Planes, Trains, and Auto-Rickshaws
Page 1
Critical Acclaim for Laura Pedersen
Buffalo Gal
“This book is compulsively readable, and owes its deadpan delivery to the fact that she has performed standup comedy on national television (The Oprah Winfrey Show, Late Night with David Letterman, Today, Primetime, etc.).”
—ForeWord Magazine
Best Bet
“The book’s laugh-out-loud funny, and readers will find themselves rereading lines just for the sheer joy of it.”
—Kirkus Reviews
The Big Shuffle
“Although it’s a laugh-out-loud read, it’s an appealing, sensitive, superbly written book. One you won’t want to put down. I loved it.”
—The Lakeland Times
“Be prepared to fall in love with a story as wise as it is witty.”
—The Compulsive Reader
The Sweetest Hours
“To call The Sweetest Hours a book of short stories would be like calling the Mona Lisa a painting.”
—Front Street Reviews
“Pedersen weaves tales that blend humor, sorrow, and sometimes surprise endings in the games of life and love.”
—Book Loons
Heart’s Desire
“Funny, tender, and poignant, Heart’s Desire should appeal to a wide range of readers.”
—Booklist
“Prepare to fall in love again because Laura Pedersen is giving you your ‘Heart’s Desire’ by bringing back Hallie Palmer and her entire endearing crew. In a story as wise as it is witty, Pedersen captures the joy of love found, the ache of love lost, and how friends can get you through it all—win or lose.”
—Sarah Bird, author of The Yokota Officers Club
“This book will make you laugh and cry and like a good friend, you’ll be happy to have made its acquaintance.”
—Lorna Landvik, author of Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons
Last Call
“Pedersen writes vividly of characters so interesting, so funny and warm that they defy staying on the page.”
—The Hartford Courant
“This book is a rare, humorous exploration of death that affirms life is a gift and tomorrow is never guaranteed. Pedersen writes an exquisitely emotional story. A must-have book to start the new year.”
—Romantic Times
Beginner’s Luck
“Laura Pedersen delivers…if this book hasn’t been made into a screenplay already, it should be soon. Throughout, you can’t help but think how hilarious some of the scenes would play on the big screen.”
—The Hartford Courant
“Funny, sweet-natured, and well-crafted…Pedersen has created a wonderful assemblage of…whimsical characters and charm.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“This novel is funny and just quirky enough to become a word-of-mouth favorite…Pedersen has a knack for capturing tart teenage observations in witty asides, and Hallie’s naiveté, combined with her gambling and numbers savvy, make her a winning protagonist.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A breezy coming-of-age novel with an appealing cast of characters.”
—Booklist
Going Away Party
“Pedersen shows off her verbal buoyancy. Their quips are witty and so are Pedersen’s amusing characterizations of the eccentric MacGuires. Sentence by sentence, Pedersen’s debut can certainly entertain.”
—Publishers Weekly
Play Money
“A savvy insider’s vastly entertaining line on aspects of the money game.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Also by Laura Pedersen
Nonfiction
Play Money
Buffalo Gal
Buffalo Unbound
Fiction
Going Away Party
Beginner’s Luck
Last Call
Heart’s Desire
The Sweetest Hours
The Big Shuffle
Best Bet
LauraPedersenBooks.com
Text © 2012 Laura Pedersen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system—except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review—without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pedersen, Laura.
Planes, trains, and auto-rickshaws : a journey through modern India / Laura Pedersen.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-55591-618-3 (pbk.)
1. India--Description and travel. 2. Pedersen, Laura--Travel--India. 3. India--Social life and customs. 4. Women--India--Social conditions. 5. Children--India--Social conditions. 6. India--Social conditions--1947- I. Title.
DS414.2.P43 2012
915.404’532--dc23
2012005900
Printed in Canada
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Design by Jack Lenzo
Fulcrum Publishing
4690 Table Mountain Dr., Ste. 100
Golden, CO 80403
800-992-2908 • 303-277-1623
www.fulcrumbooks.com
In memory of Nina Kohnstamm (1940–2011)—
teacher, traveler, friend
Contents
Bewildered, Bothered, and Bewitched
Eastward Ho!
Planes, Trains, and Auto-Rickshaws
Mother India
Old and New Delhi
Taj Mahal
Safaris, Spas, and Shopping
Shall We Gather at the River?
Oh! Kolkata!
Salaam Mumbai!
All Aboard!
Down South
So Many Gods, So Little Time
Caste Away System
Boldface Names
Monkeys and Tigers and Snakes, Oh My!
Game Changers: Women and Children
India Unbound
About the Author
Bewildered, Bothered, and Bewitched
My introduction to India came through that bedrock of American recreation during the latter half of the twentieth century, the television. Specifically, the 1960s sitcom. Bewitched starred the stunning, nose-twitching actress Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stephens, a good witch who decided to forego her magical powers (most of the time) in order to achieve the 1960s version of the female American Dream as an average suburban housewife. However, when otherworldly symptoms arose, more often than not caused by the bumbling Aunt Clara and her spells gone bad, it was necessary to call on the family witch doctor, Dr. Bombay. Thereby my first association with all things India at the impressionable age of five was in the form of Welsh-born character actor Bernard Fox, appearing out of thin air dressed in outlandish costumes, surrounded by a coterie of sexy nurses, cracking corny jokes, and providing questionable cures.
