Taxi wallah blog

They are ubiquitous in Mumbai’s fabric. They are as intrinsic to the Mumbai landscape as the Marine Drive, the chowpatty and the Ganesh festival. They are, in a sense, the movers and shakers of this maximum city that keeps running from dawn to dusk in a seemingly eternal cycle. You cannot miss them, you cannot ignore them and, of course, you cannot do without them. They are the taxi-cabs of Mumbai.

While the suburban trains occupy the pride of place in the connectivity media available in Mumbai for obvious reasons (sigh), the yellow-black cabs are your messiahs if you want to avoid the ruthless ecosystem of the local trains, or if you just want to take a leisurely drive with your spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend or someone like that. Traditionally typified by the archaic sedan – the Premier Padmini – the cabs have now partly graduated to more contemporary cousins like the Santro, Alto, Eeco and WagonR. The taxi meters have also found digital alternatives to the “Don’t tech me” Meter-Down blackboxes. However, though the cabs all look similar on the outside, they have a world of their own once you get inside, done up to the whims and fancy of their owners. So, while some are rickety, dusty and have coir fibres bulging through gaping holes in the upholstery, others look like the sets of Tamil movies – gaudy seat covers, fluorescent tubelights, big woofer speakers for the audio system, festoons of all kinds, photos of movestars; I have even come across a cab with a mini chandelier hanging in the middle of the cab! Heady fare, I tell you…

But more interesting and intriguing than the cabs themselves are the characters that drive these cabs. As Saif Khan explained in “Hum Tum”, every time you hail a cab your life intertwines with that of the driver’s for a brief interval of time. And, if you look closely, each driver has a story to tell – verbally or otherwise. Some drivers are diffident woody characters who wouldn’t do anything else except drive the cab and telling you how much to pay at the end. Some are on the other end of the spectrum, humming songs, picking up stray bits of conversation now and then, whether you like it or not (it goes like, “Arre sahab, aapka shirt ekdum rapchick hai, aap fashion street se liya hoenga, udhar sab mast maal milta hai…”) and inciting the mothers and sisters of every driver who dares to overtake them. Most of the drivers are from the part of India the Shiv Sena hates, and you can make that out from the typical slow, deliberate, musical accent they speak in.

The cab drivers have a tough life in many respects, spending about 18 hours a day sitting cramped behind the wheel, driving around people of all types to all corners of the city, through traffic, heat and sweat, all for a loaf of bread. All this hardship often finds expression in the personality of the cab drivers. There’ll be old men who’d tell you all about their exploitative owner and his antics, even though you didn’t ask. There’ll be policy makers who’ll tell you all the places the government needs to build flyovers or diversions urgently (and they’ll be right most of the time). There’ll be haggard fellows who’ll recount all the routes they had driven to on that particular day, cursing the Gujarati who left without paying the full fare and the cop who fined him for driving without a seatbelt. Then there’ll be men with flowing beards & skullcaps who’ll rue the fact that Mumbai is now ghettoized and far-removed from communal harmony. Some’ll have a flair for the language, and when asked, “arre bhaiya Thane chaloge?” will reply with, “arre sahab aap margdarshan karenge to chaand par bhi chale jayenge”. One particular man, on coming to know that I had lived in his hometown Varanasi, treated me to a cutting-chaai and omellette paav and said he missed home in this unforgiving city. The kaleidoscope is endless, and you do get to know Mumbai better through the eyes of these people.

Well, I am sure that if you are a Mumbaikar or have visited Mumbai, you would have taken a ride on one of these taxi-cabs. And if you have, you have a high probability of having a colourful memory of the ride. After all, Mumbai wouldn’t be the same without these yellow-black sentinels, ready to take you to your destination like Aladin’s carpet with a clink of the meter.

Mama & music, freak & freakonomics ...

