India- Spring, 1994

Madras, India

India, the land of color and exotic aromas, people, cows, noises, sounds, congestions, monuments, spices, beauty and ugliness. I love India. And I know that people either love India or hate it.  Me, I just love India.

We are to be in India for five days.  I am traveling around the world on a Semester at Sea program and we pull in to the noisy, crowded port of Madras.  We leave our air conditioned boat and are immediately attacked first by a wave of hot air and then by a wave of merchants.  We are under siege. They hawk trinkets and pipes and bananas, and shoes and black market money.  I look over and a man takes Jim’s body measurements.  I asked him what was doing.

“I’m getting measured.” Jim responded.

“For what?”

“I don’t know”, He shrugs his shoulders.

The man finishes his task with Jim and quickly comes over to me.  He is a tailor who makes  blouses for $3/each.  I let him measure me and I order two blouses. He is elated with his good fortune. He assures me that my blouses will be ready by the end of the day.

My conversation with the tailor is interrupted by a man, a few feet away, who claps at me.

“Madam, madam, over here pleases.  Thank you very much.  Over here please”.  He points to his black cab. “You will take my taxi, please madam.”

“How much do you charge”? I ask.

He stiffens up, became quite serious and speaks to us in a dramatic, humbled voice.

“Whatever you think is fair madam” He lowers his head as a sign of humility. I throw out a ridiculous fare because I didn’t really know what was a fair price but I throw out a number as a starting point of negotiation.

“$4 for the day “, I say with confidence but really, I am a little ashamed at such audacity on my part.

The man’s eyes lights up.  He jumps on this opportunity.  All four doors of his cab are quickly opened up and he ushers all five of us into his cab.  We get in quickly as we were anxious to get away from all the merchants and chaos at the dock.

Roger introduces himself again and welcomes us to India.  He speaks as if he has been sent from the Ambassador of India himself.  He wishes us well and speaks of pride of his beloved India.

At the end of an 11 hour day, we pay him his lousy $4. And he takes that money with such enthusiasm; you would have thought that he won the lottery today.

“I will pick you up again tomorrow” he tells us.  “And the next day too.  All the days you are in India.”  His tone is demanding but we don’t care.  We are relieved to have found someone who will usher us around.  We agree and he just can’t believe his good fortune. So we say our thanks and goodbyes and leave him on the dock.

 The next day, we gallop off the gangway of our ship.  Again, we are bombarded by taxi drivers, merchants and beggars.  We look around and can’t find Rodger anywhere. A man comes up to us and tells us that Rodger is sick. He won’t be coming today and this man has been sent in his place.  We are grateful and relieved that Roger has made such accommodations for us.  And just as we are getting in to this new cab, we hear Rodger calling to us off in the distance.  He is running, scurrying as fast as his roly-poly body can move.

“No, no madam.  You are coming with me” he shouts frantically.  “Come, come. We go now.  I was late. Sorry, I was late.”

We see the disappointment in this taxi driver’s face.  Just 30 seconds more and he would have had us.  And Rodger would have been left behind.

We get in Rodger’s taxi and he is still trying to catch his breathe.  “Why did you try to go with him and not me?”  He sounds hurt.

“Rodger, that man told us you were sick.  He said you sent him to drive us today.

“That man, he is a liar.” Rodger tells us.  “He is always cheating me.”  Apparently, Rodger had bragged to the others about his five day deal with us.  And so this man was going to lure us in to his cab in hopes of stealing this deal from Roger.

“I said I would come for you and I will come for you every day.”  He then proceeds to tell us that he had slept in his cab, parked by the dock just so he wouldn’t miss us.  We are speechless.

“Then we have to have a code” I say.  “In case you are sick, we need a code.”

“OK, very good plan madam. But I will not be sick madam.  I will come for you.  All five days. OK.”

We come up with a code word and Rodger seems relieved that we have again solidified our contract.  He would now have steady work for five days in a row. And with this reconfirmed commitment, Rodger steps it up a notch in his responsibilities to take care of us. He is now in charge of our agenda and we are all too happy to relinquish this role.

So he takes us to jewelry stores and rug factories and trinket shops and furniture makers. He would stand behind the scene and give us gestures as we attempts to bargain our way through a sale.  He gestured with his hands if the merchant’s offer was too high.  He gestured with his eyes if we are at a fair price.  And he was noncommittal if we throw out a price that was too, too low.  I guess he didn’t want to get blamed for any second guessing on our parts.

When we go to restaurants, he goes in first and checks out the restroom situation.  “OK, western toilets”, he whispers to us.  While this is not a requirement, it is always welcomed news.

He takes us to temples and monuments and shrines.  He takes us through the markets and shows us how to eat fruits and vegetables that were unfamiliar to us.  He takes us to tea houses, shamans, and Hindu monks.  He stops in the middle of traffic to let us take pictures of the cows clogging all the traffic.  And he gets us home safely, every night, ten to twelve hours after he picked us up in the morning. We are exhausted and he is grateful.

And the next morning, we greet him again. And we begin to bring him our soaps and shampoos from our cabins.  We fill a water bottle for him. And we give him gum and candies for his family.  And he takes all of these gifts with a genuine gratitude that stuns to us.

On the last of our five days we tell Rodger that we have to pick up sovereigns for our families.  Does he know some place for a one stop shopping extravaganza?  Yes, he has just the spot.  He takes us to a four story factory that sells a little bit of everything.

So off we go on our final India adventure.  It is a little bit out of town and not as congested as the port area. This little bit of space is a welcomed relief.  We finally have a bit of elbow room.

