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.
