Traveling with an Old Driver

The Ballal can arrange for a car, depending on where you'd like to go and how much you wish to spend. I want to go more than 200 miles south into Tamil Nadu. I don't particularly want to spend a lot, but I don't want to have to run for the bus with two heavy suitcases, and I'm not interested in fighting for the privilege of paying a big fee to get these bags on an airplane. Experience has taught me that a car is the best solution.

I'd like to start early, but that never works. The driver must be properly fed. In this case it seems that I, too, must be fed. The breakfast buffet is included in the room price, and neither the desk clerk nor the porter intend to let me escape without my breakfast, so in the end I relent. It is a lovely buffet, really, perfect for a relaxed morning. There's fresh juice (melon, today) and two kinds of fresh fruit. There's pongal, a sweet bhath and a savory bhath. They're sort of porridges. The sweet one is, I believe, cream of wheat with butter, sugar, and saffron. The pongal and the savory bath seem to be soft-cooked rice with different seasonings. They're all delicious to me. There are also idlis, disc-shaped steamed rice cakes, and vadas, golden lentil paste fritters that look like doughnuts. You can also order a dosa, if you like. Yesterday I tasted them all and then went on to the Kalmane Koffee (the spelling, why oh why, but they have heavenly Mysore Nuggets coffee) across the way for a chaser. Today I bypass the delicacies and drift to the end of the buffet and to order a coffee, not from Mysore, but good enough.

Only then may I go to the front desk to meet the travel agent. He explains the fare structure to me. I listen patiently. The desk clerk explained it yesterday, and anyway, I have taken so many cars in India that I could give the spiel myself. Price per kilometer, plus tolls, driver bhat, and interstate permit extra. Half the estimated charges in advance. Then am I allowed to see the driver. He is on the old side, which is fine with me. He wears a spotty beard that looks a little disreputable. His uniform is tidy, though a touch grey from many hard water washings. I hope for the best and get in.

He asks my name, and I give it. He doesn't recognize it as Indian. His, he says, is Big Brother. This seems a worrisome sign, an insistence on respect that might be trouble. He talks about the Ballal, praising its restaurant, mourning the lack of foreign guests since the passing of some guru whose name I do not catch. He is religious, and I earn a little favor by having been to the temple at Madurai and respectfully recognizing its potency. His English is not good and my Kannada is nonexistent. We run out of small talk before we clear the city limits.

He drives well, in Indian fashion, weaving in and out of his lane and taking risks that would be frowned on in some parts of the world. He is at ease, though, and his skill makes all the near misses seem all right.

At the state border, Big Brother collects our permit quickly, and we drive on. He does not read the fare schedules at the toll gates. I do, and have appropriate sums ready. He stops at a stall for tea, and chides me gently for declining to join him. It isn't that I don't want tea, or his company. It's the lack of facilities at this dusty kiosk, and the hours ahead in the car.

The travel agent told him that he must turn at Salem. He stops by the side of the road to ask a paan vendor the way. The man gives a long speech in Tamil. I lean forward to listen, pretending I might catch a word or two, but all I understand is the few English words that punctuate his speech: straight-ha, right-ha. And they are enough.

At the next roundabout, the driver fusses, unsure of whether to turn or continue on. I read the sign and tell him to go straight, which he does, but he stops at the first roadside snack vendor to ask directions again. The snack vendor's customer comes round to the window and lets forth an even faster torrent of Tamil. The driver is confused. The snack vendor himself ambles over, and explains more slowly, in shorter sentences. His hair is dangerously long, and nails are hennaed, but Big Brother does not comment on this. My instructions corroborated by these insiders—straight-ha, straight-ha, right-ha—he continues, following my directions but worrying audibly all the way. We come to the turn-off and it is to the left, not the right. Big Brother complains bitterly about people who deliberately give the wrong instructions, and I cannot think of anything to say. It is absurd to imagine that anyone chose to purposely mislead us, but isn't that what they did? Why would they bother? I make soothing noises as best I can. The driver frets.

