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I’m thrilled that Meter Down has been nominated… that the drivers’ voices are being heard. Thank You Indibloggers!

Kala Ghoda. The rains had disappeared. Eid had been celebrated. Dusserah also. There was a taxi and in it Mahadev Singh. When he left Jharkhand 20 years ago as a 20-year old youth, it was Bihar he left. He came with friends who were cooks in homes on Malabar Hill. He didn’t like cooking. He has been driving a taxi for 10 years. This is his story. Click on ‘mahadev singh podcast’ link below to stream or right click to download. (26 min 21 sec)

mahadev singh podcast

mahadev singh: idhar aye ek baar toh phir idhar se jaane ke dil nahin karta

What I heard, what came through, was the ambivalence experienced in the midst of change. A change to taxi driving, a city changing around him. Passengers picked the new vehicles to ride in. No one wants to ride in a fiat anymore. But as we spoke about the fiats, they became the desired, they have room for legs, room for luggage. Poised on the point of change, teetering between what was and what is becoming, what will be lost and what is being gained, Mahadev Singh spoke from both sides. We can contain these feelings, the simultaneous good and the simultaneous bad.

I spoke to my first Meru driver. It was his 4th day driving. He was an older man who had driven kaali-peeli all his life. He owned three taxis that he rents out. He said he wanted to see what it was like to drive this fleet taxi. But he didn’t hold much stock in it. He was going to give it a month test. He liked the A/C but he thought in the end he could make as much money driving less hours in his own taxi. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal about kaali-peeli drivers attacking Meru drivers because of the competition and loss of business. Though I have never heard about it, I guess it has happened. Man does bite dog sometimes. But I have asked every driver about Meru and have never heard any hostility. They seem to feel that there are enough fares for everyone, that enough people won’t pay extra, or can’t pay extra for the comfort of A/C or the convenience of electronic meters.  I admit though, I haven’t asked the Meru drivers their side of the story.

Mahadev Singh lives in a flat, in Mahalakshmi, with running water and a bathroom . The rent is Rs3000/mo which is the price of the maintenance the owners have to pay. This is a flat in a new building erected on the site of demolished jopad-patti and his landlords are rehabilitated jopad-patti dwellers. I have another friend who lived in a run down broken room in a rundown broken building that got torn down by a builder and from that she was given a nice flat with a kitchen and a bathroom in a nice building full of supportive rehabilitated neighbors at a maintenance she can afford. These stories aren’t all bad. But there aren’t enough good ones. More people don’t get flats or though the flat are free, the maintenance is too high to afford or the flats are too far away to make it to work or they get trundled off to transit camps from where they never leave or they can’t prove they are eligible for a new flat, they can’t prove they exist. Lately Dharavi redevelopment land grab has been in the new daily here, here and here for instance.

This is the only outtake. Because traffic was light, because we took the sealink, the raw audio was much shorter than usual. I cut this out of the podcast mostly because it came at the end, and the ending is too abrupt. Nothing lingers. I knew the answer to this question, which is why I asked it. Patrilocality. The daughter leaves her home and belongs to another family elsewhere.  How can you give you daughter her inheritance of your land if she belongs to another family somewhere else? In its stead is dahej, rakhi, maamera/maayra/naanero, these cultural strategies for passing inheritance to daughters but end up devaluing their births. (34 sec)

outtake inheritance

My friend Kannu wants to put his son, Divesh, in a boarding school like Mahadev Singh has done with his son. Kannu lives in Bombay and makes his money as a maharaj, cooking for various families. His village is 45 kms from Udaipur on the Chittorgarh-Udaipur road. He himself is an 8th class fail. He says boy children are too difficult to discipline and the women in the household anyway are too busy. I think about all the fathers in distant cities and wonder about this migration where men leave their families and spend decades away earning the money that farming no longer provides.

