Share a ride with an ex army man this Independence Day

GURUGRAM: When Gurmail Singh retired from the Indian Army as a Subedar and decided to become a cabbie, his daughter wasn’t so pleased. According to Singh, his daughter wasn’t very comfortable introducing her father as a cab driver to her friends in college. However now two years later, she has come around to the fact and Singh could not be happier.
“An acquaintance told me that he worked as a cab driver in Canada and made good money which is where I got the idea .I brought a WagonR and started driving In the initial months I made as much as Rs. 1.2 Lakhs,” said Singh who is one of the ex-army man working under the Ola Sainik program.
He added that he had never seen that kind of money and he retired at a pay of Rs. 55000 from the army. Singh initially lived in Delhi and used to work in the city. However after the 1984 Sikh riots, he left the city only to come back here as a sainik. From a sainik in the army to being a cabbie , life hasn’t changed much for him. “We used to work
really hard there as well and I do the same as a cab driver,” said Singh.
He also continues to do whatever he can to serve the country. For instance he doesn’t charge fellow army men for cab rides and gives away free rides to people in need. Just last week, he helped a man take his ailing son from Safdarjung hospital to Madan Puri when no one else was agreeing to go.
Asked if people snap at him during cab rides, he says, “Some do snap but I tend to ignore. Most young people are so tired on their way back from work they fall asleep on the way so I try to be as cheerful as I can with them.” Many of his rides also end up in some very interesting conversations.
He recalls how one of his customers was an ex-army man too who had been in the 1987 war told him about his war memoirs. Another such ex- army man working under the same program is 40 year old Bharat Shrivastava who joined the Indian Navy in 1996. He retired in 2016 and became an operator with the cab aggregator.
While at Navy, one of his main duties was to ensure that Indian fishermen boats do not enter international waters, thereby saving the lives of thousands of countrymen. “I try and ensure that I do maximum of rola share rides as our cities are suffering with issues of heavy traffic and vehicular pollution and sharing rides can help in solving these issues," said Shrivastava.
In order to bring many more such stories to the public, cab aggregator Ola will let its share riders ride with ex-army men and listen to their stories on this Independence day. Riders can also take selfies with ex-armymen. Thousands of ex-army men work under the initiative which was launched in association with The Directorate General resettlement in 2015.