10.70 fare. So in the end her misadventure only ended up costing her $100.30, as she gave Chowdhury a C-note as his reward. (Though he initially refused any reward at all, and it may be that he was only prepared to accept the equivalent of fares he lost while dealing with the situation, which of course would make her a bit less of a tightwad and him even more of a saint.)
Here’s a snapshot of Chowdhury’s life according to a BBC report:
Back home in Bangladesh he used to work as a contractor. He is still unmarried, but lost his parents recently and has to provide for his family which includes many sisters.
He does not even own a cab, but rents it for 12 hour shifts.
The job is so stressful that it has affected his health. He suffers from high blood pressure, and kidney problems.
“But I have always maintained that no matter what the problems we face in life, we should not resort to dishonesty,” he said.
And here’s Vinod Mago’s similar comment, from an AP report:
“If money doesn’t belong to me, I don’t keep it,” Mago said. “I know God is watching everybody, every second.”
Wise statements on the part of both brothers, of course, though I don’t think too many tears would have been in order had the 30-cent tipper somehow lost her diamonds for good; I suppose you can make the karmic argument either way. But I especially liked this comment on a Bangladeshi blog, which relayed another quote from Osman and added a topical barb:
This is what he had to say about the incident: “All my life, I tried to be honest, …today is no different…. I’m not going to take someone else’s money or property to make me rich. I don’t want it that way.”
IsnÂ’t it interesting that the majority of the elected officials in Bangladesh think exactly the opposite way, and think they can loot public money just because they can. I hope Osman Chowdhury will go back to Bangladesh, and run for a seat in the parliament in the next election. Bangladesh desperately needs people like Osman in the Shangshad and in the PMÂ’s cabinet.
To which one commenter offered the obviousreply:
It is quite possibly because he IS an honest man that he chose to drive a cab in NYC rather than enter BD politics.
What I liked in that BBC article was “in what has been a good week for South Asian taxi cab drivers..” Hhahahahahahah!
Thanks for the story! I had read about some of the cabbies before. Karma alwasy come back toyou sooner or later.
Cool story…although it’s a little sad that one human being doing a good turn for another is so newsworthy.
Alright, i know this is not a PC thing to say, but i am just saying…
Again this is my opinion, Cabbies return stuff(most of the time) because they know if they steal it they can’t get away with it. There is a record of every cab’s customer pickup and route, so it would be pretty hard for someone to keep the stuff.
I second that. I don’t necessarily mean to say he is dishonest, but it isn’t just a case of selflessness, despite having the freedom of having done otherwise.
one of the primary reasons many of my family members have left bangladesh is that “honesty doesn’t pay.” there is plenty of empirical evidence in my family that disregarding law and ethical behavior can result in worldly success, while being honest results in praise from everyone, but that doesn’t do anything to ameliorate your relative poverty.
Couldn’t they just claim they didn’t notice it was on the backseat and any of the next few passengers might have picked it up and taken it with them.
I haven’t felt this dissillusioned since I found out Obama smokes.
Apparently he didn’t even open the briefcase until he got back to his taxi center. And surely he could have pocketed a diamond or three and gotten away with it? There’s no way to prove what’s in a wallet or briefcse and moreover it’s the customer’s responsibility not to leave things around so they cannot feel entitled to press charges or anything. I do believe there is a huge element of honesty and simplicity involved. For all their reputation for being the most corrupt nations and what not, I’ve noticed that in small towns in India people are really touchingly honest sometimes.
And isn’t the media savvy enough not to report on a story unless it actually involved something newsworthy, i.e, genuine honesty?
It wouldn’t be that hard. I left my purse in a taxi once and it was impossible to find the driver. I couldn’t even remember what taxi company it was. Months later, someone was writing checks from my checkbook. It could have been the driver, or it could have been a passenger that found the purse, and I’ll never know.
Who carries $5000 in their wallet, anyway?
While that may be – okay, is – true for India as well, I would not make any hasty, grand, culturally deterministic conclusion about that part of the world. That might have to do primarily with the resource constraint/ economic condition of that place at that period in time. Social evils were rampant in now-prosperous, so-called progressive parts of the world – we know that from Dickens’s Oliver Twist.
And ethics certainly isn’t only about what you cannot do (e.g., disregard law), but also what one must do in that situation – what is one’s duty. That’s the basic argument between Krishna’s deontological ethics and Arjuna’s consequentialist despondency in the Gita.
Desi cabbies can always use good PR like this.
