The Taxi Driver

My girlfriend Carrol, had her birthday last week. We decided to celebrate the day with an evening out at one of Brisbane city’s lively riverside clubs.

And so it transpired that I was walking towards a bus stop at a half past two in the morning. It was bitterly cold and I was trying desperately to keep the wind from creeping into my stole and dress. It was going to be a long, circuitous bus drive home. The week had been particularly challenging, what with various financial obligations turning up, and suffice it to say that a taxi was an unnecessary luxury. But God knew that I could do with one. Steeling myself, I crossed the taxi rank and walked on. It was chilly, I was tired, my head hurt and my feet were complaining.

That was when I saw him. He was an Indian taxi driver, sitting at the wheel of his drive and completing a transaction with his last fare. He looked up to scan the scene for his next passenger and our eyes met. In a flash he comprehended my exhaustion. Lifting his eyebrows gently, he signalled me towards his cab.

A year in Australia has shown me that while I do remarkably well among people of varying nationalities, when I am tired or sick, I need the comforting sound of Hindi in my ears. Ignoring the voice of reason in my head, I catapulted and walked towards him. His earlier passenger held the front door open for me, and I got in. The driver looked at me quizzically.

“Hey. I need to go to Morningside please”, I said. He nodded and shifted gears, starting the taxi with a gentle rumbling.

And then I added in Hindi, “Please could you stop at a 7-11 en-route?”

For a second, he threw me a surprised look. Then he nodded once more, and swiftly changed lanes.

“You do understand Hindi?” I verified, in Hindi once more.

He nodded and smiled yet again. Satisfied, I leaned back, closed my eyes and massaged my temples. We drove in silence till he pulled up at a 7-11. I got out and bought some chocolate and a couple of aspirin for my throbbing head. He was waiting outside, the engine running.

I got into the warmth of the cab gratefully. The tinny sound of Brisbane’s only Indian radio channel filled the air. My spirits lifted as I heard an old film song from the yester-years. Relaxing, I issued road directions to my house.

“So are you from India?” he asked me slowly, in Hindi that held faint traces of a gentle Punjabi accent.

“Yes”, I replied, in Hindi. “From Bombay. I have been here for a year. How about yourself?”

“I have been in Australia for three years. Some time in Sydney, a bit in Melbourne and now I am trying my luck at life in Brisbane,” he responded.

“Gee, you have moved around quite a bit. Do you get to go back often?”

“I have not been home since I came three years ago”, he answered, his expression turning wistful.

My heart went out to him.

“Where are you from”, I asked. “Do you have family here?”

He hesitated for a long, audible moment.

“No. I am from Pakistan,” he finally said, with some trepidation.

“Oh ok”, I said. Apparently he expected an explosion of some sort.

“So where in Pakistan are you from?” I pressed on.

“Lahore”

“Really?” I was excited. “Did you know that my family actually originates from Lahore, in the pre-partition period?”

He smiled gently. “My family was from Amritsar before they had to move.”

Suddenly the taxi felt a lot more mellow and friendly. We were both lost in our own thoughts and memories as he pulled up outside the house.

The meter flashed a princely sum of twenty-five dollars at me. Cringing internally at the expense, I drew out the notes from my wallet and held them out to him.

He shrunk away from the money, shaking his head.

I looked at him with questioning eyes.

“No, money is not needed”, he said.

“Take it”, I pressed him, gently. “It was nice to talk to you, but you should complete the transaction.”

“No”, he shook his head. “Just treat it like a family member gave you a lift home.”

With that, he gently but firmly opened the taxi door for me and waited till I rummaged for and located my keys. Smiling, he drove away, without looking back.

I was left feeling an indescribable combination of emotions.

Planting an imaginary geographical line often cannot transcend a shared heritage of so many centuries.

Grey hair

My hairdresser in a modest little corner of China Town was mighty amused. He had only just finished blow-drying my tresses when he spotted the sprinkling of grey hair in the crown of my head.

“You have many grey hair, only on top of head”, he laughed, in his fractured English.

Our eyes met in the mirror and I smiled at him. I had seen the salt and pepper smattering in my looking glass on many occasions.

“You want to dye them?” he queried hopefully.

Silently I shook my head. I loved my greys. He was inexplicably puzzled.

Flashback to a year and a half ago. I had just spotted my very first grey hair in my mirror in Bombay. I felt frightened and shaky, almost let down by my body and health.

A grey hair?!

“You are an old woman now”, the voice in my head shrieked at me.

“Shut up”, I mouthed back firmly. “Its just one grey hair. Nothing to panic over.”

“One grey hair?” it repeated incredulously. “One grey hair?! Ha! You wait and see how quickly this spreads and you turn old!”

I laughed and tried to brush off my fears. But they lingered on, like a headache after a bad hangover. And the solo grey strand remained firmly planted on the top of my head. I watched it in the mirror every chance I got. I fingered it absently, while I contemplated seemingly impossible situations at work. It was neatly tucked into my rather severely neat hair do for the hotel – hidden from the public eye. But I could feel its presence, hovering over me like a spirit.

I tried to disguise it with a swish of mascara. It shone back at me in all its grey glory when I brushed out my hair. Colleagues at work started to notice it, comment and offer their unsolicited advice.

“Hey, you are getting old girl!”

“Cut it off… its just one grey hair.”

“Wash you hair with amla /  neem / beer”.

“Don’t cut it, the grey will spread”.

“Its your diet. You are not eating well”.

