Rickshaw Race Yakuza

Drag racing auto rickshaws can be dangerous. Never mind that the three-wheeled taxi-pods are only lightly armored from oncoming traffic and that their high-center of gravity brings the chance of rolling over at every corner--the real dangers are the stakes. While I have been working on the story for the Indian Auto Rickshaw Challenge for Wired, I am also slowly being drawn into the underworld world of illegal racing where challengers agree to cut off their thumbs if they loose. Every year several drivers die on the all-or-nothing routes in pursuit of a week's worth of bragging rights and a small cash purse, but when the challenge gets heated the only acceptable stake is to risk the one appendage that separates humans from primates.

In Chennai there are several drag racing routes where local clubs of mechanics supe-up the two stroke engines and navigate their way at top speed through the city's confusing grid work of streets and alleys. One popular route is the journey from Elliot's beach to Mahibellipuram, 50 kilometers south. The driver I interviewed said that for a while in 2003 he was the local favorite as city's most skilled racer. He had won several races for small money in the last few weeks and was feeling unbeatable. Aiming to knock him down a few pegs, another racer offered to race him and put his thumb up on hid left hand up as stake. The loser would not only end up mutilated, but ostensibly never be able to drive a rickshaw again since it requires a thumb to work the clutch. He had a good lead in the final stretch of the run with the finish line in sight when the engine on his rickshaw overheated and died. His challenger sped past him and won his prize.

That evening he used the sickle shaped edge of a thengai kathi--a knife usually used to hack coconuts-- to chop off the thumb on his left hand.

There are dozens of stories like this in Chennai--and several well-known racing clubs with one or two 9-fingered mechanics fixing rickshaws in the back room. There is even a Tamil film tentatively titled "Auto" in production about it. In the coming months I am going to mention the underground sport in a little more detail in Wired, and will start shopping around at other magazines to run a full feature on it.