True to nature, I have successfully passed close to nine months without blogging, and some would say that’s enough gestation time to produce a human being, leave alone a small piece of writing. So, here I am, back with a collection of random thoughts:

The best and brightest thing that happened to me in this inter-blog period is that I became the mama (maternal uncle) of a chubby cheerful boy in September. As is pretty well-known, a new-born brings unparalleled joy and warmth in the family (in most cases, that is, given that it is also pretty well-known that society still houses and nurtures some ungodly convictions). But the real and overwhelming magnitude of emotions that well up when you hold the little bundle in your hands for the first time and look at the two curious unfettered eyes peering at you though the cloth-wrap is something that can only be experienced first-hand. The baby has since grown rapidly, and has now graduated from the sleep-cry-drink milk-sleep sequence to the more elaborate sleep-eat-drink-shout-play-cackle-cry-eat-drink-play-sleep routine. Going by the mischievous smile that he sports when he is not hungry or in need of a nappy change, his mom and dad are preparing for tougher days when he starts to crawl and walk around the house with all the curiosity in the world. For me, one of the most fulfilling moments has been singing a lullaby to him and watching him slowly drift into an innocent sleep in my arms.

Moving to other stuff, it is but natural to talk of the cricket World Cup. We are after all a country which worships cricket and erects temples in honour of our cricket players. But given all the hoopla and whipped-up frenzy regarding the tournament, it has turned out to be pretty insipid fare, the reasons for which may be the overkill of cricket and the disappointing performance of the team that has been turned into a veritable deity by the Indian media. But a particular aspect of the tournament has been a disappointment for me – the theme song. There are a few sides to this. Firstly, the song in itself is nothing great, and coming from such versatile and able musicians is a let-down. Even the Commonwealth Games anthem was sleepy fare, and it is sad that a country that boasts of such accomplished and talented musicians and has such a rich heritage of music has nothing special to offer the world in one of the biggest showcases provided to it. Waka waka was a song with a distinct flavor of the host nation but with international appeal and an incredibly zesty touch to it. But, in my opinion, both “Let’s go” and “De Ghuma Ke” have missed the mark, especially disappointing coming from such stalwarts of international acclaim as Rehman and S-E-L. Even the alternate anthems have been few in number and equally unappealing (Compare this with the numerous anthems that went around during the Football WC, the best-known of them being “Waving the Flag”.). Secondly, it is somewhat tough for me to understand why an anthem for a tournament being co-hosted by 3 countries on a world stage should be a typical Hindi filmy soundtrack. With leading exponents of fusion available in India, it would have been great to have an anthem that reflected the music flavours of all the hosts. Also, given that all the 3 countries have great music to offer to the world, maybe a joint composition by artistes of all the 3 countries would have really been great.

Now on to another global phenomenon. I first came across Colonel Muammar Gaddafi many years back when I read the novel “The Fifth Horseman” by Collins & Lapierre. The novel has Gaddafi holding Washington DC to ransom by setting up a powerful bomb in the city. As much as that novel was fictional in nature, the specter of Gaddafi has stuck with me – a firebrand defiant & dictatorial leader with overflowing vitriol against the West and the economic muscle to back it up. There is one thing common to people like Hitler, Saddam, Gaddafi, Osama – and that is the fact that for all the fiendish atrocities that these people are blamed for, they are all products of ruthless policies of personal gain that the First World countries have pursued over the years. And stuck in the crossfire of cold blooded business-minded policy and vendetta are the common people who have to pay for this with their peace of mind and much worse in many cases, generation after generation in country after country. And as Operation Odessey Dawn brings in a string of Hornets and B-2s and Tomahawks and Gaddafi expectedly digging in, more innocent lives are sure to be lost.

Now onto something refreshing. A book I recently finished reading is called “Superfreaknomics” by Steve Levitt, an economist who has gained fame for his distinctly queer but intriguing fields of research and Steve Dubner, a journalist who has worked closely with Levitt. “Superfreakonomics” is a sequel to “Freakonomics”, and both the books use in-depth research and undeniable logic and compelling arguments to reach some startling and funny deductions about various earthly phenomena. In a lucid manner and with a whacky sense of humour, they tell you that a prostitute is more likely to end up having sex with a policeman than being arrested by him, that you are more likely to be killed walking drunk than driving drunk and that if you are a terrorist, you are less likely to be caught if you buy a life insurance. The book is educational as it is funny, and I strongly advise people who love non-fiction to go for this book (if you haven’t already) as I rush to grab my copy of “Freakonomics”.

I guess I’m done for now. Let me know what you feel …. And do something that makes me blog more often, please!!