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.