A few years ago it was common to hear comedians make slurs about immigrant cab drivers in New York (especially in the late 1990s, around the time of the big NYC cab strike). Now I’ve been hearing it less, but I have a feeling some of that sentiment (“they can’t drive,” “they can’t speak English,” “they’re all named Abdul,” etc.) is still there.
Once I had an African driver who returned a cell phone I had left in the back seat of a cab in Philly. Of course, we could actually call the phone (harder to make your $5000 make that convenient ringing sound).
Ingrate. Obama smokes so you won’t have to
I would not make any hasty, grand, culturally deterministic conclusion about that part of the world. That might have to do primarily with the resource constraint/ economic condition of that place at that period in time.
i didn’t make any, so don’t read such conclusions into it. that being said, even if situational and contingent parameters are what causes the culture of corruption to flourish (i have relatives who are economists who have done analysis of the fact that “bribes” in a place like bangladesh where everyone assumes that they’ll go on and so discount salaries appropriately are more like “tips”), that doesn’t mean it is any more pleasant for those who choose not to participate in the behavior. e.g., i have an uncle whose subordinates live in palatial mansions while he lives in a modest apartment. he was promoted to his position part because of his 25 year record of honesty and trustworthiness (he’s is in a government ministry which does auditing and accounting), so everyone agreed that he would be a good manager, and he gets a lot of respect. nevertheless, he is in the bizarre position of never being able to entertain his subordinates because they live such grand homes and have far more disposable income than he does (because they take bribes). these are the consequences based on ethical decisions which result in people leaving these countries. the best solution is economic development, but in the proximate moment there’s a reason that so many want to leave. one need not commit the fundamental attritbution error and make unethical behavior an essential facet of someone’s character to still abhor the reality of warped incentives which drives a culture to such a lack of transparency.
That was a really heartwarming story, and yes, I think it’s a good thing it’s out there, New Yorkers can be (could be? Been a few years since I lived there) rather snotty about desi cabbies and how badly they drive and how funny they speak, etc.
But who in the name of $%&* carries around half a million dollars worth of diamond rings without effing security escorts and then leaves it in the trunk of a cab???
I donÂ’t think too many tears would have been in order had the 30-cent tipper somehow lost her diamonds for good; I suppose you can make the karmic argument either way. WTF? Aside from the most delusional “brown robin hood vs. rich white (wo-)man” angle, there is NO way that keeping the diamonds would’ve been “karmically” equivalent — $0.30 tip or otherwise. Thankfully, enough people (well, in the US relative to Bangladesh at least) see it this way and thus we have a relatively lawful, orderly society.
How the heck do you reconcile the two? “Tips” in miserably impoverished Bangladesh are enough to buy “palatial mansions”???
i didn’t make any, so don’t read such conclusions into it. that being said, even if situational and contingent parameters are what causes the culture of corruption to flourish (i have relatives who are economists who have done analysis of the fact that “bribes” in a place like bangladesh where everyone assumes that they’ll go on and so discount salaries appropriately are more like “tips”), that doesn’t mean it is any more pleasant for those who choose not to participate in the behavior. e.g., i have an uncle whose subordinates live in palatial mansions while he lives in a modest apartment. he was promoted to his position part because of his 25 year record of honesty and trustworthiness (he’s is in a government ministry which does auditing and accounting), so everyone agreed that he would be a good manager, and he gets a lot of respect. nevertheless, he is in the bizarre position of never being able to entertain his subordinates because they live such grand homes and have far more disposable income than he does (because they take bribes). these are the consequences based on ethical decisions which result in people leaving these countries. the best solution is economic development, but in the proximate moment there’s a reason that so many want to leave. one need not commit the fundamental attritbution error and make unethical behavior an essential facet of someone’s character to still abhor the reality of warped incentives which drives a culture to such a lack of transparency.
Razib, you’re pedantic.
I realize you didn’t mean the slightest of harm and it was all in good fun but you should realize that “injun” is a deragatory term. I’m sure you wouldn’t have written a similar headline using the n-word in jest.
Source: WordNet (r) 1.7
Injun n : offensive term for Native Americans [syn: Redskin, Injun, red man]
What are the odds that this woman NEVER tips badly again. How embarrassing to have it revealed to the world that you are an incredibly shitty tipper.
Hehe, very true about the tipping – the driver was clever to reveal that bit of information, from now on not only this woman but everyone else will guiltily tip NYC cabbies better!
Thank you Umang, but if you’re going to google one word in my title, why not look into the entire phrase while you’re at it? “Honest Injun” is a phrase with a history in the American context, and I was alluding to that history.
And:
Perhaps my allusion now makes more sense to you.
Man, cabbies have been getting shit on so much this past year so I’m glad to see this. First there was that whole Robin Williams spew against immigrant cabbies, then I saw the movie, ‘Sorry, haters!’
