Ten things I Learned in India: A Reflection in Installments.
My family and I moved to Mumbai, July 22nd, 2015. June 15th, 2017, we will get on a plane home. That day we head back to the United States, thereby ending our almost two-year stint as Mumbaikers (what they call Mumbai citizens around here). Twenty-three months in India! What has it taught me?
I would tell you that it is not that I had never come to India before this last two-year period. My husband is from Goa, a part of India formerly settled by the Portuguese. As such, we had traveled to Mumbai and Goa almost annually since before we were married to see family. India, in other words, was not new to us. But living here is, and it has taught me a few things.
Lesson Number One: Traffic Sangfroid
The first thing I have learned is a deep calm and trust in the wildly chaotic and frequently near-life-threatening traffic of the city. I need to confess from the start that I do not, nor do I ever intend on driving in Mumbai. Only the truly courageous (in my opinion) do drive here. In fact, driving in Mumbai was recently added to the Wikipedia list of extreme sports (by me, if you must know).
Let’s just say that someone, who shall remain nameless, and his boss, who shall also remain nameless, were in a car two years ago on an early business trip before our big move. In the car, the two anonymous men were discussing the question of whether one should drive one’s own car in Mumbai or hire a driver. Timed perfectly for the discussion, a minor fender bender occurred just a few feet ahead on the road. Within seconds the drivers of both vehicles involved in the accident were out and inspecting the damage (which was minor), And, within a few more seconds, they were exchanging blows.
This, it was decided, was a very good reason not to drive. I will also mention that the police soon arrived after the aforementioned fender-bender-cum-fistfight and the keeper-of-law-and-order himself began to slap the two drivers involved in the accident and sent them packing. This, it was decided, was another good reason not to drive in Mumbai. When you add to those reasons, the scarce supply of parking in the city and the relative affordability of a driver, especially on an expat salary, the decision was clear.
All of which is a long way of getting to the fact that we have a driver. His name is Shivkumar Pandey (name not at all changed to protect the innocent). Pandey, as he prefers to be called, is unflappable. I’ve only seen him lose his cool once and that when a young driver parked us in. The driver seemed too much under the spell of his own new vicarious power and status, afforded to him by the fact that his employers had recently purchased a new Range Rover. One might say he overestimated the privileges such a secondary status afforded him. The old guard drivers took it upon themselves to disabuse the young man of his false pride and poor manners (no slapping, by the way, was involved, just a tongue lashing of a colorful and lengthy variety).
Other than that one time, Pandey has been a model of composure. Nothing shakes his Buddha-like stillness or draws him out of his practiced refusal to be pulled into the samsara of traffic suffering. Madness swirls around and he merely glides through it — sometimes in ways that seem to defy natural law.
Early on I would wince and clench during the closer-of-the-close maneuvers on the road. I’d gasp and start and double-check my seat belt and swear. Yet, the truth is we made an amazing use of the space allotted to us by the universe. Pandey seemed to know our length and width and depth down to the nanometer. And I came to understand that any touching of car parts was a calculated choice to maximize our progress through the world with minimal risk of any serious consequences.
I won’t say that I don’t still lie awake some nights wondering how we really made it through that day’s tight spots. There are moments when the image of Harry Potter’s bus — the one with the shrunken head hanging in front — comes to mind as an active hypothesis of how we survive on a regular basis. It is hard to tell, really, whether it is luck or skill or magic that helps us weather the mad streets of Mumbai or madness anywhere, and remain intact.
Time, however, is teaching me to trust the whole of it. The steady hand of Pandey, the general benevolence of the universe and even the unruly rules of the irrepressible roads of my adopted home. I am slowly acquiring, I think, a healthy case of this city’s Traffic Sangfroid; a badge of the initiated, I think!
The proof is in the pudding. Lately, I have noticed, I keep my eyes open for most of every ride in the car. I still turn my head reflexively in the direction of the side mirror I hear folding into car when I hear its characteristic thump. But that is mostly to make sure we haven’t hit anything animate, anything worthy of a gesture of contrition or a ride home. So far, so good! And I hope to keep it that way. Inshallah.
So, watch out Suburbia! Come June, there will be a new mom in town. She comes hot off the streets of the Maximum City and given half an inch she will take a mile.