To celebrate getting past our one turn successfully, we stop at a convenient Anand Bhavan. It's a chain I'm familiar with, and the driver judges, correctly, that we will both be able to eat here. He heads for the loo first. I proceed decorously to the restaurant and order a samosa and coffee. I am half through when the driver comes in. He waves away the menu and questions the waiter before placing his order. The waiter brings my bill and I tell him to bring me the driver's bill as well. (A little nicety I learned my first year in India. I had a bad Mac, and there was no authorized repair store in the city where I worked. The car service sent a driver to take me to a repair center in Cochin, always the same nice-looking, polite young man, who never spoke a word of English but proved, over time, that he could read and write it rather well. He would stop at tidy roadside places he thought good—they always were—and see that the waiters sent his bill to me.)

This was a turning point in my dealings with Big Brother. True, I was a lousy conversationist. However, in skills that mattered on the road—navigation and appropriate bill-paying—I had excelled. From then on, I had his seal of approval.

If you are at all kind to a good driver in India, he will stop to buy fruit. It may be the first fruit he finds along the way, but you can be sure that it will be much cheaper than anywhere else and "good for health". He will make sure you understand this! So it is with Big Brother. He finds a guava stand a short ways after the Anand Bhavan, and pulls over to get some fruit. I allow that I will take a half kilo, but he buys a full one for fifty rupees, which, I admit, is indeed a good price. Nothing will do but that we each have one immediately. We eat them out of hand like an apple, which he does as he drives. The guavas are hard and rather green. The skin has a peppery flavor, as it does when they are so immature. I resolve to let the rest of my fruit ripen a bit before I finish it off, and Big Brother, as if he can read my mind, informs me that I should be able to keep them for seven days.

As we get into town, the driver begins asking me names of any clearly marked buildings that we pass. I name the Meridien Hotel, Arvind Eye Hospital, PSG College, thinking this is a convenient way of conversing as Big Brother repeats each name carefully. When we gets to my door, the driver, instead of totaling up the mileage, carries my bags inside and then calls the travel agent to get the final sum I owe. It is the last clue I need. Big Brother is a functional illiterate. He needs the list of landmarks I named to navigate his way out of town.

I tip him enough for a decent meal on his way back and another on a rainy day, and he pronounces himself very happy.

Arriving in Bangalore—Speed, Youth, and Tough Guys Who Wear Pink

"How long is your flight?" I never know. Days, it seems. I leave my office at 3:45 on a Monday afternoon, and arrive at my hotel in Bangalore on Wednesday morning. I know it isn't a two-day trip, really. Fatigue and boredom lengthen the hours, and they set in immediately. Idling with a cup of coffee, I watch the workers load food I will not eat onto the plane. The tall coffee is too much to drink in the time I have, but I try, moving the cup from hand to hand to cool my burning fingers. I don't want to sleep on the flight to London. If I do, I'll be awake on the India flight and land in Bangalore ready for bed at seven in the morning.

I take my aisle seat on the plane. The two places next to me are empty, but that can hardly last. I start reading. My airplane book is Tahir Shah's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a good choice, I think, for a trip to India. It is long, cheap, and makes light of the country's difficulties in a pleasing way. My reading is interrupted by the announcement of the cabin doors closing. I look round in surprise. The two seats next to me are still empty. Across the aisle, a man with a row to himself looks about with a similar expression of surprise and pleasure. The plane is half empty. I slide over to the middle seat, reminding myself that this is good news only in the very short term. This direct-to-London flight cuts hours off my travel time. I need to to be full and profitable. And I will not be so lucky on my next flight. London-India, any airport, is unfailingly full.

But my luck holds. The British flight attendant, a man, calls me darling in his charming accent. The flight is empty enough that the crew is good-humored to the end. I smile as he hands me an extra wine, and he says darling again. I wonder why I didn't find someone to call me darling that way all the time. A million reasons, of course, but for the moment this is very nice.

In London, halfway through the journey, the security check is strangely quick. I stroll through, and into the Wagamama. A tattooed Russian serves my gyoza. They are horrid dough balls with only a scrap of gristly, unidentifiable filling. Why oh why, Wagamama? Never mind. It's an airport. I pay a little dark-haired girl. She smiles merrily and tries to frighten me with tales of approaching snow, but I am too sleepy to worry. To keep myself from dozing off, I pace from one end of the terminal to the other, my duty free allowance bumping against my leg. Luck holds—the India flight is not full. There's an empty seat between me and the gentleman by the window. He is courteous and silent, pulling down the tray at the empty place so we can each use half of it. I drink another glass of wine and sleep.

The airport smells like India. It's new, gaily decorated, orange and brushed steel that already looks dated. Immigration is cheerfully inquisitive, asking about my name and work for amusement, not national security. My suitcases appear, and I wheel them outside, wondering at how easy this is.

