Popagandhi

They say that in order to know a city quickly and intimately - you just have to talk to a taxi driver. Which is a good idea, since taxi drivers are, of all available occupations, the most - shall we say, verbally gifted, of the lot. One wonders if this tendency to be circumlocutory is directly proportional to the amount of time spent more or less alone in a moving vehicle; and even more when they are not directly answerable to any higher authority, unless they fault on rental, run over somebody, or in Singapore’s case, hover around in dark corners refusing to pick up passengers until the 50% midnight surcharge is applicable (and thus incurring the wrath of pissed off civic-minded members of society who write in to the nationbuilder’s press to demand redress). The problems with adopting this approach to familiarize yourself with a city, however, are many. More often than not one ends up finding out too much, or listening to a questionable account of history or current affairs - another occupational hazard, for many of them.

Take, for example, the cabbies who drive me to school each day. I used to be sure that they were entirely different people, since such chance affairs like flagging down cabs at disparate times of the day, are surely reliant upon the concepts of probability. These days, I can’t be too sure anymore - the more taxis I take, the more I am horrified that they could very well be the same people, albeit in different clothing and different vehicles. There is a uniform script, it appears. Hi, good morning, where do you want to go? XX University? Alright, so, what are you studying? It doesn’t matter what you tell them, they’re only interested in telling you what their children are studying. Yes, so my elder son is going to graduate soon, he’s an engineering student. My other kid is entering medical school. Isn’t that great? Where did you want to go again? Did I just miss a turn?

We won’t even mention their propensity to strike up political conversations with all and sundry. I find this phenomena absolutely shocking: I mean - we can’t find too many instances of voluntary political debate in classrooms around the nation, in the upper echelons of academia, and it’s freely available in every taxi plying the island? And the uniformity involved - how they are all disgruntled and have the one same slogan - zeng hu boh hoh. You find it ridiculous when you realize that not all doctors hold the same political opinions, and not all clerks or teachers or port workers either.

I like my taxi drivers charmingly crazy and certifiably insane. Which is why I adored Kolkata’s cabbies, who were all similarly cut from the same cloth (or the same dhoti, depending). A journalist once mused that there is no other place in the world, Kabul excepting, where he was more terrified of being in a car, than Kolkata. That was surely the understatement of the decade. Kolkata’s cabbies whiz through the maniacal traffic (magnitude of which, to give an approximation, puts Bangkok to shame by far) - lurch forward with the confidence but not the skill of Formula One drivers, before screeching to an abrupt halt in the middle of the road to buy tobacco leaves from a roadside boy. They also possessed the ability to make you feel like the biggest idiot in the world. You spend 5 minutes saying “Gariahat, Gariahat”, they look puzzled and confused as if you were speaking French (or Yiddish), and if it were not enough, would only have the Eureka “Oh, Gariahat, why didn’t you say so” moment when enough taxi drivers and random Kolkatans have gathered around to hear this alien speak. They had class, pure and simple. I have never met taxi drivers anywhere else in the world who would refuse to take you to a particular spot because they were “scared” of the journey out, leave you in the middle of the woods but not before extorting a princely 250 rupees from the foreigner.

(This description of Cal’s cabbies was so good, I had to take it: “While much has improved in Calcutta???flyovers, new shopping malls, the riverside makeover, traffic remains terrifying. There are hardly any undented cars in the city, and all taxi drivers drive with the simple assumption that the man in the car coming at him head-on is less insane than himself. Every taxi ride is serious panic-attack time. In two days, my cab was hit twice by other cars. When that happens, the drivers simply stick their necks out of the windows, abuse each other and drive on. They don???t even get down to check the damage. In only one other city in the world have I been so scared sitting in cars???Kabul.”)

I have learned many important lessons in life from taxi drivers. Many of the ones back home just want to tell me to do my woman’s duty by not studying too much, procreating with the first man available, and have 2.6 children. But the most important of these, was that one particular one in Malaysia, who taught me more colourful language to describe every member of my government, than is fit to print here.