I love that you bring us positive news, even when so many try to spin it in a negative way. I saw this first in The Daily News and was so happy to read it. Regular New Yorkers have really been doing some good deeds lately. Go New York!
what’s with all the cynics on this board? It’s a nice story; I like the NY angle, and I hope the guy enjoys his fame. Did I read correctly that he’s unmarried? All those commendations from the mayor and such should look pretty impressive on his bio/cv.
Nice story, smart Osman (his real name is Abdul, hehehe) and good work by Siddhartha! Let me stick my head out of the bunker to just say this: I am torn on the matter concerning the word Injun. While the first usage described in #22 sounds fine, the second one does not. The main difference being whether non-native-americans describe themselves using the word (as is the case in the first usage).
…I mean it’s pretty clear that current common usage is positive, but the history is not (since it implies that the usual “Injun” is dishonest).
alas, if everyone were so honest
http://www.macleans.ca/education/universities/article.jsp?content=20070212_140680_140680
…but it’s certainly appropriately used in the title to this post since it’s ton-gueinch-eek.
and i wanted to point out that those who leave are in no higher moral ground because they couldn’t take it any more (oh.. it hurts, you know). Because,[repeat] – ethics certainly isn’t only about what you cannot do (e.g., disregard law), but also what one must do in that situation – what is one’s duty.
and there’s no reason to frame that reason as an ethical decision. If so, migrations would happen to Finland, where the corruption is lowest. It’s plain old self-interest. There’s nothing wrong with survival instincts – migrations happen for access to resources/ opportunities, and can often result in win-win situations.
hmm bizarre … may be you should ask your uncle, if he really wants to entertain these subordinates at all.
it is bizarre to me why the free and transparent media here do not discuss about Mohammed Mossadegh and the coup of 1953 when they wag fingers at Iran, raise eyebrows, act surprised, and put up a facade of argumentation in the land of the free and the home of the brave. may be the ‘transparency’ here has something to do with warped incentives as well 🙂
and btw, FA is not an E. it is the straw man structuralists (read economists) dangle when they cannot fathom cause-effect relationships in their regressions. there’s much empirical evidence on personality types.
enough threadjacking.
okay..for sake of discussion…
Does finders keepers hold up in a court of law?
I left my purse in a taxi v/s I left my Van Gogh in a rickshaw . Same or not?
Speaking about corruption, NYC cabbies actually make quite a bit. There was a npr (or some such) program on the systematic under-reporting of NYC taxi salaries. Apparently, the tips can also add up to quite a lot. Anyway, in india, tips will not usually be accepted by the professional (motorized) drivers (or panwalas, for that matter). They would be summarily offended. Rickshawalas and other lower class laborers do accept “tips”. And, most of the time, it also depends on who is offering the tip.
[ABUSIVE STATEMENTS DELETED BY ADMIN. ABUSIVE, SECTARIAN GENERALIZATIONS WILL RESULT IN BANNING, AND BY THE WAY, THEY REALLY DETRACT FROM YOUR ARGUMENT.]
The answer to all the confusion: yes, it is economic development.
I had been waiting to see a Razib/Naiverealist throwdown.
Re:
The obvious way to avoid such situations is to continue to plagiarize other Mutineers’ post titles. 😉
???
Generally, no. Finders only become keepers if it’s clear that the item in question was intentionally thrown away, abandoned, or if it’s clear that the owner has stopped the search. The major exception to this is in maritime law. If a ship ever goes down on the high seas, then it’s finders keepers.
Sorry Siddhartha, I guess that joke is past its expiration date. 🙂 I was referring to the time you used a “Pour some ___ on me” reference as a post title, not realizing Anna had already done that some time ago.
Since some trigger-happy autocrat has taken the chainsaw to the coherence of my comment, let me just say that the last line was supposed to be a facetious remark.
Thanks Sriram. Now back to Namaste America 🙂
I appreciate the Bangladeshi cab driver and the honesty!! In an south asian perspective i hope Bangladesh and its honest citizens will stop infiltrating into Assam and stop assisting and managing the ULFA terrorists! Bangladesh hard line islaist government even opposed sashi taroor for the UN and is supporting Pakistani terrorists in Kashmir(India helped in formation of Bangladesh).
Bangladesh even refused to sell their gas to India(at the international price).They are opposing TATA’S 3 billion dollars steel and power plant deal(because its an Indian company).We should give the credit where its due. but lets not ignore the larger picture.there is nothing called south Asian unity unless until Pakistan and Bangladesh stops its breeding of terrorists and their export. Because of these reasons India is signing free trade deals with ASEAN and GCC and others not with SAARC!!Lets not romanticis these relations please!!