And as we are getting out of the car, we notice a woman has spotted us and she is quickly making her way over to us.  She is a young woman, nursing a baby.   She is on her way over to beg from us. We have been advised not to give to the beggars for a number of reasons.  Some families purposely maimed their children to make them more marketable on the begging circuit.  And some women pay a price with their husbands if other women in the village come home with money and they don’t.  They are often beaten.  Some children give their money to “the man” and they never see a penny of the money given to them.  So we were encouraged again and again not to support begging. But that is hard to do because poverty grabs hold of you everywhere you go in India.

 This young woman approaches us.  She puts out her boney, dirty, empty hand and then gestures that she was hungry.  She nurses her baby, her breast exposed.  It is tiny and wrinkled, dehydrated.  It looks like a dried up prune and I wonder how this child could get any nourishment from this frail mother, so thin, so fragile; she looked like a child herself.

 Sally weakens and hands her a bottle of water.  It isn’t what the woman really wants but what she really needs.  She takes it nonetheless. She bows her head in gratitude and then moves closer to Greg and again extended her empty hand.

Rodger intervened.  He claps his hand and says something to her in Hindi which causes her to move on.  Rodger than ushers us in to the store and not a moment too soon because we had now attracted a crowd of beggars.  They saw Sally hand something over to the woman so they start to make their way towards us to see if they could collect something, anything, as well.

In the midst of the crowd is a leper.  He is so disfigured that I can’t distinguish his arms from his legs.  He is underfoot of me and I am squeamish, repulsed by his broken body.  Rodger helps me get away from him.  And I am ashamed of myself but greatly relieved to break way.

The store is air conditioned and this is a welcomed relief from the 110 heat.  We are greeted by a merchant who asks us to sign his guest book.  He then proceeds to show us his wall of fame: every celebrity or politician who has entered this store in the last 50 years. The Clintons, Kennedy, Frank Sinatra and others have graced this store.  And they took our picture just in case we, too, someday, become famous.

The merchant claps his hands again and young boys emerge with trays of warm cokes and pots of hot teas.  And then the show begins. We are given a seat on a pile of rugs and then rug after rug rolls out before us for our review.  As the rug hit the ground, it would be snap for a flare of dramatics, hitting the cement floor with a sharp crackle.

Every rug is beautiful and filled with intricate details and craftsmanship beyond compare.  None of us are in the market for a rug.  But it is too entertaining to pass up the showmanship of the merchants.  Sally begins to barter with them.  But they think her prices are too, too low.  Sally assures them that these were prices other merchants had offered her.

“No, No, madam“, they correct her,”It is too low. No profit.”

With that, Sally whips out her video camera and shows them negations she had had with other rug merchants.  They laugh.  They have been caught trying to run up the price and they bow in defeat.

We spend about an hour with the rug merchants. And after both sides have exhausted each other, we make our way to the second floor where we buy saris, pots, carvings, pillows, artwork and lots and lots of odds and ends.  We all leave with two or three overstuffed bags and I don’t think anyone spent over $25.

We say our goodbyes to the merchants and make our way to the front door.  The rug merchants throw out one final low price. “Best deal madam.  I cannot go any lower.  We have better quality than that man in your camera.”

As someone opens the door, we are hit by a wave of intense heat.  But that shock is nothing compared to seeing 40 or 50 beggars who are sitting there just waiting for us.  They knew we had gone into this store two hours ago and they knew we eventually had to come out. So they all waited patiently on that scorching hot sidewalk.  They just knew if they didn’t get money from us today, then they weren’t going to get any money today.

So as we step outside, they all scrabble to get to us first. They outnumber us eight to one.  And our multiple bags of junk serve to hinder us. It was hard to see them as we are all trying to keep our bags upright. The beggars attempt to take our bags from us.  They pull on the bags and we pull back.  In hindsight we learned that they wanted to carry the bags to the cab for us in hopes of earning a tip.  But we didn’t understand their intentions at that moment so it too chaotic.

Rodger begins yelling.  He assures us that they are not trying to steal our things.  Then he switches languages and yells at the beggars. Then he would come back to English and tell us. “Hurry, hurry, get to the cab.”

We push our way through the crowd, filled with anxiety and shame.  It is shameful to deny them a few pennies when we had just purchased so much junk.

But, regardless of our greed and overconsumption, we just want to get away from them.  As I make my way to the cab, I feel a pull on my ankle.  It is the leper.  He is pulling on me.  I shake my ankle to get away from hm.

I make it to the cab and take the front seat.  My packages are secured in the trunk.  Relieved, I roll down the window and wait for the rest of the group to shake off their beggars.  With my left arm out the window, I attempt to turn on the radio with my right hand. My eyes were focused on the radio dial.  So I didn’t see him approach me.  But then he taps me on my arm and I look up to my left and there is the leper.  He has somehow hoisted himself up the car door and we are now face to face. He is inches from me.  And I am horrified.

“Rodger” I cry out, ““there is a leper on the door.”

Rodger is now behind the wheel. “Oh yes madam. I see him“, he says calmly.  “No worry, I will take care of him” he continues as he revs up the motor.  Now we are all safely in the cab.  So Rodger shifts in to reserve and quickly leaves the parking lot.  I close my eyes.  I just couldn’t look.  And by the time he puts the car in drive, the leper is gone. I don’t know what happened to him. I know we didn’t run over him. And I hope he got down in time. But I never looked back.  I didn’t have the courage to look back.  I just rolled up my wind, crouch down for a minute and tried to catch my breathe.