Stories from the Road 2002
an ongoing travelogue

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The following is a journal entry that I made right after a taxi ride through the wonderful and crazy streets of Calcutta, India.

So our large Sikh cab driver, even bigger with his nine meters of turban pressed firm against the ceiling is straddling an imaginary divider, crossing over into oncoming traffic. He's doing what every other driver in Calcutta does, essentially aiming themselves at other straddlers. In this case we are speeding straight on at a billowing (but not billowy) bus, loaded up and fuming angry diesel. I am sitting, rolled into a semi-fetus position. My feet are planted on the long front seat in front of me. I am holding my neck, riding ready for whiplash, saying, "whoa! Whooa!" There are cars driving bumper to bumper (in a super-literal way) and fast on both sides of us. There can't be more than two feet of clearance on either side of our taxi. Lane lines mean nothing here. They manage to fit themselves three to a lane.

I can't believe I am actually worried that our driver might scrape the sides of his car,after all, he's bouncing on the springs of his seat, singing away.

His arms are waving merrily, now both of them -- at the same time. We are getting closer and closer to the oncoming bus and our driver is talking to Shiva or Allah, I am not sure which. I can't bare to look but I have to. I don't want to die in Calcutta! Varanasi maybe -- but not Calcutta.

He looks over his shoulder at us. I can't really see what Bonnie is doing; both my eyes are puckered up, as though my squinting might protect us. Has the driver decided to make a self-sacrifice to the baseball card sized Hindu god replica on his dashboard? And possibly on the notion that he might get extra credit if he takes two quivering Americans from the U.S.A. (evil hissing sounds) with him?!

And he's still laughing! By now, I can clearly make out the script on the bus's license plate and to top it off, there is some prayer to Allah painted above the bus's grill and its got an exclamation mark after it.

Our driver mutters something through his no-hands-on-the-wheel-laughing-hysteria about life being better by not thinking, just doing. Then his leg moves, he presses the soft brakes, the bus not having budged a foot, and we slip in between two other cars next to us -- a space had just magically appeared. Our driver continued in his song, laughing to himself, having only paused for a breath.