Umang said:
Sidhhartha replies:
Still doesn’t detract from the fact that it is derogatory to Native Americans. Not tomention that it implies that most of “them” are untrustworthy and this one is the exception (which is where the expression cames from). You could have added the encomium that it was “mighty white of him” as well to round it off.
I know no offense was intended but I think it is fairly obvious by now we don’t get to pick what other people find offensive, whatever the context.
On second thought, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!
Indoctrination is wonderful. By engineering alternative virtues such as unrewarded honesty and sacrifice, our instincts for greed can be muted.
Selfishness is short-term greed, the ability to snatch a high-calorie cupcake while no one is looking and avoid the penalties by blaming a stuttering kid who cannot explain his own innocence. From a cost-benefit perspective, the cost is low (a) a possible addiction to lying/stealing that increases the future risk of getting caught by indulging in lying/stealing too often, and the benefits are three fold (a) a tasty cupcake, (b) practice impromptu lying, and (c) a higher relatively rank vis-a-vis the stutterer whose rank is now lower for what is deemed to be his crime.
Nepotism is long-term greed, it’s the motherly and fatherly love toward progeny and to a lesser extent kinfolk. Long-term greed often contradicts short-term greed, since a starving mother will give her sole cupcake to her own child. Such nepotism is instinctual; in fact, even reading the sentence of a mother sacrificing her life to feed her child can bring tears of respect and melancholy to our eyes. However, take for example an alternate sentence, one which talks about a starving mother giving the sole food of her and her child to a mound of poisonous ants. We’d likely think this sentence was a joke and prepare ourselves for the punch-line, or perhaps think the woman is insane and unfit to be a mother responsible for her child’s welfare. We value certain things higher, and to us, a human child is valued higher than a colony of poisonous ants. Apart from a few Jains and PeTA folk, we do not feel responsible for ants, but we do for children. We also perceive a mother’s responsibility to her own child as far greater than society’s responsibility to that same child. Reciprocally, that mother would take care of her own child more than a neighbor’s child.
Social constructions such as nationalism, chivalry, and austerity are almost absent from our biological instincts since they demand high levels of short-term sacrifice and the long-term dividends may be centuries away, at which point entropy has scattered and diluted the benefit nearly evenly to everyone so no one group gains a selective advantage over another. In order to make the meager dividends seem substantial, society’s leaders employ an elaborate system of praise, odes, paeans, celebration, and other rewards of abstract currency that can be minted freely. With all the effort these leaders make to cultivate more true heroes, there are sparingly few of them, an indication that heroism gains a lot of lip-service but confers little or no selective advantage. I believe (true) heroism was always feebly propped up by society but is of late on a decline from its tenuous standing. The only meager selective advantage of heroics was the adulation of one’s community toward the hero. Such benefits are fast evaporating since a true hero often drowns in a sea of manufactured heroes, most of whom are actors and singers with vastly superior charisma, sexual appeal, and recognition. The information distribution system of today by means of television and webpages are clogged with emanating exaltations of manufactured heroes. As our population explodes while our ability to remember people remains stagnant, we are forced to purge memories of past friends, past heroes, and anyone else who lacks relevance du jour. Moreover, the sheer volume of new faces we encounter is staggering considering we now change jobs every few years and move from neighborhoods at every rent hike. These problems have a multiplicative effect since we also show little fidelity in patronage when store clerks we were fond of move on to other things in a matter of months. The only constant faces we see are those of celebrities, whose short tenures of six to eight years are still vastly longer than the length of our relationships with anyone else. For all these reasons, it is of supreme silliness and irrationality to make personal sacrifices for the betterment of a capricious society. In an era when “Greed is Good” is the optimal strategy, Old World notions of honesty are a reminder of how disadvantaged Bangladeshi immigrants are.
I feel sorry for the cabbie and the grave disservice his Old World indoctrination has done to him and his family who have now lost $500,000 in opportunity cost and gained some worthless lip-service from elected officials who propped their own political careers up by pretending to appreciate a cabbie. I live in Manhattan and can attest to the scant disregard people have toward the lower-classes. I regularly interact with people who have no qualms paying $150 cover fees to enter clubs, tip scantily-clad bairmaids $20, and yet leave no tips or $1 tips for delivery persons and cab drivers. The half-million dollars in diamonds would have been insured (presumably), and if it was property belonging to the Texan woman’s employer and not herself, her career would be rightfully blighted and she would rightfully score lower in the big Darwinian game. The insurance premiums would expectedly go up, but the insurance company itself wouldn’t be affected because $500,000 is a statistically insignificant amount (small insurance companies are re-insured by larger insurance companies for whom the standard deviation is in hundreds-of-millions of dollars per annum, with the mean centered around positive ten billion dollars). I agree that if all crime terminated there would be a statistically significant impact on the economy (not nearly as much as people like to think, and not necessarily in the direction people would think), but this one deed doesn’t change financial matters any. His family back in Bangladesh and entire home village could have greatly benefited from that capital infusion which would have 7 times greater purchasing power there (35 times greater if comparing against Manhattan).
