I‘n Bombay, the most cosmopolitan of Indian cities, one rarely .even sees the road. The streets are covered by a thick carpet of taxis, trucks, and people — and bereft of lanes or signals. Traffic is a free-for-all resulting in what my teenage brother calls NDEs (for “near death experiences”), what with cars and trucks continually swerving around people, beggars, and animals. Libertarians ought to pay the city a visit, because one day there is sure to give any anarchist a healthy appreciation for the rule of law, especially when it comes to traffic signals.
Traveling from my grandmother’s apartment in northern Bombay to the city’s southern tip takes over an hour, although the distance is less than 10 miles. The average citizen navigates the traffic by bus, but since I was forbidden by my Indian-born mother to ride the buses (she feared pickpockets, pinchers, and kidnappers), I became very familiar with taxis and their drivers.
Each cab starts with the same base, a squat yellow and black Fiat comfortable for four, but often used as transportation for eight or nine. Lap space, seat space, it’s all the same. Each taxi celebrates the driver’s religious or cultural passions. One driver had a small plastic model of a temple attached to the dashboard and surrounded by red and zebra-print velour upholstery in the entire car, ceiling included. Many have the names of film heroes, movies, or gods painted on the back window.
Driving through Bombay with words like “Love Goddess” screaming out in fluore scent orange from the back of my taxis, I spend hours staring at shiny billboar ds advertising cellular phones, fax machines, JP Morgan, and of course movies, ranging from James Bond’s GoldenEye to something called Lady Terminator$ N (“She mates and then she terminates”). Only 10 years ago, the only show on television was I Love Lucy. Now Indians are treated to Baywatch, Beverly Hills 90210, and The Bold and the Beautiful, not to mention CNN, BBC, MTV, and ESPN. In the past, bashful media heroines only kissed behind bushes. Now they are all Madonna prototypes, baring their midriffs in dance videos reminiscent of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”
From Bombay we travel to Baroda, a city of about 3 million (and considered small!) in the prosperous state of Gujarat. My mother’s family has lived in Baroda for several hundred years. On my cousin’s Honda Kinetic (a two-wheeler), I pass prominent buildings erected by my ancestors and the crocodile pond where my parents went during their courtship to hold hands away from inquisitive neighbors.
My aunt, an accountant with a degree from the London School of Economics, takes to the roads with a real sporting spirit. In Baroda one has to avoid not only the trucks, taxis, and crowds, but also three-wheel rickshaws carrying 12 children, families on scooters, cows, oxen, and sheep.
We decide to take a road trip tothe town of Dohad, where my mother spent her first nine years. And so I have my first experience of Indian highways and their large, hulking cargo trucks — trucks with the words “Please, Horn, OK” painted on the back to indicate that those wishing to pass should just “horn.”
One frequently needs to slow down to pass bullock carts, camel carts, and farmers pushing carts. The lush country alongside us is a riot of wheat, corn, castor, sunflowers, and tobacco. We stop at what my aunt and uncle assure us is a respectable snack bar and eat hot fried bujyas. Amazingly, no one falls sick.
After several hours, we reach Dohad. In this small place, I am unquestionably a foreigner, and people stare at me intently, despite the fact that I am dressed in Indian attire identical to my cousins’. A wedding party of about 30 men dancing to the bride’s house interrupts their song and begins improvising a new one, which translates to “Pale, pale face, with dark, dark glasses.” Only in Dohad would I be called a “paleface.”
My mother takes me around St. Stephen’s school, where she learned from Catholic priests in a classroom of thatched mud walls (they now have several very respectable concrete structures). We also visit Maya Talkies, the movie theater owned by my family — a scene right out of Cinema Paradiso. Could the residents of Dohad imagine the world my mother has emigrated m — – specifically, the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills? Only from a movie. But then, Dohad is itself unimaginable to most Americans, accustomed as we are to cleanliness and order, supermarkets and strip malls.
My road trips allowed me to see as never before the confusion of India, but also the warmth, community, and hospitality that our After a few days in the smaller cities, one gets accustomed to the mayhem, and perhaps even begins to believe, as a friend’s grandmother said, that “in Bombay, we have excellent traffic control.” NEOMI RAO
