Every travel to India is somehow riddled with hair-raising taxi journeys, cows, the smell of spice and sewers, the ungodly smell of the ungodly and seemingly godly things and of course people. People closing lifts on you. People standing on you in public transport. People honking and hocking into your brain and coffee, sometimes interchangeably. And so go the cliches. Travel writers to India are going to have to find other things to write about because honestly, it's getting boring.
Till of course you find yourself in the maw of the moment on a deranged car journey through the city's potholed spaghetti strip of suicide and fatalism-ridden chaos and pray to God you live to write about it. Oh how funny it will all be when you look back on all this, regaling your chums at the club over G&Ts in the sticky Delhi air. Ha ha ha. The driver throws me a dirty look in his snot-fingered rear view mirror as I try to yank the flaccid seat belt into action. The burp and lurch of the black and yellow Ambassador is like being in a soup can on wheels propelled forward by a steroidal Matchbox car; the motor and shell of the car in unholy dissonance with each other. An unexpected bhangra tune (by someone called Juzzy Be-uh, gaana ka naam Maharajas, I am duly informed) sets the whizz of roundabouts and orange trees to song, farting out of the windows along with a host of mosquitoes I try to propel in the same direction. And just when I think I'm such a cliche - (Me? Here? In a suicide-cab in Delhi?), I look down to find that the seat belt clasp I've been groping for, is nowhere to be seen. Like all good cabs in the city, upholstering the seats means keeping the trifling seatbelt clasps tucked under the seat.
Once inspired by a midget who resides in my head who said 'Safety-self-righteousness is a religion', I once asked a cabbie to stop on the side of the road so he could lift up the seats and pull out the clasps that so ingeniously test the patience of those reared in countries with non-agrarian road systems. He complied by stopping the car on the bend of a flyover. I wondered whether he realised the irony of having his bum sticking out into swerving traffic while he hunted for the safety paraphernalia in the car. Of course, I couldn't decide whether I'd rather sit in the car and be violently rear-ended by a lorry - perhaps righteously for the first time in Indian lorry-crashing history - or stay on the flyover and face any crippling automobiles head on. Feeling some sort of pride for speaking up, I reached my destination 'safely'strapped into a yo-yo string of a seatbelt. However, at the mercy of some sort of karmic-boomerang, my day ended with a nail finding its way into one of our tires; the cabbie fixing it with bubblegum and amchoor it seemed and us finding ourselves careening through traffic on a burst tire some tortuous forty minutes later. In a desperate attempt to save my day, I actually hailed a cab in the 30mph traffic that seemed to crawl past us and I leapt from my dying taxi into the safe recesses of a black and yellow van - budget Bollywood style. As we sped away home, I thanked my stars for the new cab and vowed never to mess with the system again. Needless to say, there were no seatbelt clasps to speak of. In not mentioning them to the driver, I presumed I would make it home in one piece. I did. There must be something to this cliche thing.
Stat of the day - cliches are boring till you become one. And then you're alive.
Till of course you find yourself in the maw of the moment on a deranged car journey through the city's potholed spaghetti strip of suicide and fatalism-ridden chaos and pray to God you live to write about it. Oh how funny it will all be when you look back on all this, regaling your chums at the club over G&Ts in the sticky Delhi air. Ha ha ha. The driver throws me a dirty look in his snot-fingered rear view mirror as I try to yank the flaccid seat belt into action. The burp and lurch of the black and yellow Ambassador is like being in a soup can on wheels propelled forward by a steroidal Matchbox car; the motor and shell of the car in unholy dissonance with each other. An unexpected bhangra tune (by someone called Juzzy Be-uh, gaana ka naam Maharajas, I am duly informed) sets the whizz of roundabouts and orange trees to song, farting out of the windows along with a host of mosquitoes I try to propel in the same direction. And just when I think I'm such a cliche - (Me? Here? In a suicide-cab in Delhi?), I look down to find that the seat belt clasp I've been groping for, is nowhere to be seen. Like all good cabs in the city, upholstering the seats means keeping the trifling seatbelt clasps tucked under the seat.
Once inspired by a midget who resides in my head who said 'Safety-self-righteousness is a religion', I once asked a cabbie to stop on the side of the road so he could lift up the seats and pull out the clasps that so ingeniously test the patience of those reared in countries with non-agrarian road systems. He complied by stopping the car on the bend of a flyover. I wondered whether he realised the irony of having his bum sticking out into swerving traffic while he hunted for the safety paraphernalia in the car. Of course, I couldn't decide whether I'd rather sit in the car and be violently rear-ended by a lorry - perhaps righteously for the first time in Indian lorry-crashing history - or stay on the flyover and face any crippling automobiles head on. Feeling some sort of pride for speaking up, I reached my destination 'safely'strapped into a yo-yo string of a seatbelt. However, at the mercy of some sort of karmic-boomerang, my day ended with a nail finding its way into one of our tires; the cabbie fixing it with bubblegum and amchoor it seemed and us finding ourselves careening through traffic on a burst tire some tortuous forty minutes later. In a desperate attempt to save my day, I actually hailed a cab in the 30mph traffic that seemed to crawl past us and I leapt from my dying taxi into the safe recesses of a black and yellow van - budget Bollywood style. As we sped away home, I thanked my stars for the new cab and vowed never to mess with the system again. Needless to say, there were no seatbelt clasps to speak of. In not mentioning them to the driver, I presumed I would make it home in one piece. I did. There must be something to this cliche thing.
Stat of the day - cliches are boring till you become one. And then you're alive.
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