I think Mahadev Singh is right about the sealink. Rs30 is just about the right price where people would take it instead of inching along and jockeying for position amidst the pollution and honking in the Cadell Rd/LJ Rd traffic. Rs50 is just over that amount that most people will pay. People who have cars that is, people who are used to paying for petrol. I have only taken the sealink in taxis to augment this blog with more photos and videos and scenes of Bombay from out in the water, the city from a distance.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

I was wandering August Kranti Maidan on a day that teetered on the edge of downpour – clouds massing above and the heat pressing down, heavy with the weight of humidity. A nicely decorated fiat taxi was parked on the side of the road, facing toward Kemps Corner. It was Vijay Kumar’s, Vijay Kumar Srivastava’s, born in Bombay from UP migrants.  This podcast is a Bombay story told by a Class 3 drop-out who has poured his sweat into the labouring jobs that build this city and keep it vital. He calls Bombay home but he doesn’t see his place in the future city. Click on ‘vijay kumar podcast’ link below to stream or right click to download. (24 min 35 sec)

vijay kumar podcast

vijay kumar: garib adami ko chahiye ke apna haq kissi ko nahin deve

Vijay Kumar’s Bombay story continues. Here he talks about 1992-1993. He slept on the footpaths at Worli because the room his parents lived in was too small for all of them. What he says is what I often hear, that it was the manipulations of the politicians, that it was garib log who lost their life’s work, that the city became more visibly disjoined as Muslims moved together for safety, that his social orbit is eroded by what happened. The sound quality of this outtake is a bit bad at the beginning. It’s the wind blowing into the recorder. But later in the outtake, when the wind noise stops, you can hear the rain. (2 min 11 sec)

outtake_1992_1993

Vijay Kumar tells us that he is from Bombay and tells us why Bombay and why not UP. And then he brings up Raj Thackarey and the lafda. And recites to us all his Bombay based documentation and that he speaks perfect Marathi and so he says, he should be OK. It is as if he has internalised a checklist of authenticity, imposed from an outside source, that since he thinks he fulfills it, his inner sense of home and belonging to our city is safe. Safe in the sense that if this lafda starts again, he won’t have to leave. But the anxiety is there, voiced in the recitation of the checklist, in the need to justify his claim of belonging.

I was not born in Bombay. I do not speak Marathi. Bombay is my home. There is no dissonance in these sentences.

Everyone is used to a bit of corruption. Usually it is tolerated if what one pays for gets done. Less so if it is already within the realm of the day-to-day duties. Such as paying for have one’s papers processed faster is OK, but paying just to have them processed is not OK. Any everyone ‘knows’ that politicians are corrupt and eat our money, but if they also deliver, this too is borne. But how much is too much stealing? Vijay Kumar draws his line. (26 sec)

outtake_stealing_too_much

Vijay Kumar sees a future city in which he has no place. Sion and Bandra will be joined – the Dharavi reclamation project – the cleaving together with BKC – and folded into Bombay which will inhabited by only an upper class of people. There will be Malls, shiny new taxis, big flat complexes. There will not be thelawalas, jopadi, or much of an informal sector, which is the hustle and rozi-roti for poorer people. The work, the work that demands labour, will be done by a class of people living outside of Bombay city, who will travel in and then travel back out. Looking at the Virar fast at 6:30pm, with people hanging from the footboards, the windows, the top, we are almost there. I would have thought he had also internalised the floating discourse of a Bombay imaginary or maybe he had accepted with the cold strands of logic, a reality bearing down on him. But then he says – garib adami ko chahiye ke apni haq kissi ko nahin deve. Which haq is that? To live in our city? Yeh hai apni haq.

The outtake below is his philosophy on work and some stories from his private life. (2 min 53 sec)

outtake_work_philosophy

We turned right at Kemps Corner onto Peddar Rd and drove past Haji Ali. At the next signal, right after National Sports Club, the signal that you can turn right into for the back galli into Nehru Centre, the car next to us asked for directions. Listen to this outtake and you tell me, where exactly did he mean to turn right to get to where they were going? Pooch pooch ka jana.

outtake_directions_to_navi_bombay

Below is a point&shoot video of the flashing heart, of Vijay Kumar and my dog Josh, barking in the background.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