Anyways, to the whole community: Try to tip cabbies more and please, please, please, stop indoctrinating impressionable youth with fantasies that they should make sacrifices for the betterment of people thousands of times better off than themselves. And the fear that a vengeful, omniscient God will punish all crimes should have ended with feudalism. This is an advocacy for the renunciation of fear, not an advocacy for atheism nor an advocacy for committing crimes. Whether or not one commits a crime, be he Nixon or a lowly pickpocket, should rest in that person’s character, not in fear.
juxtapose the poor bangladeshi jihadi next to a venal manhattanite yuppie. arundhati would be proud.
For what it’s worth, the tightwad who left Chowdhury only a 30-cent tip made it to Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World” list last week. I always enjoy watching cheap tippers get blasted on national… well, cable TV, anyway.
Political correctness for the sake of political correctness is a hundred times worse than any imagined insult to any community, imo. I don’t think anyone really believed there was an intention to denigrate anyone. Why make an issue of it? It’s so token, doesn’t help the Native Americans, and in fact is completely irrelevant at this point in history since they’re no longer a target of anyone’s spite.
I agree the explanation given by Siddhartha was rather pathetic and actually made an innocent phrase seem horrific.
In my experience this is not true. I left my wallet in a San Francisco cab one drunken night. The wallet with my credit cards and license was returned to me months later by mail. The $40 cash I had was gone, but there was a note from the San Francisco Taxi Police (who knew there was such a thing?) The note said, “Found lost in a San Francisco taxi.” Yeah, it was lost, but where did my cash go and why did it take 3 months to get mailed back to me?
The very first lines of this post tell us that Siddhartha is making an observation on the relationship between image (immigrant cabbie) and perception (what the cabbie symbolizes to a certain audience) in a particular narrative. The use of the term “honest Injun” in the title prompts a comparison with the historical use of that term. I read it as a comment on the construction of the narrative, not a judgment on the term itself (or the narrative, for that matter) as a good or bad thing. So you can agree or disagree with him on the relevance of the term “honest Injun” to this subject, but let’s not automatically assume that Siddhartha’s reference to the term as a possible explanation for what’s going on here = approval or perpetuation of a negative label or stereotype. It’s kind of like shooting the messenger.
Shruti: Thank you. I couldn’t have explained it better myself.
Divya, JayV, Umang: See Shruti’s explanation. She hits it right on the mark. Special to Divya: The phrase is NOT innocent and that is precisely the point. I am sorry to expose you to the fact that there exists analysis out there that is more subtle than either pro- or anti- “PC” knee-jerkism, as your comments seem to imply, but there it is.
User’s guide: In general, when I actually have something analytic to say in my posts, I often try to front-load the post with the analysis. Thus, in this post, all the analysis was done in the first paragraph. No one except Shruti responded on the comment thread to the ideas in that paragraph, but that’s neither here nor there. I try to do this for a couple of reasons. First, it forces me to keep the analysis short, because I don’t want to bog you down in it, and writing short is a virtue. Second, it ensures you actually see the analysis and have a chance to engage with it, whether you choose to or not.
Siddhartha – IÂ’ll admit I held a bit of a prejudice against you since I remember one time you went and changed the word juggernaut just because someone objected. Perhaps this prejudice got in the way of my being able to discern what you were actually trying to convey in your post 22 and for that I apologize. I simply associated honest injun with Dennis the Menace you see, and found it quite innocent until you came up with that meaning. And just as the word juggernaut has been divested at this point in time of whatever sordid origins it may have had, so has the phrase honest injun, but that is a matter of opinion I suppose.
Good read: a previous Sepia Mutiny post on the book Taxi!: Cabs and Capitalism in New York City
This work is realy honsty. To my openion as an unrewarded, honesty and sacrifice are our insticts for all of humanbeing. We should do somethings like this, because this work is a peculiar and essential character and nature of the future. This kinds of people are very rear but honesty is a great quality of humanbeing. Selfishness is the short-term of greed, the ability of doing something which all people will be remember you.