My rapacious rickshaw driver mistook me for a tourist when he asked me for Rs 1500 for a ride to the local club. Puzzled and amused at my Urdu counter offer of Rs 100, he apologized and we settled on Rs 400. We chatted through our 20-minute journey outmaneuvering motorcycles, cars, busses, and the white stray dog who chased us. He told me that during covid he had driven his mother, wife, father-in-law, and two children to Multan 885 kilometers away. He took only the inner roads arriving 24 hours later almost in one piece. At one point, he was out of fuel in a deserted area but the djinn that his father-in-law beckoned had helped them. His father-in-law could see djinns, a gift from Allah for his strict adherence to Islam.

For those of you wishing to ride one, please look out for the preeminent Sadgar Deluxe range made in China and assembled in Lahore. You can buy one for Rs. 480,000 if you plan to own one. Stay away from the cheaper variety as their brakes fail suddenly (break jaam). Shahid had discovered this coming down a bridge last Ramadan. He had thanked Allah for the row of fruit carts he had swerved into, tilted with one wheel off the road. The fruit wallas let him go free as it was Ramadan though he had tried to “only skirt the carts to slow down” he said smugly.

According to him, the Sadgaar Deluxe “dhoka kabhi naheen daithi hai aur rickshaa ki Honda Civic hai” (never betrays you and is the Honda Civic of Rickshaws).