One of my first projects when I took a break from working, was to document the changes in the bombay sky line as the mills in the center of the city were torn down and massive, looming structures to house the people and leisure and commerce of the new economy emerged in their place. The spatiality, the geography, the culture of the city was being slowly and radically altered. These conversations with the taxi drivers also seek to address this change, amongst other things. How is this experienced, where is their place in it, how it affects their lives and their work, the routes through the city. So when my friend Maura told me about Ram Sanvar Yadav, a mill worker by day and a taxi driver by night, we immediately arranged for me to meet him. This is his story. Click on ‘ram sanvar podcast’ link below to stream or right click to download. (25 min 30 sec)

ram sanwar podcast

ram sanwar: jo mehnant karta, jo uparwala dehta, woh milta, wohi sapna

We met at a petrol pump next the New Great Eastern Mills which is where he works. It is a taxi petrol pump, where drivers meet to turn over the taxis to each other at shift change. It was a sunday and many don’t drive that day.Taxis were parked everywhere. It was night and it was finally raining after the very late onset of the monsoon.

He speaks about his Union, the Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor Sangh (RMMS).  His is one strand of the story. The RMMS was the only Union recognised by the Mill owners because of the Bombay Industrial Relations Act which ensured there was only one union, and the Congress Party spawned it.  The RMMS was highly compromised and had lost the trust of the mill workers.  There was another Union, the Girni Kamdar Sangh. And there was Datta Samant. And then there was a strike in 1982. Which has never officially been called off. But the Mills are over. And its not mainly from the strike. One of the best books I have read is called “One Hundred Years One Hundred Voices, the Millworkers of Girangaon: an oral history” by Meena Menon and Neera Adarkar. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Bombay, in labour history, in oral histories, in history, in voices, in cultural studies, in people, in movements and everyone else. Another informative book on the Mills and Bombay is “Ripping the Fabric: the Decline of Mumbai and its Mills” by Darryl D’Monte.

I have spent time at New Great Eastern. The owner has an interest in art and lets an artist I know do her shoots there and she let me come. I returned and took more photos of the plant floor.

The Mill areas of Bombay are thought to be Maharastrian, the Mill Worker culture established by migration from the Konkan coast and the Ghats. But the Mills also brought migrants from UP, from Bihar, from Tamil Nadu, from all around India. I asked Ram Sanvar how many workers from UP there were in the Mills at the beginning. I doubt his answer. (1 min 4 sec)

outtake kitne bhaiyya log mill main

We speak about the changes we can see. Its easy to spot the new kaali-peeli vehicles, the aqua, tinny-looking Meru taxis. But there have been quieter changes also. Ram Sanvar talks about the changes in his dhandha that have been instituted for the safety of the passengers. (1 min 50 sec)

outtake taxi safety today and hifi taxis

One of the most interesting things in the podcast was a fleeting mention that i regret I didn’t explore with him. The taxi owners, for instance Seva Lal but others as it has been a running theme throughout, have spoken about the taxi permits. They are crucial to the success or failure of the private fleet taxis and the existence of the kaali-peeli taxis. There is an off-the-books market for these permits. A taxi owner without a permit needs to find a taxi owner with a permit to lease the permit usually for five years. But Ram Sanvar, who has a permit, said that he had to produce a ration card, from Bombay, that is over 15 years old. This severely limits a migrant’s ability to arrive in Bombay, get a taxi-driving permit, buy a taxi and be a taxi owner. I believe that it was set up with that intention, to skewer the opportunity toward a person who is from Bombay and use the system to keep a migrant at an economic disadvantage. But these things don’t work. There are always alternate systems by those with a little bit of hustle to level the playing field.

a video of ram sanvar:

The work in the Mills was gendered of course. Though some women worked there, the worker population was primarily male. And the work that the women did do was lower down on the scale, less valued and less skilled and less paid. but women did work there. It being an industrial work force in one subscribed area, Ram Sanvar saw more women working outside the home and fields than he every had seen in UP. In this outtake, he speaks about the changes that are happening, changes he welcomes, from a past societal practice he sees as mistaken. As he also plans ahead for his daughters. (3 min 20 sec)

outtake UP women and working

We came from Chinchpokli and around through Byculla and out to Worli and got in line at the seaface to get onto the sealink on the last night before they would start collecting the toll. We inched along with all the other vehicles that wanted their last chance at a free ride. It was still raining and everything was clear and glistening and there we were, in the sea, looking at the lights of the city across the water.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

