The world teaches us to be strategic, resourceful, and ambitious—and these skills can take us far. But sometimes, life sends us someone who shows us the beauty of a completely different path: one shaped not by calculation, but by simplicity, trust, and a quiet generosity of the heart.
This is the story of one such person I was blessed to briefly encounter.
The Delhi Dance
Years ago, I would travel quite regularly to New Delhi. The city had its signature yellow-and-black Ambassador taxis, clunky and charming.
One day, I stepped into one. The driver didn’t turn on the meter. So, at the end of the ride, I asked him, “How much?”
He turned and smiled warmly. “Sir, you can just pay me what you think is right for this ride.”
So I did.
He peeked at the cash, then chuckled, “Sahib! A big, successful man like you, and this is all you give a poor, hardworking cab driver? Surely your heart is large enough to give more!”
Well, so I did.
This happened more than once. Eventually, I pieced together the cabbies’ playbook: If the passenger looks local and modest, start the meter and charge them the regular charges. If they seem foreign or affluent, keep the meter off. Disarm them by asking them to pay “whatever you wish,” hoping they feel generous and don’t know the going rate. If they do not overshoot the fare enough, execute Plan B. Put them on a gentle guilt trip and ask them to bump up the amount.
I would leave the cab feeling at peace with their logic, but at war with their spirit. Eventually, I became firmer in asking the cabbies to turn on the meter as we started our ride.
The Ranchi Encounter
A year or so later, I was visiting Yogananda’s ashram in Ranchi, a town in the east of India. Where Delhi is rich, restless, and decadent, Ranchi is simple, scrappy, and still.
One afternoon, I hailed a cycle rickshaw from the ashram gate. My driver was an elderly man with a gleam in his eyes and a smile that seemed to hold a secret. He was barefoot and modestly dressed. His legs strained up the inclines as he pedaled us forward, yet all the while, he was humming a song, softly, joyfully.
When we reached our destination, I asked, “How much should I pay you for the ride?”
He looked at me, eyes steady and kind. “Sir, just give me whatever you wish.”
Uh-oh.
Was this the Delhi dance again?
Part of me wanted to give him far more than the market rate, for I had been so moved by the quiet dignity with which he carried me. But another part feared I might spoil the purity of the exchange—that if I gave too much, I would be playing into a game I didn’t want to be part of.
Who are you, rickshaw man, at your core? I wondered.
I decided to find out.
The Experiment
I turned away from him so he could not see what I was doing next. I folded a generous sum of money in my hand, closing my fingers around it so he couldn’t see the amount. Then I faced him, locked my eyes with his, placed the cash in his hand, and closed his fist around it.
This was the moment.
I watched. Would he open his hand right away to check, to measure my generosity and decide his next move?
He did not.
He just kept looking at me, love and joy pouring from his eyes into mine. Without glancing down, he slipped the money into his shirt pocket, then smiled, waved and pedaled away.
The Real Fare
I stood there, a bit stunned.
Hitendra, God decided to visit you today and serve you in the guise of this barefoot cycle-rickshaw driver.
I had come to Ranchi to visit a spiritual sanctuary, to sit in silence and prayer. But the grace I had been seeking inside the ashram had just been delivered to me outside its gates, by a man whose heart overflowed with riches no currency could touch.
In the cab drivers of Delhi, I had encountered quickness, wit, and a hunger to get ahead.
In this cycle-rickshaw driver of Ranchi, I met something softer, slower, freer: an uncalculated generosity of spirit.
I still think of his face—the lines around his eyes, the quiet dignity of his smile—and I know that on our brief ride, we saw each other not as a stranger and a passenger, but as two souls, side by side.
That day reminded me that heaven sometimes draws closer in the smallest human exchanges of trust and love. And in those moments, we glimpse the truth the French mystic Teilhard de Chardin so beautifully expressed: We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Gratefully yours,
Hitendra
P.S. I do not begrudge at all the Delhi cab drivers for how they dealt with me. One of the things we teach our MBA students at Columbia Business School is “segmented pricing”—how to find a way to charge less for a product to those who can afford less, and more to those who can afford more. The Delhi cabbies had devised their own inventive approach to segmented pricing, without investing a mini-fortune in a Business School education.
In fact, in those years past, I taught a course on Pricing Strategy at Columbia, and my Ph.D. dissertation at MIT Sloan School of Management was on the related technique of “dynamic pricing”—adjusting the price of a product or service over time, based on supply and demand.
It is a beautiful problem to solve mathematically, and I had lots of fun with it. Yet, when I look back on life, the pricing experiment I am most proud to have conducted was not in a classroom or a research paper, but on that blessed day in Ranchi with the cycle-rickshaw driver.
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