A typical Monday in Bangalore.
Today I woke up just like any other day. I didn’t feel much like eating, so I prepared for work and left my apartment around 10AM. I had no problem getting a rickshaw to the office (for the white-guy bargain of meter-plus-twenty, a special treatment to which I’ve grown quite accustomed).
The driver sped off in the wrong direction. Who would have thought there were multiple IBM offices in Bangalore? Funny thing is I don’t even work for IBM, it’s just that mentioning the company is usually the quickest way to get a driver to acknowledge where I need to go. We corrected our direction and continued onward.
What is usually a ten-minute ride soon became a 15-minute wait on a small side street connecting to 100 Feet Road. The driver waited patiently, sighing on occasion, and talking something in Kannada to adjacent rickshaw drivers. In the twenty minutes we waited there, I was approached by two hookers. All before 10:30AM.
The first one tiptoed toward me, garnering the sultry sashay of a catwalk, and tenderly gripped the rickshaw. Her voice was about three octaves lower than mine when she spoke. Whatever she said, I didn’t understand, but I couldn’t help but laugh — especially since the driver now had his head on the handlebars and was silently chuckling to himself.
I her, or, him, to go away by shyly muttering some Kannada, and thought I was in the clear. A minute later, another woman, or maybe another man, approached me, smiled coyly, and walked away after softly running her fingers across my trembling knee.
The driver looked up, still laughing, and I asked him, “The first one was man, right?” He didn’t understand a word I said, but I think the sentiment got across.
Traffic started to move, and we slowly crawled across 100 Feet Road, which we would usually take to the flyover, except there were half a dozen police officers in their starched white shirts and cowboy hats forcing us directly across the street. It was probably best that way, especially since 100 Feet Road was backed with cars like vomit trickling out of its gaping mouth.
We began slithering through more side streets, trying to find a way back to 100 Feet Road, but they were just as congested. Cars were going the opposite way down one-way streets, which didn’t help. People were, like always, everywhere, which also didn’t help.
We came to another corner of a small street and 100 Feet Road where I saw a familiar face, a ghostly white guy with bright red hair who I believe works in the Microsoft office in the same building as mine. He looked a little lost. I’m not sure if he was looking for a rickshaw, but we drove by him too quickly for me to ask him to hop in.
Back on 100 Feet Road, heading south (directions don’t exist in Bangalore, by the way, only landmarks, like malls, police stations, statues, fire hydrants, dirt piles, holes in the ground, etc.), we found that traffic was still completely stuck. It had now been about 45 minutes since I first got in. The meter was slightly over 20 rupees.
We crept along a little bit more, and finally came to a complete standstill. Nothing moved. The rickshaws were silent. People’s cars were turned off. There wasn’t a horn to be heard. The driver tried to tell me something about the route, and, again, I really don’t know what he said, but I knew the quickest route to work that didn’t involve the fly over, so I thought I would just have to wait this out.
After we went back and forth a bit, he made it quite clear by offering to find me another rickshaw (to sit in traffic, presumably). When his search turned up no other drivers, he politely kicked me out of the rickshaw — after I paid him, of course.
I wasn’t too far from my office, but I was slightly disoriented being on my feet in this area for the first time. I knew how to navigate to work by driving, but walking was totally foreign to me. I should mention now that walking in Bangalore is similar to a precarious trek up an untrodden mountainside.
Due south of me was the flyover, and I’d be damned if I walked over it. I would have been as red as a tomato by the time I reached the other side, not to mention drenched from head to toe, which was inevitable at this point as my body refuses to get adjusted to the heat. What can I say? I sweat a little bit, and it just so happens to gather in my hair like a sponge.
I began walking, but opted to take the lower roads, hoping to find a way under the flyover, maybe through the mud field I see every day, the one with the blue tarp tents lined up perfectly in the shade. I quickly found myself on what I can only call a highway off-ramp. Fearing my life, I called my office and said something along the lines of, “I know where I am, and I’m trying to get to work, but I might die, and I just wanted you to know.”
I kept on, doing my best to stay close to the rails (on the inside, of course), and kept my arms closely at my side every time a car, rickshaw, or truck drove passed. I made it safely, eventually, but found myself in an entirely new predicament — crossing Old Airport Road, a road typically busy with a heavy flow of traffic only now augmented by other cars seeking an alternate route.
A quick dash brought me to the median, where I surveyed the oncoming traffic. A car stopped, trying to make a u-turn, and the bus behind it appeared to be slowing down. It was my chance, but was also risky, as I couldn’t see what was waiting for me on the other side of the bus, since, well, it was a bus. But I had no choice — I didn’t know how long it would take to find another break in traffic, and the sweat was already trickling down my cheeks.
I hopped out in front of the bus, but instead of slowing down, it sped up. I had no choice but to continue on. As soon as I cleared the bus, I was met by another bus.
Imagine a waffle stuck in a toaster oven, rigidly frozen at full attention, basking in the heat of the oven, the sweat of melting ice dribbling down its entire body. That was me.
When I opened my eyes, they had both passed, and I had become a human obstacle for the other drives, all of which were expressing their consternation with my existence with a cacophony of horn-honking. I wriggled to the other side, took a breath of relief, of victory, and — an empty auto!
I flagged him down and said, “Please, just take me down Inner Ring Road.” I didn’t even want to bargain with him, but my desperation must have spoken loudly enough, because once I crumbled in the back seat he flipped on the meter without me even asking. Didn’t even tell me plus-ten, or plus-twenty.
The rest of the ride was typically calm — bumper-to-bumper traffic, symphonic horn-honking, blistering heat. I arrived at the office campus around 11, and entered good ol’ Pebble Beach Block B, and — what the hell?
The Irish-looking Microsoft guy was hanging out at the elevators. I didn’t bother asking, but every time I see him, I’ll now wonder how in the world he made it to the office before me, and in such dry and tidy condition.