My cellphone rang, showing Seva Lal’s name in the screen. He wanted to know if I knew of any jobs and to give me the news that he was no longer driving his kaali-peeli taxi. It had been cancelled because it was 25 years old and he didn’t have the money to take up a loan, a loan that Rafiq called ‘taxi ki atyachar’. Seva Lal is episode 4, the 4th driver on this blog, the 4th podcast. You can see his taxi and hear his story from September 2007 here. His news made me sad, and even sadder, I don’t know of any jobs. Driver jobs that pay enough to support a family. The impending cancellation of the taxis has been a topic that has run through each and every conversation starting with Hari Lal Yadav, the first driver. And now they are being cancelled and the story continues but now it speaks of how this is being experienced, the weight of a loan, the loss of a livelihood. This is Seva Lal’s story. Click on ‘seva lal revisited podcast’ link below to stream or right click to download. (19 min 19 sec)

seva lal revisted podcast

seva lal: kwaihish rekhna aur pura karna do alag-alag cheez

People hire drivers, often to take them to and from their offices where they get salaries that have benefits, one of which is paid leave. Another is paid sick leave. Yet, how often is that benefit passed on to the drivers who drive them there, or the cook that feeds them or the bai who keeps the house clean? (1 min 37 sec)

outake paid leave

We met on the streets of Lower Parel, I waiting in front of Globe Mill Passage BMC school until he came to fetch me. We wanted to find a quiet place, a shady place to talk. None of the high office buildings around there would let us sit inside their compounds on a bench under a tree. We ended up back in a taxi, his saggeewala’s,  parked on the street in a line of taxis where Seva Lal used to park his taxi before it was cancelled.

As with Jamid Ali, we already knew each other so in the place of discovery was a continuing story. The taxi wasn’t moving through the city, he didn’t have to concentrate on driving, we were facing each other in the front seat. All of this alters the rhythm of what is being asked and what is being said. I think the story here is different. Its not only the taxi. It is what happens after taxis get cancelled and the tenuous and shrinking spaces of livelihood. Seva Lal has gone from an autonomous job, an independent owner with a degree of control over any transaction, over his workday, to being an informal employee, a hired servant of someone else and at a 40% drop in earnings. It isn’t the cancellation or the new vehicles, though it is in a way. Why aren’t 25 year old private cars being taken off the road? There must be a way that the burdens of change aren’t disproportionately borne by those who are least equipped to grapple with them.

Seva Lal’s daughter was getting married and he was soon leaving for UP. I asked about the jamai, wondering if he would also be coming to Bombay to make his rozi-roti. and hopefully be closer to her family. UP is so far away when its your daughter leaving your home. (1 min 55 sec)

outtake ladki and jamai

Below is a video from my point-and-shoot (which has a spot on the lens I think) where Seva Lal shows us his sethani ka ghar, the taxi line where he parked his taxi, his street and the lane to his room, next to the mandir.

In the first conversation with Seva Lal, he spoke about marriage and why his is successful. It touched me then and it has always stayed with me. I wanted to ask him what he had told his children, especially as the marriage of his daughter approaches.(2 min 7 sec)

outtake successful marriage

bombay today…….

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

I was in Fort at the Paper Mart on Cawasji Patel St. buying printer ink, which meant I went to Yazdani for chai and brun-maska which meant I went to Strand.  It was late afternoon, just before the office goers spring free and the taxis were lined up along DN Rd. I saw an Omni kaali-peeli taxi parked in the line of waiting taxis along the curb, a driver gazing out.  It was Rafiq and he has lived in in Jijamata Nagar, Worli his whole life. His taxi had been cancelled because it was 25 years old. He has had this new one for a month. He says it is more comfortable to drive and he doesn’t get as tired but he describes the loan as atyachar, taxi ka atyachar, and Bombay as a confuse nagari. Click on ‘rafiq podcast’ link below to stream or right click to download. (26 min 15 sec)

rafiq podcast

rafiq: chelti jab tak chelana ka. ankh band hogaya tho anari

I apologise for the sound quality. I had forgotten to set the mic sense to uni-directional so I’ve picked up all the ambient sound in full. Plus, the back seat of the Omni is so far back, I had to sit on the hump on the floor behind the front seats and stick my arm through the opening between the driver and passenger seats. I kept sliding off the hump and my arm kept getting lower and lower as I got tired of holding it up. Though it did help create an intimacy in the shared hardship, I prefer the fiat, and the unbroken backseat to hang over.

