"You shall sojourn in the corners, and wait for a sign on the pedestrian islands. You shall know hardship and challenges, but you, and the old men slowly shuffling in their kurtas and turbans, and the women with secret, quiet eyes in their bright saris, and the businessmen with their bad Mafia shades, all of you will cross the road in safety if you but heed my words"
That was what Nick said, and I believed him.
Actually what he said was one rather dry paragraph on crossing the road in a getting-oriented-to-India email. His advice amounted to "Make sure the drivers can see you. Wait for an ebb in the traffic current. Ignore the signals in favor of watching the locals, and do not do anything they don't. Whatever else, DO NOT CHANGE COURSE OR SPEED ONCE YOU START ACROSS THE ROAD.
"And don't look at the oncoming traffic."
I had questions. What should I do to make sure the drivers could see me? Would it be enough to be an obvious Western woman fish out of my cultural waters? Did I need to make myself more noticeable than being taller than most Indian women & having blonde hair, with no headcover? Should I go looking for a set of Dealy-Boppers, those constructs of a plastic headband and spring mounted, sequin-ball bearing antennae? Should I just work up a quick shoftshoe routine, to be be conducted as an offering to the the crossing spirits at every corner?
As it happened, there was no chance to ask Nick those questions before I found myself preparing to cross a side street that intersected Mahatma Gandhi Road, better knowing in Bangalore as the MG Road.
I'd already made it across the MG Road twice by myself, more or less. Actually once I'd had coaching from the porter at the Oberoi Hotel. The staff there appear to think it unseemly for guests to be expiring on the frontage. Adds unneeded burdens to a schedule that already includes combing the fringes on the lobby rugs so that they lay straight.
So I'd been coached when to go, and had kept a weather eye on the small knot of fellow venturers in to the pedestrian flow while the doorman, clothed in snowy kurta, trousers, and elegant-tailed turban, murmured with perfect dignity "Now madam. Please step lively."
Step lively I did, while noting a sudden coming to attention of the band of crossing travelers, an uplifting of posture and snapping of eyes.
An hour or so later, I once again faced off the MG Road from the same position, but this time I was completely across the road from the Oberoi. I fixed a mental picture of the crossers' change in posture in my mental eye. I waited until a group gathered that included at least one women wearing a sari and middle-aged dignity, on the theory that nobody can really hustle in a garment designed to fall off, and waited for the band to gather itself. I threw myself into the MG Road fray behind a nice sober businessman with a comfortable belly, who looked like he wouldn't be betting speed and nimbleness against drivers and fate. I zipped across the road like his shadow, and bought myself a tonic water to celebrate. No ice alas--too like a source of inhospitable bugs. Surely, though, facing down the MG Road deserved some small British Raj ritual--or at least an excuse for some time in the Oberoi's so-veddy bar.
|
|