Magic and Mayhem

We have been on a non-stop whirlwind adventure since the day we arrived in India. I  now understand why my friend Bethany loves this place so much - she talks about the colors and the energy and I feel it! Every day when I walk outside I am surrounded by stunning faces, vibrant colors, different religious practices, construction and destruction - cars, rickshaws, motorbikes, dogs, cows - and people - all fighting for their own space on a narrow street or a dirt path. There's non-stop music, talking, arguing, honking, the smell of delicious spices, and the stink of cow dung and rotting garbage. It's joy and sorrow - magic and mayhem, all at once. 

Music is playing most of the time and it’s everywhere – from inside local Hindu temples found in almost every neighborhood, to the call to prayer from mosques, to the roaring of radios in cars. Then there is the strange music of horns – incessant honking from cars, motorbikes and rickshaws. The honking is maddening but I’ve been trying a new approach – I try to experience it as a kind of music of street life. If I allow myself to really hear the honking I won’t be able to walk around – it’s horrific – as if the cars and drivers are screaming at each other and no one is listening. Many people honk their horns for no reason. Our driver Prabu does it - sometimes it seems like he is honking just to make noise. He may honk to let people know he is about to pass  – perhaps it's a kind of affirmation, trying to be heard over the loudspeaker of the street, crying out, “I am here. Do you hear me?”  

Street life is a swirl of women from all walks of life dressed in brightly colored saris, scarves and salwar kameez outfits of purple, green, yellow, orange, mauve, red, blue – some with floral prints or elaborate embroidery… weaving in and out of traffic in a secret flowing rhythm. It’s a kind of fatalistic dance, moving just inches away from speeding cars, huge buses and trucks, they slink in an out of the traffic trying to make it to the other side of the road. Horns blaring from three-wheeler rickshaws made for three people – often stuffed with five, six or seven. Purses and bags hanging off the side of the rickshaw, flying down the road.

The most startling sight is the motorcycle or motorbike packed with three, four, sometimes five people – it looks like this; the (mostly) male motorbike driver is usually wearing a mandated helmet (but no one else on the bike wears one). Sometimes there’s a toddler or a baby in front of him on the small seat space between him and the handlebar gears. Directly behind the driver you’ll see one or two children sandwiched between him and a woman at the back of the bike. She sits calmly, her colorful dress or sari waving in the wind, long black braid lying neatly down her back, often with fresh flowers in her hair.

The few sidewalks that exist are literally death traps – with open holes, broken cement, and dangerous metal pieces sticking up from the ground. It’s rare to find a clean, safe sidewalk. You also have to watch out for the dangling electrical wires and tree branches hanging over the so-called sidewalks. Everywhere you walk it’s a dance with danger.

Flying down the road and weaving skillfully, within inches of other vehicles, the motorbikes, too, dance in and out of traffic. Sometimes they go up on the sidewalk or on an adjacent dirt path, other times they move like a snake between the taxis, cars, rickshaws, cows, and other motorbikes.

Really, huge milk cows roam the streets of our neighborhood and most parts of the city (except for the highway) foraging for food, hanging out, often in pairs, in trash piles and around restaurants, homes and stores. If you accidentally hit a cow, or God forbid, kill a cow, there are expensive penalties.

VIDEO OF COW WALKING IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD

In India, cows are sacred. They roam, they eat, and they wander home late in the day so their ‘owners’ can milk them in the morning and set them out for the day to roam again. These sacred cows often wander in the shadow of gleaming corporate headquarters housing Infosys, Google, Accenture and IBM, or in the back alleys behind the Ritz Carlton or the Oberoi Hotel, and around streets surrounding modern shopping malls with stores like Gucci and Nike and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The smell of spices drift out of every small café, street vendor and shop mixed with the smell of garbage and filth. Fresh dosas are cooked in the open air – and then a few seconds later, a whiff of cow dung stings your nose. The smell of urine is the most offensive  – men urinate everywhere – in front of people – they just pull their car or rickshaw over t the side of the road and pee against a tree, a wall, or out in the open – with no shame.

Tent dwellers near construction site where women risk their lives to go to the bathroom

At first it is shocking but soon you become inured to it – a kind of male entitlement that I find offensive as a feminist. Why is that ok? What do women do? There are few public toilets so I’m told that the women who work selling farm products on the streets or on construction sites have to hide behind bushes and in the city, there are not many. A friend who works with an NGO said that many women slum dwellers tell her they have to hold in their urine or feces all day – they try not to drink too much water and they go to the bathroom in the bushes at dawn and in the evening at dusk – in the company of other women for safety. The mayhem and the magic. It’s India.

Entrance to workers' tent community on the edge of construction site