More and more new kaali-peeli taxis catch the eye, moving through the montage of Bombay streets. The kaali-peeli blends into the known but the shape, the size, that difference, registers. The cityscape will slowly change as each month, each year, a few more new taxis appear in small increments within the total. Visually measuring the difference is like visually measuring the growth of a tree, until one day you realise the tree is big and there are no more fiats on the road. But the atyachar continues for the drivers. (57 sec)

outtake aur atyachar kya hai

New vehicle sightings:

Worli. Kalbadevi. Bombay Central. Mahim. I think if I were ever gone from here, hearing the names of the city spaces would make me teary. Nostalgia for that which I haven’t left, yearning for where I already am. In this outtake Rafiq tells me where today’s dhandha has taken him. Mapping the city in the naming of places, reciting Bombay. (1 min 48 sec)

outtake aaj ka dhandha

Rafiq must pay Rs. 5,000/mo to the bank or they tow away his livelihood. That is Rs 2,500 for interest and Rs 2,500 on the capital. Or they tow away his livelihood.  He can’t be more than 2 weeks late on the payment. Or they tow away his livelihood. He can’t go home until he has earned Rs. 700. And yet he keeps his children in fee-based English medium schools. And postpones the day he can stop renting and buy his own room in Nallasopara until he pays of his loan. In 5 years. 60 weeks. I asked him about his day off. (52 sec)

outtake no chutti

Rafiq is an SSC pass. Maybe 17 years ago, an SSC pass could hope to get a job. He hoped, but no job. For two months after his old fiat was cancelled, he was anari, doing a bit of refrigerator work, working contract at Jet Airways for Rs 5,000/mo. I asked him if he ever considered becoming a Meru Taxi driver, riding around in AC. From his answers, I wonder who they do find to drive for them. (1 min 19 sec)

outtake meru ka naukri

Rafiq had many stories, especially about taking people in emergencies to hospitals. The Navi Nagar story is a favourite. But underlying it is the story of the service that taxi drivers do for us, rickshaw drivers do for us, that in our expectations, our  class bias perhaps, or in our panic, we might not notice. The family didn’t have the neighbors help carry the woman down to the taxi. They yelled down 9 stories – hey taxiwala bhaiya, give us a hand. The Kamathipura story is also a hospital story. The third story is about returning things left in the taxi. Rafiq says of all these things, upaarwala barkat se achha.

outtake navynagar story (55 sec)

outtake kamathipura story (32 sec)

outtake returning samaan left in taxi (2 min 1 sec)

The litte beeps you hear in the podcast? Its the electronic meter. Each new vehicle has an electronic meter that shows the actual amount you have to pay. No more 13x multipliers. No more fare cards. No more reaching out the passenger side window to rotate the meter down, or up. And no more photos of decorated meters. Plus an added feature. In the front of the taxi, facing the street is will be a red light that shines if the taxi is available, the virtual meter up. (or is it the other way?)

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

Back at Crawford Market. I had walked from VT, searching for one of the new taxis, an omni, an alto, the new kaali-peelis. They are beginning to appear on the streets as the over 25 year old taxis are cancelled. I couldnt find any so again walking the taxi line and I saw a taxi with an array of tigers on the back windscreen. Ahh, Shiv Sena I thought. This might be an interesting conversation. The driver agreed to recording our conversation. When I got in I saw the decorations on the dashboard and the front windscreen and had a moment of dissonance.  Kadeer started the engine and I started the recorder.  He talks much faster than he drives. Click on ‘kadeer podcast’ link below to stream or right click to download or click kadeer under podcast feed in column on right side. (23 min 28 sec)

kadeer podcast

kadeer: mera niyaat achcha karna ke liya sochta

I took a photo of his Shiv Sena card but the camera couldn’t focus through the opaque, foggy plastic protector. Kadeer isn’t very different from the netas who switch parties, not because of a change in beliefs but because of some personal advancement. Or the political parties that partner up with yesterday’s opposition to better the equation to stay in or gain power. Kadeer isn’t switching between parties and Kadeer isn’t trying to gain power. Just trying to keep it steady.

