Hyderabadi Taxi versus the Tiajuana Taxi

Last night (and most of the day, really) was an exciting experience worth sharing. I needn't remind you that it's still monsoon. The pattern has now shifted to one of warm day, some sun building humidity with relatively warm temps (mid-80s). The easterly winds drive in a storm each evening with a heavy downpour followed by some cooling in the late evening. Now this meteorological description might not seem really relevant until one is standing in the deluge with a river running down the street trying to get a non-English speaking security guard to talk to a semi-non-English speaking cab driver giving him directions to our apartment building. Our address says "Road 12" which is a major artery through Banjara Hills. We're talkin' 14 lanes. Well, six actually, but 14 cars, motorcycles, and motorized rickshaws can line up next to each other without physically touching, but the distances between vehicles are measured in microns. Anyhow, the majority (probably 99.8%) of the 4 million inhabitants of greater Hyderabad mistakenly believe we live on Road Number 12. Wrongo-bongo! Our apartment is nearly 2 kilometers off Road 12 and not just a straight shot off Road 12. The first road off Road 12 to get to our apartment has no name. Kind of like a traffic version of "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly". But instead of our road-with-no-name wearing a Mexican serape, it has a distinctive, three speed-reducing devices at the entrance to the MLA Colony which is another part of our address. The MLA stands for the "members of the legislative assembly" which is the governing body for Hyderabad, much like the Detroit City Council, but without the extravagant drama. But before you get to colony entrance, you have a gauntlet of people at the hospital and the chai vendors, Fast Chinese vendor, and other various eateries (all mobile establishments) who line the opposite side of the road from the hospital entrance, a private school entrance, a banana vendor (also mobile) and another office building of unknown occupancy. At lunch time, this is THE happenin' place on the road-with-no-name. There are literally hundreds of people on the street, most walking from somewhere to one of the vendors whose various methods of producing their menu items create a choking smoke screen that adds a degree of difficulty for any driver when maneuvering through the lunch crowds. Once again, as a passenger through these crowds, you notice the ballet-like dance that the cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, and pedestrians all gracefully move in this close proximity.


Once you pass the entrance to the colony, you drive about a kilometer over a rough partially-paved road. The monsoon rivers that flood the street each night gouges out holes that will eventually swallow the front wheel of a rickshaw. As the road-with-no-name makes a gentle curve to the left as it intersects with another street, you see one of the landmarks required to get to our place: Apollo Supply. You turn onto the street next to Apollo, it's a event supplier. Sometimes you will drive over their carpets they have lying in the street to dry or perhaps a woman will be sweeping off the litter with the brooms that she sweeps the streets at some other point in time. Now you must turn left at the next street which is a short block and narrow. It can only handle one motorcycle, rickshaw and a car at one time, that is if two cars aren't parked on opposite sides of the road. Then only the vehicles whose drivers are agile enough to maneuver will get through. The street dead-ends into a home. You have to turn right. The road narrows. Now we're on a street that makes an alley look like a freeway. You come down a hill to a dead-end. There is a small shrine on the wall in front of you. You turn left. Going uphill on a pretty steep grade, you traverse two speed ruts. Well, maybe they are utility trenches that were never repaired. Regardless, they slow your progress going uphill as well as the chickens and dogs that roam this street. As you near the crest, you see the top of a temple in a private home's front yard. You turn right and start down a slight grade and you are staring at the bottom through a vacant lot out on the city. Nearly everyone I have driven with at this point are taken by the view. Just hope the drive isn't distracted. You turn left and come to the end of the road, in a literal sense, and you're at our apartment. If you're completely confused, now you know why I was standing in a downpour last night trying to get our security guard to help the driver get to the apartment as he was driving through the flooded street-with-no-name.

Why, you now ask, wasn't Ashraf driving us? He needed an evening off so we contracted a city cab from City Cab to pick us up to go to the play "A Disappearing Number". I had built in two hours to get to a venue that was less than 10 kilometers away. But our little buddy driver was enthusiastic if not clueless each time I called to see if he had found the next landmark. Each time, he was 5 minutes away. That 5 minutes turned into 45. Deb stood in the parking deck of our apartment to stay out of the rain. Finally, one of the younger guys who works for someone in the building or lives here or somehow is connected to someone who works and/or lives at the building talked to the cab driver on my phone and then ran up the road, coming back with the driver in his TaTa which was ostensibly air conditioned. When we got in the back seat the Hyderabadi driver had left the windows open, because all four side windows had black film on them. You couldn't see out. But he was in a pleasant mood which was directly opposite of Deb & mine. But we started out on our journey to Gachabowli and the Global Peace Auditorium. Tomorrow I will try to describe the drive and how the rain, our driver, and God actually made the timing of our arrival fortuitous.