Purgatory: Bombay Cab-Pageantry

I donot own this picture. I donot own this cab. I donot own the blurred guy. 

The completeness of the experience that lies behind the word and within the vast and seemingly vapid boundaries of Bombay [now and before, Mumbai] is captured within the everyday activity that I shall proceed to label Cab-Pageantry [and attribute to my cleverness]. Cab-Pageantry is exactly what the its hyphenated form might suggest - a ceremony where one of Bombay's myriad cabs chooses you. The cab-wallah, as Merchant-Ivory would've put it, is your everyday Donald Trump, and you're every everyday Donald Trump cab-wallah's proverbial Miss Universe. Like a swayamvar, only more grotesquely unipolar in the decision-making and ostensibly less enjoyable as a source of entertainment.

Here's how it works. You see something you want to get into, *ahem*, in the distance, and judging by the silhouettes stacking up against the yellow and black of the [remarkably expensive] Bombay cab, you check it out for existing passengers. Or if, you're experienced or intelligent, you try to simulate which way the 'For Hire' sign should be, in your head, and jump to a conclusion. Either way, you raise your hand, hoping against hope and yell out at your most passive-aggressive, "Taxi!" and it comes out manlier than you expected. Most times, fate plays truant and the cab is occupado. Sometimes, and these are those times when you know if you believe in a God, you should thank him if only for a second, just sometimes, the cab-wallah stops and asks you to get in. At this point, if you make the mistake of pronouncing aloud where it is exactly that you want to go, you will be met with a disapproving invitation, an approach to sales that must be unique to Bombay cabs and dominatrix madames that run harems and know their customers will never be good enough. Remember: if you're in the right lane, the cab-wallah knows where to go. 


But the aforementioned must be anomalies when compared to the most regular experience that you might have when dealing with the many heads of the multi-cellular Bombay cab 'company'. The run-of-the-mill flows a little like this: you run through your analytically sound routine, and raise your arm and your voice - only to find, the cab-wallah already sizing you up from behind his steering wheel, wondering if your money is worth letting a mere mortal like you, standing in wet and warmly Bombay, into his prized and precious Fiat/Santro/whathaveyou. While undergoing said analysis, you are supposed to continue showing your utmost determination in trying to get into the cab, else the pretty girls or the bigger uncle standing on your either side might beat you to it, which is where the pageantry of the Cab-Pageant becomes entirely and clearly apparent. 


The results of this in-cab evaluation depend on factors that only intense social research can determine. So the least I can possibly do is hazard a few guesses about the flows of thought that might occur inside the taxi, in the time that you hailed it, and when it finally stopped to let you in, if. Either way, what exactly the driver is wondering during this interval and the algorithm to his decision making are best left untouched in this. 


You raise your hand at Sewri Bus Depot. You raise your hand at Byculla. Shout loudly at Mahalaxmi, wave like a maniac near the Bandra-Worli Sea Link.You raise your hand, along with 20 others that belong to pretty girls, pretty boys, ugly boys, not-so-pretty girls, girls in a queue to get home, girls in a queue running away from home, boys looking at girls running away from home in a taxi and wondering if they should get into another taxi and ask the driver to "follow that cab", while you wonder if you should make getting a cab at Phoenix Mills your favourite evening activity aimed at relaxing after a long day at work. You look around Mahim Causeway or outside Bandra station, you fix your gaze at the bunch of cabs parked about two blocks down the road, because the ones close by will only let the ladies in, and you walk up to them, sweaty, almost tired, looking like a totally hopeless case in the world of advertising, and still you ask, "Bhau/Kaka/Boss/Brother, aap chaloge?", waiting, holding your breath for that flourish of his left hand, inviting you into his little stinking car for short-term hire.You raise your hand, as if beckoning to your God, calling him to let him know that you need help, and like a miracle served on a QR code, the cab-wallah lets you in, and for a second you're wondering if it's a good thing or a bad thing that they don't let cabs ply north of Bandra. And while an epiphany of an answer trickles into your head, you're off! 


So the next time you're feeling too happy for yourself at having accomplished something clever or said or done something nice for someone else, just remember, there's me and a million others still trapped in the purgatorial maze that is Bombay's street-life, still waiting for some Donald Trump cab-wallah to have some mercy and some business sense, and some time to pick us up on the way and make us his own personal Miss Universe, if only for a while. 


Add to all of this my loving father's sudden refusal to allow me the pleasures of my big and beautiful bike, which, FYI, is in perfect working condition after a year of assault at the hands of a man from the stone-age. So it is with a sense of resignation to my pre-decided or post-destroyed fate that I hope to win some Cab-Pageants in the near future and to get a chance to work towards *drum-roll* WORLD PEACE! =D


Never-never-land was never-so-bright-and-yellow.