Ho-lee Cow, I took an auto rickshaw all by myself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Flagged him down, haggled price & when he acquiesced, I hopped in triumphant, felt like the veteran who’d been doin’ this their whole life!!! After weeks of fear, trepidation & plain ol’ ughdom, after weeks of watching the natives do the ‘Auto Rickshaw Tango’ like breathing, I managed to snag a ride on the dreaded auto rickshaw & without an Indian present no less! Now, if you are new to The BirdSpeak Blogs or haven’t been reading in a while, you are probably going what the heck is she babbling on about? Let me recap—the first week I was in India, I was very close to being hit by an auto. They are 3 wheeled motorized rickshaws & the drivers man them like Tasmanian Devils on a crack-meth cocktail. To apply to ride, one must haggle on the price & can be refused if they don’t want to take you to the destination. The other added challenge is that more than one person can be jockeying for the ride as YOU are haggling. I’ve seen the drivers inch the auto slowly along while the prospective passenger holds onto the sides & tries to convince the driver of their worthiness, only to see someone else come up, say the right place & price then it’s ‘SEE YA!’ EVERY, friggin’ time you want to ride an auto ya gotta do the Auto Rickshaw Tango. That’s why it was such a big deal I was able to do this, it felt like conquering Mt. Everest or something. Well, maybe not quite but you get my drift I hope. Anywho, I was pretty doggone proud of myself. On this day I was going to visit a fellow guest teacher who with her diplomat husband lived in the area of town where the government officials reside. She very graciously invited me over for a day to enjoy a BATH, clean & spacious living plus, THE INTERNET! I thought I would lose my mind! Though I never made it into the tub, I was blissfully happy spending the entire day on the net like a junkie in a drugstore with someone else's debit card.
The place was BEAUTIFUL, there was not a cow in sight & there were sidewalks, SIDEWALKS on the outskirts of impeccably manicured lawns. No honking horns, no dusty roads, it was just Nirvana. Her husband was a sweetheart & they both extended their home to me for the remainder of my trip, saying ‘go back, pack your stuff & come stay!’ Tempting, very tempting indeed & in earlier conversations with my host, I found out she had told The Office they would be more than happy to house any overseas guests. Now you know when I heard that I was none too pleased! Why wouldn’t they make sure the guest teachers had the best experience possible? But I gotta tell ya interestingly enough, the place was so perfect & I realized had I stayed there from the outset, I wouldn’t have seen India as it is in the raw, wouldn’t have really experienced it as deeply as I had. Experience IS Life. Being immersed in the living of Life is what it’s all about.
So, I didn’t take them up on their generous offer choosing instead to go back & stay in the nicely renovated fire trap of an apartment with the broken kitchen window & the bucket to bathe in!
But going back to auto rickshaws & my dealings with them, I first rode one on my fourth day in Delhi with Gautam as my guide. When he announced the green & yellow motor monster was to be our means of transport home, I grimaced at the thought & begged him for another solution. Well that was the only way available so I had to get a grip. Barely with enough time to awkwardly fold myself into the seat, we take off! Oh gees, trying to sit with someone a) I just met & b) a student of mine, of course I was trying to have my cool 'I'm a world traveler, I've got this under control face' I think I may have been in mid-sentence at some point when driver dude took a very sharp turn causing that face I just spoke about to dissolve because the look that replaced it sent Gautam into peals of uncontrollable laughter. The boy laughed so hard his face hurt when I grabbed something [what, I couldn’t tell you] to hold onto as we flew over bumpy bad road after bumpier bad road & weaved like driver dude was darning socks. It was worse than anything I’d experienced at Six Flags. EVER.
Now fast forward 5 weeks, Gautam & I share an auto after class. Carefree & easy, I am sitting with my legs crossed, yakkin’ away. At one point to avoid the usual stalled traffic, the driver veered off the road onto the dirt. [dirt for real, mind you because there was no shoulder on the side of the road at-tall!] Gautam was amazed speechless because I didn’t flinch, pause or even look, just kept on talking like I was sitting in a real taxi with doors & everything. HE was the one wondering where the heck the dude was going! Reflecting back to the first auto ride with amused fondness, he told me I had grown up. That was too funny since I am quite a clip older than he, but I couldn’t agree more. Shucks! Felt like I did when my daddy gave me a compliment as a child. I was just beaming.
After that episode, rollin’ down to my last two days in Delhi was sort of bittersweet. Just when I finally felt like I’d gotten the flow it was approaching the time to leave. Walking the sidewalk-less dusty streets no longer fazed me—not my preferred way to travel but I was strolling down the streets with confidence & a swag of 'I dare you to hit me-ness.' The proprietors of the shops I frequented in the hood knew me, would smile & even give me a bit of a chat up—except Mr. Nasty at the tired ‘I’m runnin’ Windows 98 but am the only business in this part of town so I can give you a hard time & I will ‘cause I CAN!’ Now I’ve been in there no less than 4 times, the first was when I showed him a copy of my passport & there was no problem, he waved me over to a tight, claustrophobically hot booth with shitty equipment. Visits 2-4, he didn’t even ask to look at the copy when I pulled it out. But on this day he decides he wants not the copy I pull out but the ACTUAL passport so HE can make a copy! When I point out I’ve been there a few times before without it, he became adamant to which I could only whistle ‘WOW’ as I folded up my copy & exited, just shaking my head. Why is it so easy for people to be so hateful? Damn, I can understand having a bad day but is it necessary to take it out on folks that had nothing to do with it?
