Tuesday 2nd December 2008

Over the last week or so, we’ve been flooded with emails and phone calls asking if we’re alright, now that international terrorism has launched itself on our doorstep. If only our parents and friends knew that the real danger was not on streets, but in cars.

I am thinking about this as we pick up a kebab from the local market and travel home. Our rickshaw driver, surprisingly happy to accept the first price we offer him, chugs gently along the road and lights up a joint. As the herby smoke curls into the back of vehicle, and we slalom gently across the road, we just look at each other and shrug. It’s not the worst we’ve had, after all.

Last week, Eva and I were trying to hail a ride at the absolute no-no time of 6pm. About this time, Delhi steps out of its office, or packs up its street stall, and gets into the nearest rickshaw. Scuffles, fights, screams, fisticuffs: even armed with these methods, you’re unlikely to travel anywhere except on two feet.

A small black van pulls up by the roadside. It looks as if though it has been pummeled by a plague of locusts armed with chisels. A plump Sikh sticks his head out of the window. “Where you going?” he asks. I tell him the name of one of the colonies on the south east side of town. “Three hundred rupees,” he demands, ushering us, presumptuously, into the back. It’s not even a one hundred rupee journey. I tell him it’s that or nothing. “Two hundred,” he says, and I shake my head. He drives off. Less than ten seconds later, the sound of a squeaky reverse gear. “OK, one fifty.” Tired, and also willing to admit we’ll never find anything else at this hour, we agree.

Conversations in the back of taxis and rickshaws almost inevitably start with the same question. Which country? England. And you live? London. Sometimes this is greeted with confusion. You are being born in the country of England and you are living in the country of London? It’s best at such times to simply shrug.

“You are having smoke?” I tell him he can have a cigarette if he wants one. But he’ll only take one lit from my mouth, he says, and there’s something I don’t like about this strange, specific arrangement. He asks several times, but I’m slightly creeped out and thus pretty adamant.

“I do not like the smoking either,” he says. “But I have pimple on my nose and it makes it better. This and shower. I have shower for one hour every day.” With this, he opens the window and in the tradition of drivers all over the city hocks a huge, snotty globule of spit and projects it across three lanes of traffic.

“You married?” he asks. Yes, I reply. What does husband do? I think quickly. A doctor’s always a respectable choice for an Indian. Our Sikh driver grins. “Is he a gynacologist?”

The banter continues for another twenty minutes before we realise our friend has no idea where he is going either. I get out my Delhi streetmap, show him where we are and where we want to be, gesturing towards the right hand lane. He grins. “This map is very nice,” he says, flicking through the pages with one hand while the other strokes the steering wheel. I realise he has no intention of following it. He fills the traffic jam waiting with pictures of his family, and at one point jumps out of the drivers’ seat, apparently to go and buy some ‘soup’, though he returns empty handed. Having miraculously found our destination after driving only a few kilometres out of our way, he hands us his businesscard: ‘Harvinder Singh Bindra,’ it says, and then, ‘transporter.’ He didn’t, after all, promise us anything more than that.

Our driver to the Taj Mahal could not have taken a less lackadaisical attitude. Rajesh was not only our transporter, but our sworn guardian. Dropping us in the centre of Agra, he gently took us aside and whispered. “Here is the gate,” he breathed. “You walk in there, you go straight-straight for ten minutes. You do not talk to any other peoples. You do not stop for any other peoples. Agra peoples is not good. I am your man.” After that, the urchins selling plastic bracelets and Taj Mahal keyrings loomed from beneath us like Edvard Munch’s The Scream, and even the ice-cream sellers were out to steal our passports - and our souls.

On the way home, once he was assured we were safely tucked into the back seat of his car, Rajesh shouted questions at Eva as he straddled two, sometimes even three, lanes of traffic.

“How many cars are there being in your country?” he asks, as the cacophany of car horns aimed our way grows slowly louder. She replies that she doesn’t know, there are really to many to count. This is not enough for Rajesh. How many? He shakes his head.

“And how many Muslims are there being your country?” He asks. Once again Eva shakes her head. She doesn’t really know exactly. But how many? She doesn’t know. How many Muslims are there in India? He kisses his teeth mournfully. “Many, many,” he replies.

Being a driver in Delhi is a thankless task. Drivers wait around for unspecified periods of time, being relieved only when madam or mistress deign to return. Drivers sleep in their cars, and are woken at all hours of the night. They are on call 24/7, and – perhaps dangerously – there are no maximum limits for working hours. Middle class Indians moan about their drivers the way Brits moan about the weather. They make the car smell, they don’t speak good English, they’re lazy, and, of course, they never know where they are going. “I don’t have my driver any more,” said a friend of ours as he sped down a city freeway, late at night. He had consumed at least twice as much red wine as I had, and I felt more than a little woozy. “I was driving back from a party the other day,” he shouted over the thump of R’n’B, “and I just told him to get out of the car. He sat in the passenger seat while I drove. Imagine!”

Delhi drivers may be smelly, they may be lazy. I can at least agree that they get lost a lot. But one thing is sure: they ask a lot of questions, and while one serious eye is always reserved for madam in the driving seat, the other is winking at the road.