I heard there’s a commercial here with a homesick Indian in New York City. He has trouble falling asleep so he calls home & tells his mom the problem. She says she has just the thing & holds the phone out the window so he can hear the soothing sounds of HONK! BEEP BEEP!! BEEEEEEEEPPPPPP!!!! HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNKKKKKKKKKKKKK! ‘Ahhhh…now I can sleep, thanks mom,’ he says or something to that effect. This place is so noisy that I am looking forward to returning to the relative ‘quiet’ of the NYC area! Can you believe that??!!
It is NOT the land of Om, if I thought I’d find that here I was sadly [oh so sadly] mistaken. Of all the places I have been in the world, this is in a class, school, system, zone by itself! I have never experienced anything like it. NEVER. In the month I have been here, I have vacillated between total horror & utter fascination. What a combination. Though I have spent more time in the total horror category I have to say. No street signs except for the major roads & in the diplomat area—‘you go straight & you go straight & then turn left!’ I heard for directions one day & the trip of it was, the party got to the destination before we did! Crazy construction almost everywhere as the city digs out for the extension of the Delhi Metro which is slated to be complete in 2010 for the Commonwealth Games.
My cabbie on the way to the airport [oh I was so excited to be coming here then, sigh] happened to be from India & was telling me there were no rules on the road. Now I scoffed at that in my head, SURELY there must be some rules. Wey-all, the man was right. THERE ARE NO RULES ON THE ROAD HERE. ABSOLUTELY, UNEQUIVICABLY, EMPHATICALLY NONE! NO. RULES. ON. THE. ROAD. NONE. I have been places where the driving was atrocious, where no visitor should even consider thinking about renting a car—Bogotá, Colombia up until this point had my award for the Worse Driving Ever. But I have to say; I would love to see driving like that right about now, because these people here are KUH-RAZY! They honk incessantly, pass on EITHER side of a vehicle, will even cross the yellow line to pass. Yes, I said it. They will & DO cross the yellow line to pass, so what if oncoming traffic is coming toward them?! It is a city of extremes.
4 lanes of cars in a 3 lane area, why they even have lines painted on the roads, I have no idea. Motorcycles up the ying yang, rickshaws, auto rickshaws, [someone asked me what the heck an auto rickshaw was, well it’s a motorized 3 wheeled menace of a vehicle] bicycles, dogs, pedestrians—oh yes, there are no friggin’ SIDEWALKS HERE so you walk in the street with the maniac drivers driving right up on your ass & then scaring the crap out of you when they honk! and, let me not forget to mention, cows. Yes, COWS. Or I should say cattle because I know there’s some oxen walkin’ around! Cows are sacred to the Hindu, particularly brown & white ones. They aren’t in every neighborhood—they sure as heck ain’t in the spit shiny clean area where the diplomats live. The pollution will kill you & it’s dirty, dirty, dirty. Oh man, & the poverty is rampant here, hoards of people sleeping on the few sidewalks that exist or in the dirt where I guess buildings once inhabited. Tons of tents & lean-tos in varying condition from poor to piss poor. You have to harden your heart or you’d just cry all the time. ‘It’s about survival,’ I was told the first week I was here. Yes, there is truly a ‘me before you’ mentality here; I see very little regard for others.
Over the yellow line to pass a car as he comes at the car I'm in!
I was asked repeatedly, 'you don't have cows on the road?' to which I replied, 'ah, NO.'
©Jacquie Bird
©Jacquie Bird