Outside, the taxi drivers are anxious. Perhaps not enough people want a cab. I do, but approach them with care. A man bundled in a muted plaid blanket with a grey stocking cap on his head snatches at my cart. I let him take it, though I tense myself to dive after him in case he rushes past the line of waiting cabs. A boy, taller than I but rail-thin, rushes up and grabs the cart. A porter, I think, annoyed that all my change is at the bottom of my handbag. He eagerly shoves my bags in the back of an Indica. He puts the smaller duffel at the bottom, and props the larger case up on top of it at an uncomfortable angle. I would like to correct him, make him rearrange them, but the hopelessly buried tip money stops me. I get in the car as he slams the hatch shut.

I am surprised when he hops into the driver's seat. Forget rearranging the luggage, I should have asked for an older driver. It's too late now. We are in motion.

He drives just as you think a youngster would drive, barreling down the highway weaving right and left, but keeping his car more or less on top of the white dashed lane separator. The rule of the road in India is that biggest takes precedence, but he yields to no one, skinning past trucks and between buses as if we were in a video game. I look at the moon, almost full in the black morning sky, and am silent.

After a time, we veer off the road into a gas station. The attendant approaches. He is a scrawny old man, a typical station attendant except for one thing. He has a fleece blanket decorated with bright pink and white buffalo checks wrapped around his shoulders. The white squares of the pattern are ornamented with smiling teddy bear faces. The blanket is not merely flung about him, but carefully draped in tidy pleats. His turban, folded with the same care as his blanket, is also pink and white plaid, shot with a bit of spring green. I would like to take a picture, but rolling down the window would attract notice, and it's not ladylike to photograph strange men in the night. I content myself with looking.

We drive on, weaving in and out of traffic as if we each have nine lives. A yellow bus, a private intercity bus, is merging into traffic. We are between it and a cement Jersey barrier, squarely in the bus driver's blind spot, the space before us narrowing. I squeak with dismay. The bus falters for a moment and my driver scoots through the narrowing gap. He glances back at me, grinning, but does not slow down.

The sky is fading to grey. We speed up Brigade Road, turn, but my driver zips past the street where the hotel is. I point this out. He pulls over, sheepish for the first time. We agree on how he will make his way back to the hotel, and he does. He rolls into the hotel complex and up to the restaurant door rather than the hotel entrance, pursing his lips with embarrassment. I nearly tell him to drive up to the correct door, but decide that carrying my suitcases the extra feet is a good penance for him. He hasn't the sense to pull the car up himself. He casts me a last grin, still sheepish but irrepressibly mischievous. I hand him a tip, and he zooms off into the morning.

In Praise of the Dosa

In South India, dosas are the staff of life. Breakfast, dinner, snacktime, even for a light lunch, the dosa is always served. People say it's a pancake, but a true dosa bears no resemblance to your standard buttermilk, nor even to a slim French crepe. Properly made, a dosa is translucent, golden and crisp, bendable only at the moment it slides off the pan. This is not takeout food, nor anything to serve at a sociable gathering, at least not one for the cook to take part in. It's perfect the moment it's made, and gets a little less good with every passing minute.

Preparation sounds simple. Blend rice (some recipes call for a mixture of rice and black lentils, but in South India home cooks and restaurants use only rice) with enough water to make a smooth paste, let it ferment at room temperature overnight, and fry. Sounds simple, but don’t be fooled. Cooking dosas is best left to a professional. A good dosa’s perfect, thin smoothness and slightly ridged interior are only achieved through years of practice. Sliding one off the pan without breaking or wrinkling it is a feat, not to mention rolling it into a loose cylinder before it hardens.

Eat a dosa with your fingers. Break off a piece, dip it in the pale, pureed coconut chutney always served alongside, and enjoy the crispness, the oddly substantial cheweyness, the caramelized, subtle nuttiness, of a perfect dosa.

Palolem, Goa: Beach and Food

Palolem is a little capsule, buffered from the rest of India. Not all Goa is like this. I've been on beaches where wearing a bikini would have been a death wish. Not here, though. The Russian grannies and the French students lie in the sun in their suits. Few look twice—why should they?—except a group of young Indians who have come especially to gawk. They keep their distance, though.

