Outside Akber Batada’s cab, two men are pointing.

“Come in, come in,” Batada says excitedly.

“Holy moly,” one guy says as he opens the door and sits in the back seat, where he is surrounded by flashing lights and two video screens. “What have you got going on in here?”

“You want Tootsie Pop?” Batada asks. The bag is already slung over his shoulder.

Batada lives for this moment. His eyebrows raise as he watches the men take in the splendour of his “Cosmic Cab.” The men take suckers and leave. No fare here. Batada grins.

“At least they remember me forever, after I’m gone from this Earth,” he will say later.

Toronto has nearly 5,000 licenced cabs, but only a few that stick out like Batada’s. There is Mr. Geography, who quizzes his customers on capital cities and ocean depths in exchange for cab fare. There’s also the Cash Cab, in which comedian Adam Growe asks unsuspecting passengers trivia questions for the Discovery Channel show of the same name.

While quizzing is big in some of the city’s quirkier cabs, the only questions you’re likely to hear in Cosmic Cab are “Do you want gum?” and “You like Wesley Snipes?”

Jeff Fernandes was asked about Snipes when he called a cab to pick him up in the Distillery District this past December. A few minutes later, a Beck cab decked out with plastic Santa Claus heads and tinsel pulled up, driven by a smiling Batada.

“I kind of felt embarrassed getting in,” the optician said.

Inside the back seat, it was a “trippy dream,” Fernandes says. A shrine of action figures and small chandeliers hung from the roof. Two screens played an array of movies. Once Fernandes turned down a Wesley Snipes flick, Batada put on a Punjabi music video.

“He seemed very excited,” he said.

When he got to work, Fernandes told his skeptical coworkers all about the cab. He hasn’t been able to find Batada since.

“He’s kind of like the taxi Snuffleupagus,” he said.

Mr. Geography’s main base is the Westin Harbour Castle. Depending on production, the Cash Cab prowls downtown streets for two months in the spring and two months in the winter. The Cosmic Cab is “everywhere” Batada says.

Batada moved to Canada from India in 1983. He worked in the seafood industry in Bombay and later did some seafood importing in Canada. He decided to drive a cab 27 years ago so he could make his own hours. He’s seen his share of grumps, but since he added television screens and a rave-like atmosphere five years ago, it’s hard for riders to be bleak.

“They say, ‘You make my day, you make my night,’” he says. “They love my cab. When they’re happy, I’m happy.”

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Cash Cab’s Adam Growe applauds the entrepreneurial spirit of the city’s quirky cabs.

“I’m always interested to talk to those guys,” he said. “It’s a great enterprising idea.”

City bylaws do not outlaw decorations, but each cab is inspected to make sure everything is secure and the driver’s visibility is not impaired.

You can barely find Batada’s cab licence underneath the $4,000 worth of enhancements. He shops in Wal-Mart for seasonal statues which he glues, safety pins and Velcroes to his cab’s interior. He visits music stores at the mall and asks what the kids like these days. He’s purchased a few pulsating light fixtures at flea markets. Every month, he stocks the cab with new magazines for his riders. It’s also got “nice books” for the kids and a plastic guitar. He says no one copies him because it’s too much work.

Each ride starts off the same. Batada offers a stick of gum or a Tootsie Pop from a bag he keeps in the front seat. Then he sees what kind of music the rider wants. Michael Jackson is a favourite.

He works from 7 a.m. until noon, then takes a four-hour midday break at his Scarborough home for lunch, a walk and a nap. Then he goes back downtown for rush hour. Batada is 59 but looks like he’s in his mid 40s — thanks to all those naps, he says.

And while he is a man who speaks only with a smile, he admits there are doubters. Before he turned his cab into this world of fun, his son worried his father might be ruining a perfectly good car. Batada’s colleagues fear riders will steal his magazines.

But Batada tells them he trusts people, and people love his cab.

“They say, ‘Forget love.’ Just pick up, drop off.’”

That’s never happened in the Cosmic Cab.