Cultural terrorism has  ratcheted up its violence. Roving groups of vigilantes are attacking women for entering male spaces and enacting in public, male acts such as drinking alcohol. Or these same men, wearing western clothes, attack women for wearing western jeans.  or being alone on the streets at night. This violence against women by individuals is just part of the trajectory that extends out of actions by the State. In Bombay they went after the bar girls and closed the bars. Women sitting together outside, on a bench, by the sea, in a car, after midnight are told to go home by police roaming the streets on their bikes or in their qualises or those big dark blue vans with the yellow stripes. Couples are harassed and arrested for public displays of affection in parks or at the water’s edge by the sea. This outtake talks about the Bandra-Worli sealink and then the police at reclamation lovers’ lane. (1 min 22 sec)

outtake sealink & lovers lane

I am being prosaic if I write about the cyclical nature of Bombay road work. The machines that appear as soon as the rains stop to dig up the road that was dug up and finished last year, well after the rains started. We were struck in traffic on the Mahim end of the Western Highway, below the western line trains are running and the Mithi River and the green of the mangroves. The workers were doing something on that part of the road where the highway is getting ready to end, widening or patching or digging and most of the lanes were closed down. As we nudged our way into the bottleneck, this was our conversation. He calls it a gandi baat. (36 sec)

outtake gandi baat

What is the middle class? Is it that large majority that neither lives in a jopadpatti or a luxury flat, driven around in a mercedes? Are the highly paid IT workers middle class and the BMC primary school teacher who rides second class from Bhayander or Dombivili both middle class? Were the mill workers middle class? Kadeer locates himself firmly within the middle class which he then defines. The bada class he says can’t sleep at night. They have big tensions. Chotta class has smaller tensions. I don’t think its a matter of the height of the fall or the weight of the money but rather the precipitousness of the consequences. Maybe the poor don’t spend on a luxury like neend ki goli. (2 min 3 sec)

outtake middle class neend ki goli slumdog

As we wound around the bylanes of Bandra, avoiding the road work between Lilavati and Baristas, Kadeer started talking about playing housie and the different places on which night he goes to.  It took me a few days into the edit to understand that housie is bingo. Am i right? I loved his description. (33 sec)

outtake housie

These photos are of Crawford Market and the street in front of it. Kadeer was just pulling out of the taxi line and I was shooting through the window. Look lovingly at Crawford Market. Once again it is poised on the tip of a decision; is the whole structure Heritage Grade I or just part of the facade and the tower? Will it remain as we see it or will some large looming cement and glass edifice rise from its centre and wrap around and devour it?

A plethora of TV stations come to us through cable. In these days of 24 hours news stations, in all languages, competing for many of the same segments, its hard to separate the fact from the fantastical sometimes especialy since often they are presented as the same thing. In this outtake Kadeer recounts what he saw on the news and then his favourite programme on his favourite channel. (52 sec)

outtake discovery channel

In the photos of the dashboard above, there is a newpapers rolled and stuck behind the decorations. It carries news of and for the diaspora and it has a special section for overseas, outside of India, assignments.  Kadeer wants to get out of the taxi, get out of India and make some money. A migrant in waiting.