The beach is lined with hotels and restaurants from one edge of the sandy crescent to the other. One hotel is much the same as the other. Cracked tile, a bit of mildew, sandy tiles, some mosquito net. Nothing fancy, but at the beach you don't need much. A roof to keep the sun off and someone to bring cold drinks seems enough.

The restaurants are also much the same. They serve grilled fish, fresh, but a little overcooked, alongside a few Goan dishes. I try ambotik, xacutti, vindaloo, and Goan sausage. They are good enough for me, but a Goan auntie would likely complain.

Each table comes with its own dog to provide company, and, if needed, clean up any scraps that fall. The morning dog rivalry resumes after dark. One evening as we sip aperitif, a smallish white dog comes trotting along, following a plump, unhappy lady. All the dogs around us rise up, barking, even snarling, until the intruder has run away. Our dog for the evening is a female, a mother. She barks briefly, for form's sake, it seems, and then lies down to sleep on our toes. We debate giving her a bit of fish, but fear the consequences of bones. And where are the cats? Surely with this much fish about, cats should be prowling?

Later I find them, skinny and sand-colored, above our heads, living on the roofs. They must jump down once in while to scavenge, but they are very quick. In the week I am there, I never see one on the ground.

Palolem, Goa: Morning

I walk early in the morning, leaving my room just before dawn. By six thirty, the sky is just light and the air is still cool enough that I am glad to be wearing sleeves. The beach is far from empty, though. Hung-over tourists trudge across the sand, regretting the boat trips they booked the day before. Boatmen cast about for more passengers. Women with men's shirts over their saris pick up bottles and smooth the sand in front of their hotels. It's the hour of the dogs, who wake and stretch, greet their favorite friends, and bark at the non grata. Further down the beach, a group of North Indian men do calisthenics in preparation for a football game, enjoying an hour of freedom before their long workday. The waves lap closer, tickling my toes, wetting my cuffs. Everything is covered with sand, and no one seems to mind.

Picturing India: The Darjeeling Limited

The Grand Budapest Hotel's elegiac nostalgia left me wanting more. Cue The Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson's “precious” 2007 release, which is not a film about India. It is American. The main characters are so self-centered, yet they manage, by the end, to shed their baggage and love each other. The fairy-tale setting is hardly needed. It's beautiful, though. I love to watch the opening sequence. It's unreal, just off-kilter enough to make us believe it might be true, and then remind us that it isn't. Look past Bill Murray’s grandfatherly worry and mad dash at the still, clean, imaginary India. The sun-bleached buildings, the colors of the clothes are right. Yet there are no hooting buses, no “Horn OK Please” trucks, no crowds, at least not by Indian standards. The immaculate cream-colored bullock stands stock-still. There is no scrap of trash in the gutters, Murray's taxi races past no open sewer. The railway station — spotless. But it’s almost India. It's a film that lets you dream about how India could be, if only.

Palolem, Goa: Arrival

The flight from Banaglore arrives at little old Dabolim Airport just before dusk. The baggage claim area is disorganized, ill-suited for a very mixed crowd hoping for relaxation. People mill about, uncertain where, or if, their luggage will appear. Mine does, but it seems others on my flight are not so lucky.

I negotiate a ride from the pre-paid taxi window in the baggage claim area, and a driver appears. I follow his plaid back, struggling to keep up, jostled by slender men pushing carts stacked high with bags. They do not care whose ankles they bruise along the way. The driver glances back at me. Stuck in a crowd of trollies, I cast him a dirty look. When I finally break free, he takes the handle to wheel my luggage around a corner, then leaves me to wait while he gets the car.

Our drive to Palolem is long and dark. Snack stands and barber shops stand out, beacons of light in the night. Mostly, though, the road is unpopulated, and barely lit. The air carries hints of what might be seen, were it light: sewer canals, salt flats where fish dry, and, once, a fragrant forest. But perhaps it's best that it's too dark to see. The heat of the day is past, and Goa's black air is soft and cool, mysterious. When we turn for Palolem, the roadside bursts to life. A man is getting a shave in a pink-painted barber shop. A group clusters around a stand, drinking tea. Vendor's stalls loom, full of T-shirts, brass trinkets, silver earrings, and mounds of fake spices and teas.

As we approach the arch that leads to the beach, touts crowd around the car. They hope I want a room, but are disappointed. Already booked. They point me in the right direction and leave me to tote my bags down the beach alone. I am in Goa.