We were in congested downtown Bangalore, at City Market, on a stuffy Saturday evening. That’s what Sattish, our driver, said anyway. I had no idea. We’d spent the last 5 minutes of driving wedged between two large buses. Had I extended my arms, I would have easily been palming the rear wheels of both buses simultaneously. Somehow the gap persisted, and we were allowed passage between them, along with a bicyclist or other two-wheeler ahead of us.
Auto-rickshaws are three-wheelers. They’re basically a Haunted-Mansion cab with a motorbike front end, only the ghosts don’t lower the safety bars for you. You’re left to clutch the few bars which frame cage around the back seat, which is just comfy for two. On your left, above the bar that separates you from the driver, at shoulder-level sits the rickshaw meter. It’s an odometer which displays rupees. There’s a standardized rate in Bangalore, which is the meter + 20%, due to recent oil prices and traffic. We don’t get in an “auto” unless its meter works, and then the price is reasonable. Most trips around town are 20-50Rs ($0.50-$1.00), like 20Rs to the Forum (mall) or 40Rs to church. All rickshaws come with bright yellow tarpaulin top and a blunt nosecone with windshield. The sides are open, giving you (a) visibility and (b) ventilation, which are both bad things.
I kept my nose buried in my hat. It filters fumes. Even though I hang out with smokers now on my lunch break, I’m still sensitive to engine exhaust, which really builds up in tight, turtle-time traffic. It was building up now as we sat there, another leg closer to the Silk Road to purchase a couple layaways Robin had found earlier in the week as well as have a peek at the fabrics sold for men’s tailoring. I peered over the hat and turned my eyes further to the right. A cow’s head was there, no more than inches from my own head. White with black trim (mine’s white with rust trim). He had one blue horn and one red horn which came to meet each other a short distance above his ears. A used rope ran through his nose, came up and grabbed his horns and then knotted itself before traveling his long spine to meet the hands of a small-oxcart driver. This was probably the first bovine on the streets we’d seen that day which had an owner. [Photo taken out the back of the rickshaw after we were going again]
Independent bovines are not an uncommon sight in Bangalore. They’ll be moseying along the streets, unabashedly taking up a valuable “lane” of traffic, and certainly unconcerned with the cacophony rushing passed them. Some cows skip the mosey-part and just park, right in the road, standing, sitting, laying, whatever suits them. Cars, buses, lorries, etc. give them a small berth just as they do anything else on the road. But I wonder where they come from, where are they going? and what do they eat?
They are just another element of these busy Bangalore streets, these streets which truly fulfill their purpose with the utmost tolerance: provide the path from point A to point B regardless of your mode of transit, cargo, or position in the food chain.
Truly transportation and traffic have been a large part of my culture shock here --the quantity, variety, and its seething nature. Yet I do not call it chaos. Somewhere there is an amazing distributed intelligence to the system and its agents. This intelligence I share not in and I remain a mere passenger in awe.
No comments:
Post a Comment