Taking Risks in the Country of Colors

As I slide onto the motorbike’s seat, I officially disobey all the commands of my parents. First, I had indulged in street food. I suppose the bhajis qualify; peppers encased in a deep-fried shell of dough and sold by a boy at a makeshift kiosk on the beach. Then I had drained a rum-Coca-Cola beneath a wash of blue light in a downtown club.
“No drinking,” Mom had ordered.
Now, I sit side-saddle behind a 19-year-old motorist, my father’s warning echoing inside my head: “And remember, NO motorcycles.”
“You need to hold on,” the guy tells me. My hands rest near his hips, but the minute his motorbike lurches forward I lock around him.
I am going to die.
The sun splits through the buildings. One is pink enough to eat. Another dirt-washed apartment is hollowed-out from the tsunami. As we slow to a stoplight, the heat and motor-exhaust settles upon my shoulders. 3-wheeled taxis, glass-less buses, and motorcycles piled with entire families crawl close enough for me to touch. They take in the terror in my eyes and smirk. The light changes. We catapult between two cars as they inch closer to each other. The aroma of spices and seawater drops away. The wind drags away my senses. My eyes become too watery to function.
In Chennai’s traffic, there is a mutual effort to understand each other, a network of thoughts reaching out to interlock. Vehicles interweave to create a braid of movement.
I suddenly remember stepping out onto the balcony that morning, into a bath of heat, and marveling at the barefoot construction worker next door. She stacked bricks upon her cloth hat, steadied the tower with cracked fingers, and then shuffled away, her feet dusted with plaster.
Now, the beach blows past us, spotted with red from food-seller’s awnings. Earlier, I had settled beside a kiosk in a sea of plastic color. The boy thrust a plastic chair beneath me like a gentleman. The air smelled of grease, sea salt, and waxy, horse hair. Teenage boys straddled horses with bare feet and carried strips of straw to double as crops. They cantered alongside visitors, sand spitting out behind the hooves, and offered rides for a humble price.
I smile to myself, relishing the change in my vision. While outsiders of India saw risk, filth, and, ultimately, underdevelopment, I perceived a system. There was order in the chaos. Security in the powder-skinned recklessness. Precision in the imperfection.
As traffic blurs past me, my hear surges into my throat.
Joy in the terror.