Planes, Trains, and Auto-Rickshaws
I discovered that catching a cab from the airport to your hotel in any Indian metropolis is an exercise in patience and networking, as would seem to be the case throughout much of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. You will see lots of taxis, but whenever you inquire about hiring one, a man leads you in the opposite direction. A transaction may eventually occur that appears to be on the up-and-up, but you still don’t climb into a cab. Noisy caucusing continues at curbside or in a parking lot as if political candidates are being selected in some smoke-filled back room. There are more conversations and peregrinations, and finally you’re excited to be loading your bags into a trunk. However, the driver now disappears for a period of time. Several people have asked you for money “for helping,” which is a good moment to point out that you requested a taxi and not to be led through a labyrinth of wheeler-dealers who appear to have been extras in Slumdog Millionaire. The driver then returns with someone else who has also been “helped.” On the bright side, using the prepaid taxi stand (which does not cut out nearly as many middlemen as one would think) avoids any unexpected companions and tours of the city that serve to run up the meter. However, the only place I’ve seen more hot meters than in New York City is Bulgaria, where the taxis are driven by former Olympic weightlifters and thus negotiation is discouraged.
The real culture shock of New Delhi doesn’t begin so much with the separate exit from baggage claim for ladies as it does upon hitting the highway. You’re driving in a country where one hundred thousand people a year are killed in road accidents, which would be like losing the entire population of Boulder, Colorado, by the end of every December. The city of Delhi alone has about ten thousand accidents a year, with twenty-five hundred fatalities. And this is a place without blizzards, black ice, or avalanches. Driver’s education clearly needs to be supplemented with classes in applied physics, because the main problem is that the roads are filled with a wide range of objects of varying weights, number of legs, and trajectories traveling at different velocities, including but not confined to: pedestrians, pedicabs, pushcarts, rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, scooters, careening motorcycles, antique tractors, heavy machinery, brightly painted trucks, buses, cars, thirty-year-old Fiat taxis, SUVs, donkey carts, oxen, bovines, goats, and equal numbers of three- and four-legged dogs. My favorites were the makeshift vehicles constructed from the leftover parts of others (presumably demolished in accidents), such as a combine seat and steering wheel atop a minivan chassis with the windshield of an old crop duster and the bell from a bicycle. Think Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. None of these modes of conveyance contained seatbelts or airbags (unless you include animal bladders). Anything framed in metal featured numerous dents, while anything framed in fur sported bald spots. Two questions immediately arose: (1) Is my life insurance paid up? and (2) Where are all the trial lawyers?
Did I mention the marching bands and parade floats? Even if you don’t get invited to an Indian wedding (which can last a week and would probably take up your entire trip anyway), you might still participate in one, as the festivities normally gravitate toward the streets at a certain point, and on some nights two or three celebratory caravans roar past with music blaring, intoxicated revelers dancing, and the turbaned groom riding atop a blinged-out elephant or white horse. Which brings me to the only roadside installations I expected to see but didn’t—Motel 6, Carvel, and 7-Eleven.
“There are no bad drivers in Manhattan,” goes the old joke, “because they’re all dead.” This is far from the case in India. Most driving is done with the horn. Although another clear-cut rule seems to be “When in doubt, shout.” As for lanes, there aren’t any to speak of on these lunar-cratered roads, not between vehicles going the same way or to separate traffic headed in opposite directions. There are no shoulders alongside the roads. There are few traffic lights (that work) or signs or other legal impediments to moving at top speed. The written portion of the Indian licensing exam must be incredibly short. Some busy urban intersections feature a traffic cop, but he often gets into long conversations or conflagrations with pedestrians, and thus continues an endless high-speed game of horn-honking chicken. Because whenever any of the aforementioned modes of transport give way, drivers hit their accelerators as if fleeing a crime scene.
The best strategy to avoid crashing into another vehicle is apparently for the driver not to acknowledge that it exists, which is easily accomplished by not looking left, right, or in the rearview mirror (if there is one) and ignoring the outsized horn section of the automotive orchestra. Oddly, most trucks and buses don’t have bumper stickers saying “I Brake for Animals” or “Vishnu Is the Answer” but rather “Horn OK Please” or “Blow Horn,” which seems like an invitation to trouble. However, if you wish to pass a large vehicle on a narrow road, you really are supposed to honk, and people do a lot of it. One is left to speculate whether musical air horns playing the pulse-pounding Hindi hit songs “Kabootar Ja, Ja, Ja” or “Khamosh Hai Zamana” would make things better or worse.
On Indian roads, larger vehicles always have the right of way, similar to how in a Buffalo blizzard the least expensive jalopy is entitled to go first solely because the Mercedes driver prefers not to be smashed to bits. The exceptions are that, technically speaking, a motorbike is larger than a goat and a car is larger than a cow, however, goats and cows do not have steering and thus have the right of way.
