Abdullah after visiting Jyoti Basu. (Sanat Kr Sinha)

A Calcutta cab may be no substitute for a motorbike with a young Shabana Azmi riding pillion, but Farooq Abdullah did wear a big smile after his taxi “adventure” in town on Tuesday afternoon.

The energetic 73-year-old Union minister for renewable energy, scheduled to head for IIT Kharagpur from the city airport by helicopter around 11am, left his security entourage sweating by hailing a taxi to go to the Salt Lake campus instead after low visibility forced the flight to be aborted.

Clad in a sherwani and his trademark cap, Abdullah later shrugged off concerns over his security — he is on the hit-list of several terror groups — by saying he was “protected by Allah”.

And what was the cab ride like? “It was an adventure. The driver was also very nice, and I think it is safe to travel by taxi in Calcutta without security personnel,” Abdullah told Metro after a visit to AMRI Hospitals in Salt Lake to meet the ailing Jyoti Basu.

Cabbie Jhagru Rai — initially unaware about his VIP passenger’s identity — had driven Abdullah, his secretary, a bodyguard and the deputy director of IIT Kharagpur to the Salt Lake campus of the tech institute around 12.30pm. “The fare was Rs 190 but I got Rs 250,” he smiled, though auto driver Dipak Haldar had made double that amount by ferrying a stranded Mamata Banerjee till the airport on December 28.

IIT deputy director A.K. Mazumdar said Abdullah — who rode a bike through Gulmarg in 1984 with his “favourite actress” riding pillion — had asked for a taxi even as his secretary informed the home department that the helicopter ride had been cancelled. “He didn’t want to wait for a bullet-proof car. I sat in the taxi with some degree of concern,” he added.

Home secretary Ardhendu Sen later said “no inquiry would be required”.