In Mumbai, when family burdens weigh heavy, two taxi drivers offer unexpected kinship.
The Taxiwallah
Our father is in his seventies, lying in Bombay Hospital with a catheter connected for urine flow. My brother and I are back from the US. This is the first time we siblings have spent this much time together in more than a decade. We are still testing our comfort level with each other. The intervening decade of careers and separate families, the strain unspoken sometimes surfaces in who sets the plates for dinner, a sibling closing the door to make a private phone call to his family.
We hail a taxi, each pulling the other to cross the road. Bombay traffic has ballooned out of control in our years of absence from the city. We get into one of the black and yellow taxis. The driver is a lean, older man; he wears the white embroidered topi favoured by Muslim men atop his bald skull. I start giving directions; my brother butts in: Turn left, straight.
The driver tells us he’s catching the afternoon flight to Mecca, his third Haj. When he finds out it is our father in hospital, he says he will pray in Mecca for him. We pass a dargah on the way to the hospital—a small mosque, this one with a parrot-green dome. The driver stops the taxi in the middle of the road to say namaaz, while someone behind blasts his horn. As he restarts the taxi, he asks where we are from.
We both pipe in that we’re from Bombay. He looks askance at our accents, and we admit to living in America, but add “Hum Mumbai se hein” in Hindi to let him know that we are Bombay-bred. Uneasy, we nudge each other’s knees, a signal not to say too much. Better that way. America and a staunch Muselman, who says his prayers five times a day, even though he is a Mumbai-wallah, living around Hindus and Christians—why tempt fate, don’t know what he thinks of Amrika? He is in the driver’s seat after all.
The driver asks about our families, while we perch on the edge of our seats. He tells us in his slightly hoarse voice that we should give him a chadar (I wonder what kind—should it be a floral cloth?), he’ll chadao it, offer it at the mosque in Mecca. For our father’s health.
When the taxi stops and my brother pays, the old man reminds him that sister is like Lakshmi—she is precious, do not forget that. My brother’s eyes widen. “Wow, I would never have thought he would invoke the name of a Hindu Goddess,” he confesses as we hurry onto the pavement, brother and sister, dodging people and the cars with red lights on top, the ones belonging to the government VIPs, eager to tell our father about our mini-adventure, make him smile.
Thank You for Saying the Right Thing
I’m returning to Berkeley from Bombay, now Mumbai. This time my father can’t accompany me to the airport, as he’s done nearly every time since I first left for America more than two decades ago. Back then I carried ambition, dreams, and two suitcases stuffed with chemical engineering textbooks (cheap Indian editions), clothes I hoped would not stand out too much—mod enough, hip enough to pass, durable enough to withstand a washing machine—and the requisite pressure cooker for dal-chawal.
Now, two decades older, my father manages excruciating back pain and cannot sit for more than ten minutes. So I take the AC Meru Cab. My father, being a father, worries about the safety of his only daughter traveling alone. There have been stories of cab drivers harassing women passengers or robbing them, taking them to desolate locations, though of course there are a thousand good drivers and the items in the newspapers only mention those very rare incidents, but still my father feels concerned.
The driver wears the requisite white topi of his Muslim brethren. I try to speak a bit with him. My street savvy uncle’s advice: always find out a bit more about them, any detail, so if anything goes wrong, which we hope does not, you’ll have more information to report. I ask where he is from. Uttar Pradesh. OK, I have my one piece of information. I sit back, ready to let my own thoughts surround me. Things are calm now, but the riots of 1992 and 1993, when more than 500 Muslims were scorched and 200 Hindus killed, and then the Mumbai bomb blasts in 1993, which some saw as revenge, linger unspoken.
He interrupts to ask, “So is your husband back in Amrika?”
I don’t know what in that split second makes me say, “He has left me for another woman.” I am generally evasive, even with friends. And once I say it, I realise the arrow’s gone, cannot be taken back. I grab my hair, to tug the tension out as it were, wondering, What have I done? To change the subject, I ask if he has children, inquire about his wife.
He says she died six months ago. His eyes study the road ahead; I wonder if he is seeing me in the rearview mirror. His relatives offered to take his children back to the village, but he keeps them with him. At this, his voice breaks, and a tear rolls down my cheek. I wipe it away with my right index finger, as he continues. His son is six; his daughter is sixteen. His wife made him promise not to marry her off without her agreeing.
Leaning forward, I second his wife’s last wish, urging him to let the girl go to college. I can see the back of his head nodding, in agreement, I hope. I am saying something, but I will go back to my life; I am not the one paying for his daughter’s education or withstanding the pressure from his relatives to marry her off.
He says, “You are in America, you should find someone. That is what your father would want, so he can leave this world in peace.” His voice is filled with concern, while my friends and relatives have just ignored my husband’s departure. Even when I visit their houses, they haven’t offered to help me find someone.
“You are educated,” he continues, “isn’t there the internet or gatherings of people for parties around Diwali?” The conversation takes place in Hindi, and I am not as facile as I once was. Even so, I say, “Dhanyavaad, aap tho theek kah rahe hain,” Thank you for saying the right thing. I think he is not totally off, so it’s better to thank him for his advice. After all, he is trying to be helpful.
By the time the taxi arrives at Sahar Airport in late evening, we have passed the sea near Chowpatty, where during the day families would have been eating spicy Bhel Puri and Kulfi ice-cream, children standing in the waves or building mounds in the sand; Haji Ali mosque, the Sufi shrine that can only be accessed during low tide; Prabha Devi temple that houses a 12th century idol; small shops in sheds that sell single-use shampoos, det soap, til oil, or other essential groceries, maybe a puja item; and jhopadpattis—slums where kids run around playing with whatever sticks are lying around, where someone is studying under a hurricane lamp—and skyscrapers, and billboards advertising videshi goods like Levis jeans and Omega watches. We two, one Hindu, one Muslim, from different strata, have shared a bit of suffering and settled a taxi fare, wishing each other to take care.