India next appeared when I started kindergarten, in 1970. There weren’t any students who hailed from the subcontinent in my Western New York elementary school, but American Indians were going from being called Indians to Native Americans, except by actual Native Americans who, by and large, preferred being called Indians. So when someone said the word Indian, kids often asked, “Dot or feather?” This was just before political correctness came into being (Need any Helen Keller jokes?).
However, such nomenclature confusion existed for good reason. Indian was the name Christopher Columbus (the Italian who got funding from Spain to discover a country that would be taken over by England, only to gain independence with help from France) gave the people he found in the New World, believing he’d arrived in the Indies, which was the medieval n
ame for Asia. To further befuddle things, islands in the Caribbean Sea came to be called the West Indies when it turned out they weren’t the Indies of the East. And, just for fun, the islands known as the Lesser Antilles are located in the eastern West Indies.
In the neighborhood where I grew up, people regularly headed off to play bingo at the Seneca Indian Reservation or the neighborhood Catholic church, despite the Corinthians 1:36 edict against ill-gotten gains. The Seneca Reservation had the advantage of tax-free gas and cigarettes, while the church offered nonalcoholic refreshments and guilt. In the 1980s and ’90s, American Indian tribes around the country were busy expanding their gambling enterprises by building actual casinos with hotels and stage shows. Meantime, India Indians in America were taking over 7-Elevens, Carvel stores, and roadside motels at a rate that provided a gold mine of material for stand-up comics—the likes of which wouldn’t be seen again until Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot his hunting partner in the face and Osama Bin Laden was found to have more pornography than Times Square in the 1970s.
Technology began booming in the 1980s and the subcontinent soon became known for operating call centers, where your service inquiries would be routed, especially for operational issues, such as whether your CD–ROM drive could interchangeably hold a disc or a coffee cup (Answer: no). As a result, by the time I arrived on Wall Street and the word Indian came up, colleagues asked, “Computer or casino?” Political correctness was late in hitting the stock exchange, as evidenced by the weekly bimbo contests in which traders competed to see how many scantily clad women could be lured to the trading floor for “free tours” that ended on a balcony with a Plexiglas barrier that transformed pantygazing from a sport into a vocation for hundreds of male employees.
I’d wanted to travel to India for many years but feared that the poverty and misogyny would be too disquieting. I had read articles about children purposely maimed to beg more efficiently and wives cast out of their husband’s homes after mysterious cooking accidents and forced to live on the streets scarred and deformed, if they survived at all. Meantime, the stories went on, if a woman’s husband happened to die, she suddenly found herself in terrible circumstances. And women in bad marriages regularly resorted to suicide rather than apply for divorce because of the social stigma. Having been raised as a Unitarian Universalist during the 1970s, when the opportunities for women in this country were still largely limited to housewife, teacher, nurse, or Miss America, I spent many weekends marching to support equal rights for women while my dad enjoyed pointing out that our local feminist collective bookstore contained no humor section. So I secretly worried that upon entering the country I’d have flashbacks complete with a Helen Reddy soundtrack, dash into the first Indian women and children’s advocacy group I came across, and devote the rest of my days to folding pamphlets, building birthing centers, and promoting the serious business of change.
However, by the start of the new millenium, surveys were confirming that the recent success of the Indian economy was partly due to the fact that women had finally been given the freedom to fully participate in this surging democracy. Their contributions, from piecemeal worker all the way up to president, were a substantial component in powering an economic engine with a 9 percent growth rate and the potential to lift millions out of poverty. When women were no longer discriminated against or treated as encumbrances, but given opportunity, they quickly became society’s biggest assets. This was something worth seeing.
Another factor that had been holding me back was that the land of swamis, meditation, yoga, toe rings, and walking barefoot on fire was also renowned for mob violence. When two Sikh bodyguards gunned down prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, more than three thousand citizens were killed during the frenzied days that followed. In 2002, a train fire that killed fifty-eight passengers, mostly Hindu pilgrims, was blamed on Muslims, and more than two thousand died in the riotous aftermath; people were burned alive, women and young girls were raped while government officials looked the other way, and two hundred thousand Muslims were driven from their homes. On a lesser but still worrisome note, when a popular 1980s Indian television serialization of the religious epic Ramayana came to an end, viewers took to the streets with bricks and bottle rockets in a region that was home to some particularly dedicated and hotheaded audience members. Would the safety-conscious traveler need also to carry a TV guide?
Lastly, when it came to corndog-fed foreigners, the food and water in India had a reputation for being a dysentery delivery system that resulted in what we called the crabapple two-step back home in Western New York.
Obviously the United States has its fair share of problems, but at least here I could vote, protest, and volunteer and thereby feel that I’m at least attempting to make some small contribution to improving my corner of the world. In India, I’d be nothing more than a helpless observer.