In case you suspect this contains the slightest bit of exaggeration, let the record show that when the popular TV show Ice Road Truckers created a new spin-off called IRT: Deadliest Roads, the first stop was India. Furthermore, the three veterans of the show, driving wood-framed cement-loaded rigs from Delhi to the Himalayas, were either terrific actors or completely petrified for their lives. Apparently the treacherous roads of northern Alaska are nothing next to this death-defying automotive extravaganza. Or as the circus proprietor who encounters a pushmi-pullyu in the musical Doctor Dolittle exclaims, “I’ve never seen anything like it in all my life!”
Hopefully you’ll manage to avoid any road collisions, but be prepared for some pedestrian run-ins. The fact that Indians drive on the left has unintended consequences for walking Westerners since we tend to veer right to pass, while Indians automatically go left. Attention women: high heels, open-toe sandals, jellies, and flip-flops are not recommended footwear.
For some reason, I assumed that traveling from Manhattan to Delhi for the first time would be like moving from the Buffalo suburbs to the heart of New York City in 1983, when I was eighteen. The city was just crawling out of its Mean Streets chain-snatching, token-sucking, muggin’ and druggin’, homicidal maniac, squeegee men days, and people were shocked that I’d leave a city with a high suicide rate for one with an even higher homicide rate. Why trade snowstorms for serial killers? Avenues teemed with hurried and harried pedestrians, graffiti-covered subways greeted passengers with ear-piercing brake squeals and unintelligible announcements while rodents freely plied their trade far from Habitrails. Street preachers with ZZ Top beards shouted apocalyptic pronouncements up and down Broadway while brightly costumed fortune tellers sep-arated tourists from their money on the cracked sidewalks of Greenwich Village. My second day in town, a woman standing behind me in a New York University lecture hall announced that she couldn’t sit down because of hemorrhoids. That would have been more than enough information right there. But no, she had to add that these hemorrhoids were the result of “pushing too hard.” Sensory overload. Since we were in an educational environment, she apparently assumed this was a teachable moment and concluded with, “So be careful.”
Alone in the bustling capital city of Delhi, I reminded myself of all the things I’d learned, sometimes the hard way, about city living: don’t trust anyone on the street, be assertive, even aggressive, and act a little loco if necessary. Remaining vigilant had also served me in good stead during recent trips to Cairo, Istanbul, and Casablanca, all heaving metropolises fi
lled with entrepreneurs overly anxious for tourist trade, where Westerners are constantly harassed to hire guides and are held hostage over cups of tea in rug shops. If you’re a woman traveling solo, it becomes annoying to the point that you can no longer enjoy taking in the sights as a pedestrian. Eventually, you may even long for Athens, where public square dwellers laboring as unpaid critics remove the cigarettes from their lips just long enough to scowl at American tourists.
But none of this defensive behavior was necessary. Even the de rigueur cab-driver shuffle was performed in lilting voices with smiles and friendliness. People in Delhi seemed for the most part purposeful, heading to work and school or busy operating their outdoor stalls. Locals are polite and helpful if you need something and leave you be if you don’t. Few police officers carry guns. And most criminals don’t carry firearms. The joke is that lawbreakers are much better off approaching the police with hard cash rather than handguns. This is so different from Manhattan, where no one pulls out a gun, because chances are that everyone else has one too. I wasn’t accosted by panhandlers or children who’d been blinded or maimed in order to become more effective beggars. Pimps weren’t prostituting women in alleyways. I didn’t even see a car with a sign saying “Radio Already Stolen,” which never seems to go out of style on my street back home, where ear-piercing car alarms serve as the city’s theme song.
Mother India
I arrived the night before Independence Day. On August 15, 1947, India threw off the shackles following 347 years of British rule and declared itself a sovereign nation where every man and woman would have a vote. Actually, that was the plan, but at the last minute, an astrologer came dashing in with charts fluttering and declared that August 15 was bad luck, and they moved things back to midnight of the 14th so no one would be struck by lightning. Independence Day in India is a somewhat staid affair, with the prime minister hoisting a flag from the ramparts of the historic Red Fort in New Delhi and giving a carefully crafted speech highlighting everything he’s accomplished that year. At local cultural centers, schoolchildren sing patriotic songs and act out the roles of main players in the revolution, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Then everyone heads home to watch Indian Idol, the top-rated TV show.
Sadly missing were backyard barbecues, small-town parades, three-legged races, hot dog–eating contests, fireworks, M-80s tossed into backyards, potato salad left in the sun too long, bonfires built too close to garages, and the obligatory trips to the emergency room. But that’s understandable, since the Islamic Republic of Pakistan was carved out on the same day, which resulted in massacres of entire villages along with the largest human migration in history. Hindus and Sikhs moved south and east to India, while Muslims headed north and west for Pakistan, making a grand total of about 12 million displaced persons. It didn’t help that in order to maintain control of India, the Brits had played the Hindus and Muslims against each other for decades, so there was already a substantial amount of ill will brewing. The consequence was that more than a million people lost their lives during the violent and bloody chaos known as Partition.
