MY COMMUTE

MY COMMUTE
2 October 2006
(happy birthday, Gandhi-ji)

dear readers:
agar aap Hindustan se parichit hue hain, ya aap yahan rahte hain, maf kijie. yeh sab aapko aata hai. i’m stating the obvious.
ye likhai un logon ke lie hain, jinhone Hindustan kabhi dekha nahin.

so, to the rest of you--
some things i see on my way to school.

cows.
goats.
dogs.
water buffalo.

the goats sound uncannily like humans imitating goats. once i passed a rickshaw carrying 7 kids [i mean the goats]-- 5 with their bellies on the seat and their hind legs trailing off the back, and 2 more lying in the footrest. all plaintively saying baaa just the way you and i would.

the dogs come in two distinct styles. you could call them class differences. the street dogs are leggy and long tailed and jackal-eared, with short coats. aside from the fact that they are so bony and mangy and fleabitten, they look clever and resourceful and they seem the kind of dogs i’d like to have. the pet dogs are the little yappy fluffball type, perhaps to more clearly differentiate them from street dogs.

the cows and bulls fulfill stereotype by being beatifically everywhere, eating garbage or wandering through the traffic with their effulgent eyes, imposing humps, curly horns and smelly bottoms. i once had to literally lean against a cow to get my bike out of the crush outside a movie theater where it was wedged between said cow and a motorcycle. watch out for droppings.

morning routines: men in loincloths vigorously soap themselves up and rinse in buckets on the side of the road. people cook breakfast in mini mobile kitchens, the same kind of cart that’s used for selling fruit and vegetables, selling shoes, ironing clothes, frying snacks, boiling chai, anything you like-- basically a wooden flat mounted on 4 bicycle wheels. also good for sleeping on once you close up shop for the day. some of the rickshaw drivers go home to families at night, but others just sleep on the curb or on the rickshaw seat. i see them at night or early morning gathered in clumps, here and there making little campfires under trees in a traffic island.

police posts: off duty cops sleep on folding cots in canvas tents or hang their towels and khakis out to dry. the ones on duty hang out in front sauntering around or leaning casually on their rifles. a recent newspaper poll determined that the majority of Indian citizens experience the police to be a “threatening and hostile presence.”

old aristocratic houses that look like they were sketched with smudged ochre pastels, framed in tangled gardens and picturesque decrepitude behind walls. domes and pointed arches and frilled balconies and intricate screens and arabesques, all crumbling. fruiting and flowering tropical trees.

construction sites: workers perch high on rickety-looking scaffolds of rope and bamboo. more workers at the bottom toss gravel against angled mesh screens until it’s winnowed into fine sand. for concrete, i guess. the dogs like to make nests in the piles of sand-- soft, warm, form-fitting-- to sleep in.
people toil in the sun along the broad new flyover road, bent over breaking up big slabs of rock into smaller chunks of rock and smaller chunks of rock into gravel. others tote the chunks of all sizes in baskets or on their heads. at night they make cooking fires and stretch out to sleep right there by the worksite under shelters of tarp or plastic sheeting slung over bamboo poles.
a woman in a parrot-green sari with necessarily perfect posture piles a castle of bricks on her head. a woman in a candy-pink sari bears a bundle of grass the size of a haystack on hers.
it never ceases to amaze me how people can do hard physical labor from dawn to dusk every day for years, on painfully substandard nutrition. like running a marathon on one cup of juice. the cost is that it ages them fast, so that someone you think is 50 or older might actually be 30 or younger.

bicycles, motorcycles, scooters:
milkmen hang a big metal cannister on each side. office workers hang tiffins on the handle bars. wives balance skilfully behind husbands, kids behind dads, moms behind daughters, any 2 guys, any 2 girls. if you ride on the back, make sure your legs are hanging off on the left. if you learned the road in North America, remember traffic flows on the left not the right, but if you forget it’s not that big a deal because half the time people are cruising unconcerned up the wrong side of the road anyway. if you’re wondering how women ride bikes without getting tangled in their dupattas, the secret is that you tie the ends behind your back. let me tell you, wearing a dupatta and a backpack at the same time can have complex results. all bikes, for you bike people, are basically fixed gear, and very upright with narrow handle bars and broad springy seats.

cycle rickshaws. auto rickshaws. more cycle rickshaws. they’re basically giant tricycles with a passenger bench on the back, and a fold-up awning for when it rains. they’re personalized with patterns of birds, fish, and flowers done with rivets and scraps of of red, yellow, blue and green metal, or with names: Deepu, Qaif, Suresh 2, Bobby.
they’ve been having student elections at Lucknow University, which is a bigger deal than it is in the states because it’s seen as a training and recruiting ground for the major political parties (and their partners in organized crime, it appears. more on this later.) this dude Rajan Nayak must have an in with the transportation department because he’s gotten “Vote for Rajan Nayak” painted on scads of city buses and tempos.

there are some cars, but they’re outnumbered by all of the above. most of the cars belong either to the police, the military or the government. these are the most obnoxious things on the road, big white Ambassadors that barge through like the original Juggernaut crushing anything in their path, honking continously at a level that would be 11 on a Spinal Tap amp. i cuss at them every time they pass, trusting that my English cussing does not raise hackles the way Hindi cussing would. though i know those words too and keep them ready just in case for when i might need them, like for Eve-teasing.

i sometimes take rickshaws if i’m going out with friends on the weekend, but usually i bike or walk. at the beginning i was doing the rickshaw thing by default, before i learned my way around, but i didn’t like it. partly just because of my native restlessness and my preference for physical activity and personal autonomy. but also because the whole situation of sitting pretty while someone pulls you around with the sweat of his skinny brow makes me feel weird. we’ve all discussed this amongst ourselves, and everyone comes up with their own rationale. for some, it goes something like this: you are not refraining from exploiting the drivers by not taking rides from them; you are merely depriving them of their income. so ride, and just pay handsomely.
but, but, but, am i supposed to just embrace a paternalistic role in an inequitable system? do i just accept that my sole obligation as an economically privileged person is to treat my peons with beneficence? i am uncomfortable with this. i prefer to simplify things by conveying myself through my own labor rather than buying someone else’s. i prefer to not use the services of anybody for anything i can do for myself, and that is very different than the way things most often work here. self-reliance is not expected, or even necessarily assumed desirable. (it makes me realize how deeply ingrained the liberal-individualist assumptions are in my cultural training.)
of course the choice to walk or bike is not going to change the economic relationships, any more than the choice to ride. but my ideal of interdependency is of mutuality among equals, and this is all one-sided.

tune in next time for the Rant of the Day and more politics in the street.