We almost gave up waiting for our guest house driver at the Delhi airport, when he finally appeared: a short dark-skinned Indian man in his 20s, half-wet from the generous monsoon rain and with a dripping placard with our names on it, barely discernible. He was apologetic about lateness: "too much water on the road". And we were about to find out exactly how much water Delhi had in store for us at the end of its monsoon season...
We hastily followed our wet driver's quick steps out of the airport onto by that point slowly dribbling rain, past our first and very indifferent cow, past a piece of shit of undetermined origin (later we learned to tell various kinds), from stepping into which Teodora's sharp eyes has saved me; past the huge puddles.
The car was an old minivan with 5-6- layers of rubber sheets under our feat(I guess to protect us from the seas of water we were about to swim in).
After we slowly navigated out of the airport parking lot, the drive from Hell started..
Everything around us was wet and grey as we past hundreds of cars, autorikshas, motorcycles. Many cars were stalled blocking the traffic, many people walked their
stalled (because of rain and humidity) motorcycles and small autoriksha vehicles under the rain...
The rules of the road were impossible to determine- cars, bikes and an occasional pedestrian - all moved in all possible directions simultaneously. Some intersections we miraculously negotiated looked as if some invisible hand had tossed cars at random as desperate gambling dice.
Our driver in a very broken English explained to us the obvious: "the traffic is very bad today!" After he exhausted his small English vocabulary, he switched on some blasting Indian tune, and while holding to the wheel with one hand,with another retrieved a pack of wet cigarettes from somewhere deep under his seat. The deafening tune coming from the radio was strangely befitting the madness of our ride, as it kept the driver in sink with the demands of the road. Often he joined the radio, while checking in his rear mirror our paled by fear faces. It was as if he was assuring us with his singing that all was good!
Encouraged by the rhythmical beat of Indian drums, our driver has squeezed into impossible small gaps between cars, full speed, constantly honking away. On the dash of his car, a small figurine of Siva (the Destroyer) was nodding in blessing of this kamikaze stint. I mused clutching the rickety handle in my right hand, that it may have been better to appeal to Vishnu (the Preserver) rather the Siva, but perhaps, Siva had special skills needed to survive this drive.
Just when I was beginning to one by one relax my hands, stomach and legs (all tightened to brace the inevitable), our driver decided that we should take a different route. How to do that? Simple, sharply turn around and just continue full speed against the oncoming flow of traffic, honking crazily and meeting thousands of honks in response. I was beginning to regret that I had no knowledge of Hindu prayers:
what was it that Mahatma Gandhi uttered when he was stabbed to death? Was it RAM? Ram, ram, rammmm....
As our 1.5 hours drive (over only 30 kilometers) continued, I began to realize that in this mess of cars, people and huge puddles, honking is the only organizing factor!
"Honk, honk-hoooooonk, honk-honk!
"watch out, I am intending to go non-stop where I am going!"
" I am not going to stop just to save your life!"
"Honk-honnnnnk, Honk-Hon!"
"I see, you are on my tail, going non-stop where you are going"
"Aye, why do you rush so much!?"
Honkkkkkk-honk=honk-honk-hooooonk!"
"I am trying to kill myself and these two stupid foreigners!"
"Honk-Honk"
"you must do what you must do!"
and so it goes, non-stop, the music of Indian roads.
Suddenly, we make a sharp left turn and with a brave acceleration, speed towards a very (and I mean VERY) narrow street of Maja-ka-Tilla (a small Tibetan quarter in Delhi)
I am convinced we are going to kill a few people as we enter the wet and slippery maize ...but, no, despite of our speed and incessant honking, a few pedestrians (many of them are red robed monks) respond with a surprising sense of calm and trust. Trust in the driver??? or trust in the inevitable, or Divine intervention? Their trust is amazing to me as our mini-van barely misses, and sometimes actually brushes against their torsos. Only later I learn that personal space is highly negligible in India: especially on the streets, cars, cows, donkeys, motorcycles and people, all rub each other as they negotiate crowded streets and small spaces. Surprisingly there are few accidents..
Finally we stopped, drowsy, spaced out, but happy to be alive, sensing the closeness of food and bed. From our guest house window, we could see, in the grey mist outside, the muddy waters of Yamuna river. A few huts huddled together, a group of women and children were washing cloths and making fires. I am glad we are dry here in this guest house!
We are finally in India!