We all have our stories of trudging through the rain and waist high water the day of the flood on 26 July. I was in Lower Parel, at work. My neighbor was near Mahalakshmi Station. We met on Tulsi Pipe and walked to Bandra. What i remember the most, even more than the thigh high water that filled my ground floor house, is the people who lived in the jopadpattis that lined Tulsi Pipe Rd at that time. The streets were flooded, their shanties were flooded yet they piled whatever they could find to demarcate the open drainage holes and various ditches in the road and stood out in the rain that night, to warn us, the multitudes wading thru the waters, so no one would fall in. This is not a spirit of Bombay story necessarily, though it could be written up and prismed that way. I wonder where they went after their jopadi were torn down.  Here is Kadeer’s story. (50 sec)

outtake 26 july flood

Kadeer bought the taxi from another driver seven months ago. That driver took out a loan and Kadeer pays him monthly on the loan terms. Rs 4,000/mo. If he drives 6 days a week, that is about Rs170/per day that he has to earn to pay the loan. This is actually better than if he were a driver leasing a taxi where the first Rs/200 per day would be for the owner. In this outtake Kadeer talks about the union and the loan. (49 sec)

outtake union and loan

Taxis have been in the news lately. There was an article about permits and how the state government is thinking of making this system of agreements legal. I had no idea that it wasn’t. In the podcast with Kadeer, with Sebi, with Junaid they all speak about the permit system.  Here is a Times of India article on the legalising of the “rampant illegal transfers“.  Here is another Times of India article explaining the number of cancelled taxis and the terms for getting new vehicles. And what about the 25 year old taxis that are still driving around? DNA explains what actions are being taken to stop them in their tracks here.

and after the news, a shameless plug.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

Mohammad Kasab is from Hyderabad, actually Secunderabad. He came here when he was 10, or 12 years old, telling his parents he and his friends were going to Bombay for a few days. That was 42 years ago. He says he is Bombay kai now. His wife was born here, his children were born here. He is the first driver from the South, and the first driver from a city, not a village.  All migrations are the same, in that we are from one place and we leave it and go to another place. We spend our lives sliding back and forth along the continuum of place and home and belonging.  Yet each migration is unique in where and why we left, and where we went and what we left behind, what we kept with us, what sticks to us and what falls away. Mohammad Kasab tells us his story and a lot about taxi driving. Click on ‘mohammad kasab podcast’ link below to stream or right click to download or click under podcast feed in column on right side. (24 min 7 sec)

mohammad kasab podcast

mohammad kasab: roti milta upaar wala aasaan hain bahut

I was down at Lohar Chawl and then walked the line of taxis parked facing toward Mohammad Ali Rd, opposite from Crawford Market to find a taxi. That is where I found Mohammad Kasab sitting in his taxi in the middle of the line, in the middle of the day. I asked him what his day had been like, where his passengers has taken him around the city. In this outtake he tells me. (1 min 16 sec)

outtake aaj ka dhanda

The photos below are of the Crawford Market  road as we started, and  turning the corner onto Mohammad Ali Rd as we drove under the flyover.

During the ride I had him stop at Ghaans Gali in Agripada. I have spent much time there, looking for radiumwallas, buying a meter, talking to taxi drivers. This time I wanted to buy more of the brightly coloured rexine mudflaps seen hanging behind the wheels of taxis and rickshaws. Ghaans Gali is where taxis go to get fixed;  garage after garage and long lines of taxis, black and yellow stretching down the lane, dappled in the shade of the trees. Along with the garages are the parts and supply shops, the painters, the fender unbenders, the meter calibrators, the decoration sellers, the chaiwalas and the drivers in their khakhi uniforms, at once relaxing and anxious to get back on the road. There are more of these places throughout Bombay, though Ghaans Gali is one of the main ones in town. In this outtake Mohammad Kasab names another main one. I know why he says it. Its near his home. (28 sec)

outtake ghaans gali

Mohammad Kasab at Ghaans Gali:

In the podcast we talk about the Mills and their absence and the new city that is emerging in that space. Passing Dadar he talks about another absence, the Dadar wholesale market that has been pushed out of the city boundary, across the river and into Vashi. Byculla Market, Crawford Market and Dadar Market…..all once wholesale, now the next link down in the chain, each losing bits of their vibrancy and altering the routes of taxi drivers who trace the changes as they ferry the passengers who follow the goods. (1 min 9 sec)

