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LIFE AFTER BLASTS

Attacks change face of business

Inam Ahmed, From London
Londoners, in fear of more attacks, are avoiding the Underground. That should be good news for the cabbies. Not for all. Salam is contemplating to wrap up his business.
A few hundred metres from his Brick Lane attic office, Shane, a white cabby at Commercial Road at Lime House, is contemplating to buy another car, because he thinks business will continue to boom, as it is now, for him.
Both Salam and Shane are waiting for a few more weeks to take the final decision, depending on the way the future unfolds.
As London is riding a wave of apprehension and uncertainty, things are turning out in different ways for different communities. Salam, a Bangladeshi running a taxi cab company called Eastern Executive Cars, finds his drivers are
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finding fewer and fewer customers by the day - well to be exact by the night. That used to be a good time to ferry Londoners visiting Brick Lane to taste its unique characteristics of fun and intellectuality. But now many avoid those nightly sorties. In Salam's language, Brick Lane turns into a 'completely dead' place at night.
"The English and the Europeans, many of them young artists and would-be intellectuals, would hang around the restaurants at night and they would need cabs to go back home," said Salam. "Now they have almost disappeared. My drivers don't get calls to drop them."
Shane has a different version of the events that followed 7/7.
"The English people want to take a ride in my cab because they think it is safer," he said. "I give them a reliable face."
But Salam seems to have lost that reliable face to many and wants to wait for a few weeks before taking a final decision about his business.
"Things are turning out difficult by the day," says Koyes Chowdhury, his driver. "I get more calls during the day from my customers. But that has not increased my business because I get delayed on the road because of the traffic jam caused by frequent road blocks put up by the police." And for cabbies like Salam who do not ply on metres but on a rate fixed by the public carriage office, there is no waiting charge for traffic jams.
Koyes still hoped for the night commuters, but that is also not materialising.
Like Salam and Koyes, 15 other
taxi companies owned by Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlet and around 1,000 cabbies are facing the same hazy future. One of them closed the shop a week ago.
Not only the lack of passengers, but the Bangladeshi cabbies also face a host of embarrassing questions from the English commuters. They will obviously first ask them if they are Pakis, as the Pakistanis are often referred to here. And getting a negative reply, they will want to know if they are Muslims and then the discussion will dangerously veer to the London attacks.
"Although I don't like to discuss all this I still have to respond to such queries," says Koyes. "Because keeping silent is even more dangerous."
Madhu, another Bangladeshi cabby working for Hoxton Car at Hoxton Square of North London, says he faces even more trouble from the police at night. He thinks his escorting a beard and fair complexion might make the cops curious.
"Last Wednesday, police stopped me at London Bridge at night and asked what I am doing there," he said. "They knew I am a taxi driver and still they did it."
Madhu too wants to sell off his car if business does not pick up soon. Because though business remains dull, he will still have to pay the usual fees and taxes 170 pounds a year in road tax, 80 pounds a week in insurance, 80 pounds a week to the cab company, 100 pounds a year to the public carriage office and 300 pounds a year in fitness charge.