things that well and truly suck: part 2

Our office is on the 5th (or 6th, or 7th, depending on how you count) floor overlooking a heavily-traveled, 12-lane road with a crude divider made of concrete and, in some spots, rough boulders. Many, many people have to cross this street throughout the day, and their only option is to wander through moving traffic. It's something that shocks you when you first get here (seriously, we spent a LOT of time staring out the window, mouths agape, when we first got here last summer), but you get used to it. You even do it yourself--maybe not on the road by the office, but on the smaller roads on the way to the market near your house, or when you're walking around downtown, or whatever. Once in a while you see a pedestrian crossing light, but like all traffic signals in Bombay, it is ignored. If you want to cross a street, you have to step into traffic.

People on the road by the office typically have to pause and stand on the divider before they can progress across the second half of the street. Today we suddenly heard lots of shouting, enough that people jumped up from their desks and ran to look out the window. There was a huge crowd of people in the middle of the street, literally rocking a bus back and forth in an apparent attempt to tip it over. Our first thought was that it had to do with the political strife that's been troubling the city lately, because buses have been frequent targets (Anil says something like 150 buses in Bombay have been damaged this past week--by thrown rocks, by being set on fire, that kind of thing).

But that wasn't it. I think the rocking of the bus was in hopes of dislodging it from the boulders underneath it that were preventing its being moved. What had happened, we found out later, was that the bus had swerved out of control, and had torn through/over the rocky center divider and taken four pedestrians with it, killing three of them.

The traffic jam that ensued for the next couple of hours was remarkable even for this street.


Honestly I am surprised we don't see accidents like that more often. Part of it may be that the street is so crowded that the vehicles can't usually attain deadly speeds.

It wasn't a great day to be near buses. This is what we got stuck behind on the drive home:


Updated 2/16 to add: According to this article in the Times of India, two of the pedestrians were killed, not three.

cum laude, redux

Today Dan, Misti, and I went downtown again and went to the gardens in Malabar Hill. Once again we got our Beavis & Butthead-style jollies from an unintentionally funny sign:



There were cool butterflies in the garden:





This is the same garden place where Robin and Alex took photos of the penguin trash cans and the giant shoe, and as much as I would love to make use of the "very large shoe" tag again, it's not really worth the redundant photo here. Oh wait, but I just talked about it, so I can still use the tag! Awesome.

What was not so awesome was the ride home. Which took almost two hours. In the dark. In a rickety, stall-prone, seatbelt-less, 40-year-old taxi (the same as all the other taxis). In bumper-to-bumper traffic, without air conditioning, and with exhaust fumes and ambient smoke you could cut with a knife. Seriously, I feel like my life expectancy went down by at least two years on this ride. I am not even going to try to describe it. Once in a while I would turn around to Dan and Misti in the back seat and just widen my eyes and silently plead, "What in the name of sweet holy jesus in motherf@cking hell?"

But back to our day. Here's a guy taking a nap in his taxi; the drivers do this a lot. This one was in a line of at least five taxis parked along the road with feet sticking out of the back seats.



We had yummy food again at the same place we went to dinner last time we were downtown, and we did some serious shopping. Misti got a rug and some jewelry and a wall hanging, Dan got some gifts, and I got jewelry for myself, including, but not limited to, the following:


(That's coral.)


(Those are freshwater pearls and...um...some pale blue-green stones.)

OK, it's really hard to think about being frugal and saving up for a nice dishwasher when you are stuck 10,000 miles away from your apartment.

Anyhooooo, the rest of the photos I took today are here.

driven

Some people might hear that we have drivers to take us to and from work here in India and imagine that we cruise along gently in our plush BMW, sipping champagne out of delicate crystal flutes as we relax and enjoy the scenery while saying things like "Home, Ahmed!" and giggling hysterically.

Yeah, right. OK, see those tall skinny beige buildings with the little blue-green pointy tops? That's our apartment complex as seen from my office window. It's about 3 miles away.



Last night it took us an hour and ten minutes to get home. Our route involved dirt road "shortcuts" through slums, massive potholes, teeming pedestrians, wandering dogs and cattle and goats and chickens and small children, piles of rubble to be maneuvered around or over, a complete absence of road rules, approximately 185,000 swarming auto-rickshaws, a huge rickety bus that took about 8 minutes of maneuvering to get around the corner from one narrow alley to another (while we were trapped, gridlocked among about 50 other vehicles), open cooking fires inches from the car, daredevil motorcyclists, vehicles and people passing within millimeters of the moving car, and non-stop honking. Oh, the honking. I am not exaggerating for comic effect. IT IS LITERALLY NON-STOP.

And last night was only a little worse than usual. Seriously.

P.S. And it's also definitely not a BMW we're driven in. And usually at least one of us has to sit sideways on a fold-down seat in the cargo area.

more video + food news

People seemed to really like the traffic video, so I'm adding two more I filmed on the same morning. They are not as dramatic in terms of the actual traffic interactions, but the soundtracks are cool and you can get some more feel for the local color. Not to mention a quick look at our very nice driver!





In other breathtaking news, you can buy MANGO CORN FLAKES here!! I haven't actually tried them yet because I am still trying to soak the sticker goo off the inside of the bowl I bought to eat them in. I shake my fist angrily at the sticker goo gods! Bastards!!



Please note that this cereal has IRON SHAKTI (Iron Power!).

experimenting with video

Let's see if this works...this is a drive through light morning traffic. (I'm not being sarcastic--it really is light traffic.)



The soundtrack is a music video that was playing on the van's tv/stereo system.

Life and (near) death in Maximum City

All I have to say about today's commute home from the office is Holy. Mother. Of. God. Traffic here is always chaotic and seemingly rule free, but at rush hour it is astonishing. There are no lanes on most streets and people just squeeze in wherever they can. Cars and autorickshaws and trucks and motorcycles and pedestrians pass within millimeters of each other--literally. People wander nonchalantly through traffic to cross major roads. It is absolutely impossible to describe adequately what it is like to be in the midst of it. I thought the driving situation in Lisbon was crazy, but now I understand that its drivers' use of sidewalks as alternative lanes is positively demure.

Here's a photo from amidst the insanity. There are more new shots in my album (see link in sidebar). I love how the passenger has his bare foot sticking out.


In other news, I suggest to my San Francisco friends that they take a moment to step out into the Tenderloin district and marvel at the sparkling clean, sanitized wonder that it is...and marvel too at the prosperity of its residents. The level of poverty and the lack of sanitation here in many areas is mind blowing and gut wrenching, in no small part because of the constant contrast between luxury and filth--high end clothing and housewares stores sit on streets piled with rubble and inhabited by paupers; the most expensive hotel in town is a block or two away from corrugated tin shacks with no water or power and open fires burning inside. It is extremely humbling and deeply moving to be driven through these streets.

But still I am very glad that I am here.