Although Independence Day isn’t the exuberant celebration to which Americans are accustomed, fireworks come out in full force during Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, which usually occurs in November or December, depending on the position of the moon. Diwali commemorates the return of Lord Rama from exile, proclaims the triumph of good over evil, and marks the Hindu New Year. This five-day celebration entails full-scale merrymaking and falls during the tourist season (October through May) rather than monsoon season (June through September). And the springtime festival of Holi, which involves throwing buckets of colored powder and colored water at friends, family, and strangers, gives the appearance of fireworks having been unleashed at ground level.
There appear to be as many festivals in India as there are gods and goddesses. In Bollywood movies, it’s always at a festival where the protagonist loses his twin brother or sister. When traveling through the subcontinent, Mark Twain noted that although a week has only seven days, Indians seemed to celebrate eight festivals every week. They run the gamut from the religious and political to the agricultural and commercial. There are gala events to celebrate elephants, chariots, mangoes, monsoons, full moons, and even inner light. One festival involves hurling paint at people and another features body piercing. A ten-day-long celebration in October commemorates the slaying of the buffalo-headed demon Mahishasura by Durga, wife of the god Shiva. People blow sacred conch shells, offer prayers, and shower enormous statues of the Hindu goddess with countless marigolds. One must assume that schoolchildren don’t get every holiday off, or they’d be in class only four days out of the entire year.
Marijuana smoking is especially popular at holy festivals. Technically speaking, cannabis is illegal in most parts of India, but busting potheads isn’t high on police officers’ to-do lists in what is sometimes referred to as a functional anarchy. Just be careful about where you decide to take a stoner nap, since India is the hair export capital of the world, and while tresses are usually harvested through consensual head shaving at temples (a form of sacrifice), your lustrous ponytail might suddenly be snipped off by a hair robber after your consciousness has been sufficiently raised or lowered.
British rule over India was known as the Raj, a Hindi word from the Sanskrit raja, which means “king.” India was declared “The Jewel in the Crown” of the British Empire for being its most valuable colony, with a wealth of natural resources that included diamonds, raw cotton, wheat, tea, coffee, jute (a plant fiber used to make twine), burlap, and cheap paper. Also, the country’s outsized population could be made to pay tariffs that would fill the royal coffers. I recall something from a fourth-grade history class about American colonists eventually getting slightly ticked about a similar taxation without representation situation.
Prior to British reign, India was a vast array of competing kingdoms that occasionally invaded and took over one another, not unlike a giant game of Risk. Following independence, the various maharajas, which is Sanskrit for “great kings,” were given a stipend from the government but no longer had administrative powers or the authority to collect taxes. By the early 1970s, all of their privileges had been ended and their titles revoked. They are now, technically speaking, “former maharaja so-and-so,” similar to how the recording star who changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol was for years called The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.
Several of the maharajas’ palaces still stand and can be visited, while a few have been turned into hotels. Much like how Sitting Bull joined William F. Cody’s Wild West Show after the whole America thing didn’t work out as planned, a number of maharajas along with their offspring entered the tourist trade and now offer grandiose accommodation in former palaces, complete with billiards rooms, heated swimming pools, tea and cucumber sandwiches alongside the croquet lawn, spas offering Ayurvedic massage, and ancestral portrait galleries featuring portly men with impressive handlebar mustaches and intelligent dark eyes beneath brilliantly jeweled turbans.
Today, with 1.2 billion people, India is the world’s largest democracy and the second most populous country after China. There isn’t a national language but rather an official language, which is Hindi. (Hindi is the more proper version of the language spoken by politicians and newscasters, while Hindustani is the less rigid form heard in the streets and chai stalls.) English is the second official language, so it’s easy to follow street signs, make reservations, purchase tickets, and communicate with hospitality workers, who almost all speak English. Furthermore, because Hindi is mostly spoken in the north, English is used to connect north and south. Most Indians know at least two languages, and educated Indians are often fluent in three or four or five languages. States are allowed to operate in their native tongues, so all in all you have twenty-two government-recognized languages with people speaking in more than two hundred variations and dialects. It can be difficult for English speakers to pronounce Hind
i and trying out a few phrases will more likely result in widespread amusement than create a positive impression. But if you do manage to say something vaguely comprehensible, Indians will be astounded, flattered, and thrilled and want to take you home for dinner and show you off to their entire family.
Indians are naturally loquacious, so I found it easy to strike up extended casual conversations and was not surprised to learn that they have the longest constitution in the world (which went into effect January 26, 1950). The musically accented Indian voice sounds perennially cheerful, and I’m not sure how you’d know if a local was really frustrated with you. But such widespread comprehension of English aids the current economic liftoff and keeps tourism robust. Indians are as creative with their speech as they are in business. Vishal Nagar, a concierge at the Hyatt Regency in Delhi, produced a word new to my ears, prepone. If you want to defer an appointment, then obviously you postpone it; but if you want to bring something forward and make it earlier, then Mr. Nagar is happy to prepone the activity for you. Meantime, if you want to enter a building from the rear, you’ll be going in through its backside, and denting is used to describe the act of removing a dent from your car. Otherwise, Indians don’t like to disappoint, and instead of saying no, they often nod agreeably while being vague about the details.
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