“Have you examined your lifestyle?”

And so I tried it all. I washed my hair with various herbs, eggs and beer. I nearly lost a few friends to the odour, but nevertheless. I safeguarded the strand from being cut off accidentally. My diet was supplemented with proteins and vitamins. I regularised my sleep patterns. My hair turned glossy black and yet the grey thread remained loyally attached to me.

One morning I awoke to find two grey strands peering back at me. They were symmetrically arranged around the centre of my head. I was close to tears. Visions of me turning into an old hag flashed before my eyes. I too was susceptible to aging. Growing old was a phenomenon I never believed that I could fall prey to.

It was a frenetically busy week. The hotel had been recently launched and it was facing teething troubles. And so restaurant walls sprung unexpected leaks, air conditioning was either too hot or too cold, staff messed up orders and technology remained stubbornly unresponsive. One particularly trying day, I carelessly tucked my grey hair behind my ear, as I took an order from a harried customer. His face softened as he followed my action.

“So you have had your first grey hairs, eh?” he queried gently.

Taken aback at the sudden shift in conversation, I gawked at him.

“They don’t look good on everyone, but they suit you just fine,” he continued.

“Thank you”, I blushed. “But I am not sure I like them, all the same.”

“Why?” he pressed on. “They stand witness to your efforts to date. They speak of your strife and successes.”

“My efforts?” I repeated woodenly.

“Oh yes”, he said. “They speak of all the trouble you have taken on, to get to where you are. I hope it was worth it”. 

I smiled as I transcribed his order and left the table. My mind was working furiously. So was it all worth it? Was I happy with all that I had given up to get here? Unsurprisingly, I was not very pleased with the answer.

It would be another year before I was finally able to extract myself from the bruising reality of hoteliering to where I currently am. But that nameless customer started the ball rolling.  Sometimes life presents you with a viewing glass. Looking through it encourages remedial measures with astonishing alacrity, crystallizing thought into action.

I have had many more grey hair turn up ever since. I would never part with them for anything. They remind me of my journey till now. They remind me that it was worth it.

Coming back to the present, I looked back at my Chinese hairdresser in the mirror.

“I do not want to conceal them. I love them”.

His eyes helplessly rued the state of the world.

“Freak”, they accused me silently.

From a coffee shop window

Siddharth and I decided to wrap up the day with a contemplative cuppa each. And so, we stepped out of the cold, into the buzzing warmth of the coffee shop. Having made our selections from the pastry counter, we took charge of our cups of tea and latte, and looked around for a place to sit. It was a relatively quiet time of the evening and the café was rather vacant.

We decided against sitting at a conventional table, facing each other. Instead, we perched ourselves side-by-side at a window side counter on high bar stools. As I heard the sound of my teaspoon clink delicately against the ceramic of my cup, I sniffed the wonderful aroma of my orange almond bread and watched the world walk by.

It was one of those days, when we did not feel like talking too much. So after the usual pleasantries were exchanged, sugar sachets were passed around and our desserts were politely offered to and declined by the other, we fell silent and watched the pavement outside – each one surreptitiously engrossed in his or her thoughts.

Suddenly, a scruffy man sitting on the bench outside captured my attention. Wordlessly, I drew Siddharth’s eyes to him as well and we both gazed out at him. He was shabbily dressed in a pair of well-worn jeans, boots, a patchy shirt and a hat. With a glowing cigarette propped in a corner of his mouth and his head thrown back, he sat cross-legged and relaxed on the wooden bench.

He was talking to himself.

It was hard to miss. Actually, he was not really so much talking to himself, as he was conversing to an imaginary character that appeared to be standing two feet away in the emptiness. We watched as he shook his head, laughed and shared his thoughts with his fictitious companion. He seemed ill-equipped for the cold, as he sat with his head tilted, as if concentrating deeply on the imaginary voice in his head.

Passers by shuffled past him in the cold, instinctively shrinking away from this aberration on the pavement. He was blissfully unaware as he followed their movements with a pre-occupied air, all the time nodding and smiling at the thin air. Sometimes he threw his hands up and gesticulated passionately as he tried to explain his point of view to his spectral companion.

It was a surreal moment for me. Coffee forgotten, fruit bread abandoned, I looked out at the man, moved almost to tears. I wondered at his lonely, abandoned state; to be sitting at a solitary street corner in the winter chill and talking to his imaginary friend. The image of him sitting there, stirred in me an inherent deep-seated fear of being abandoned and alone.  Tearing my eyes away from the solitude figure on the bench, I turned to look at Siddharth.

His eyes mirrored my confusion.

“You know, I feel a pit in my stomach when I see something like this”, he said.

I nodded gently, instinct prompting me to delve further. But there was no need. I understood. We both fell silent once more, as we reached into the recesses of our mind and conjured up faces and sounds. Outside, the man gave a shout of delighted laughter in the emptiness.

Suddenly the fruit bread tasted like sawdust in my mouth. The tea had gone tannic and tepid. It was time to go home. Siddharth touched my shoulder silently and we rose in tandem, making our way out of the café.

I braced myself as we walked out of the glass doors of the café and towards our crazy man on a bench. The sound of static filled my ears as we approached him. He laughed once more and looked over at his side. A radiophone crackled gently on the bench next to him, its display glowing gently in the dark. The voice of the caller on the other side could now be heard lucidly.

I’m not sure why, but it was more than a quarter of an hour later before I could bring myself to laugh at our folly.