However, by 2010 I wasn’t getting any younger. I’d survived disco, Afros, Pintos, Jaws, Oddjob, atomic wedgies, rainbow wedgies, and Watergate. I went to school back when trophies were handed out for winning, not participation. I was on my sixth dog, to be exact, and reports from the subcontinent suggested that things were changing for the better. Furthermore, India was one of the few countries in that part of the world where citizens didn’t hate the United States like it was a job they were getting paid to perform. After trips to Greece, Russia, and Egypt, I was tired of pretending to be Canadian, which entailed keeping up with hockey scores and memorizing recipes for making peameal back bacon.
My divorced parents, after having both lost their spouses within the space of fourteen months, seemed to be getting back on track as best they could. At least they appeared healthy—Mom solicited actual doctors’ opinions, and you just sort of eyeballed Dad to make sure he was getting his daily allowance of coffee, cigarettes, Corona, and pastrami, since he’s a man at two with nature. As an only child, it occurred to me that some energetic younger brothers and sisters might come in handy, especially since Mom and Dad were living two thousand miles apart. Unfortunately, when you advertise for siblings on Craigslist at this age and stage, consumers are more interested in your potential as an organ donor than as a big sister.
Eastward Ho!
Two days after buying my ticket on the state-owned Air India, direct from New York to New Delhi, the airline experienced a horrible crash that killed 158 people. A plane coming from Dubai overshot a runway in southern India, hurtled into a ravine, and exploded. My travel agent e-mailed: But that was their first accident in ten years—Freakonomics would tell us that the odds say you are safer on them after an accident because they are not “due” for another ten years!! Or you now prefer I explore connecting options?
Her logic was compelling—until you factored in that the cause of the crash was poor pilot training and tricky landing facilities. But the meandering cloud of volcanic ash tap-dancing its way across Europe like crickets on a hot stove still made a direct flight preferable, so I threw caution to the wind the way one does when climbing aboard Coney Island’s rackety Cyclone roller coaster. Air India it was. The key to a brilliant vacation is finding adventure and possibility in the face of disaster and tragedy. And a prescription for Ambien.
By catching a cab from Manhattan to JFK Airport, in Queens, you already feel that you’re halfway to Southeast Asia, since most drivers in Manhattan hail from India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh, and they jabber away in their singsong native tongues on hands-free cell phones while attempting to break the taxi land speed record. These phone calls entail multiple listeners, so a driver can apparently have his entire extended family of six hundred on the line at once to discuss who’s bringing the rasam masala to the Friday night mosque social. The constantly under construction JFK Airport, with its outdated facilities, poor signage, sickly fluorescent lighting, and flock of live-in birds, operates much like a developing country, so this furthers a smooth transition.
I arrived at the airport just twenty-four hours after fed-up flight atten
dant Steven Slater performed a spectacular “take this job and shove it” on the JFK tarmac subsequent to being cursed out by a defiant passenger. He grabbed a couple beers, disembarked on the inflatable emergency evacuation slide with one in each hand, dashed to the employee parking lot, and headed home, where he was promptly arrested for reckless endangerment and criminal mischief. The Washington Post dubbed it “pulling a Slater,” perhaps to suggest a nonviolent version of “going postal.” I felt everyone’s pain—passengers, pilots, and flight attendants alike. The tarmac at JFK is an enormous parking lot where one spends mind-numbing hours waiting to take off amidst the sound of jackhammers and strange smells that, best I can tell, involve past-its-prime egg salad. Or else one waits for a gate to open up following a long flight while babies cry and toilets overflow and people are famished for anything but a minipretzel. New Yorkers know that rules about remaining in their seats don’t apply to them. What are the airport police going to do—take away our feet?
Surely there will soon be an annual awards ceremony for individuals who go berserk in the most newsworthy way, such as when a cell phone rang nonstop during a one-woman off-Broadway show. When the theatergoer finally answered, the actress hopped offstage, got on the line, and explained the circumstances to the caller. How many actors can say they’ve received a standing ovation just ten minutes into a performance?
I haven’t yet turned into a cell phone freak, but sadly I have become one of those people who arrive for long international flights wearing pajamas. I vaguely recall that when I was a child, people actually used to dress up for plane travel as if they were going to a wife-swapping party. That was back before passengers were required to strip, have their skivvies wanded, and submit to a colonoscopy prior to boarding.
Nowadays many people wear their sweats and scuffs to the airport like toddlers being taken to a drive-in movie. It’s hard to blame frequent fliers, since they know what it’s like to spend several days waiting out a power failure, terrorist attack, or volcano eruption while sleeping atop molded plastic chairs and bathing in the shallow metal sink of a public restroom. And just when that ordeal ends, reclaiming one’s luggage is more like awaiting the birth of a first child. That’s why a sequined poly-blend tracksuit has come to symbolize what naturalists call adaptability and functions as the linchpin to our survival as a species. Or as Gilbert and Sullivan so memorably wrote: “Let the punishment fit the crime.” Next stop, New Delhi.