outtake dadar market

I sit leaning forward in the back seat, draping my arm over the drivers seat with my small digital recorder in my hand, holding it in front of the driver’s mouth. The first time I tried recording, I sat in the front seat. At each signal we stopped, someone, in a car, in a taxi, yelled over to us, asking what was going on. Sitting at these long signals there is nothing to do but look around or watch the decrementing LED counter – 84-83-82-81-80…….. until its your turn. So people notice my forward pitch, my outstretched arm, a handheld small white object. We were idling at the Mahim Church signal, waiting to turn right onto the causeway. The beggar came begging and then the Cool Cab driver next to us noticed something different in the kaali-peeli next to him. (44 sec)

outtake at the signal

How many of us are in a job that we know we will do until we stop working? I always know that there will be another job at another place and probably, and usually hopefully, another type of work. Many of the drivers had various jobs before driving. And the younger ones have ideas, dreams of getting out of the taxi into something else… a shop, a hotel, maybe someone’s private driver and a few have plans of going ‘out’ to drive trucks somewhere else. I called Subash Chand a few months after our conversation. His phone was disconnected. Maybe his plan to go to Saudi came into being. The older drivers see this as their last job, the one they will do until they can’t do it, or anything, any more. In this outtake, Mohammad Kasab describes that time. (29 sec)

outtake kab tak taxi chelayga

26 November attacks didn’t loom largely in our conversation. You can hear that in the podcast. Even with a name like Kasab. Which I didn’t want to bring up because..I’m not sure. It didn’t feel like a  flow within the conversation perhaps because the attacks didn’t loom large. I did ask him if he took out the taxi the day after the attacks had started. Even now I am not sure if he didn’t or if he did but stayed only in Kurla, Sion, Matunga areas. Listen to the outtake. What do you think? (42 sec)

outtake nov 26 taxi

In the podcast, Mohammad Kasab talks about the move to clean up Bombay, to remove the dirtiness. I speak of a ‘word class city’ narrative being imposed on the spatiality and landscape of our city. Are we speaking about the same thing and each experiencing it and naming it within our own context? Mohammad Kasab likes clean roads and the removal of jopad-pattis and shantys from the streets. From Mohammad Ali Rd/Baba Amdedkar Rd. we went through Byculla to Saat Rasta to E. Moses. As we turned right onto Tulsi Pipe, he points out how clean the road is since all the shantys have been removed. Since I am holding the recorder in one hand, I am not able to take photos along the routes. Even more, to pull out a camera would signal a disengagement from his words, a turning away from the intimacy of the conversation;  it is their stories that are the essence and the substance and the meaning. I returned to this spot a few days later and took these pictures of that stretch. The bus stop with the Slumdog Millionaire advertising poster in the place of where there used to be slums is not some intended heavy irony. It is how it is.

I am not seeing an increasing number of Meru taxis. That might have to do with permits. I wonder with the cancellation of the 8,000+ fiats whether the owners who can’t afford a loan for a new vehicle will lease the permit to Meru and more pastel generics will fill the cityscape.  Despite the lure of comfortable AC, the kaali-peeli drivers chafe at the structured naukri type relationship and the terms of employment. As Mohammad Kasab closes with in the podcast, “kisko bhi paisa dena ka, kiska bhi chelaana ka”. In the outtake he talks about Meru terms but then explains who pays for kaali-peeli fender-benders. All you samanjdar drivers out on the Bombay roads, remember this. (1 min 36 sec)

outtake meru and more

and what of my my mudflaps from Ghaans Gali? Here they are…………..

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

It was not long after the attacks here in Bombay. The streets were full again, people rejoining their dailiness but not in the same way. Every day an event, an action, a gesture, that flowed in response to the attacks. On TV, in print, on the street there are noises of darkness; war, retaliation, chants signifying a venomous nationalism, a willingness to abrogate democratic liberties in an apprehensive and erroneous belief that this has something to do with prevention or even safety.  And here is Sebi Fernandes in his taxi, talking of aam aadami, watching the television and how ‘feeling hogaya, dukh hogaya’ for the people, and his niece who works in housekeeping in the Oberoi, trapped and hiding over night there, caught in the firing, and his mistrust of the officially reported numbers of dead.  Nothing will be solved by war he says, only it is the common man that dies. Jang nahin. Aman chahiye. Click on ‘sebastian fernandes podcast’ link below to stream or right click to download or click on feed in column on right side. (26 min 5 sec)

sebastian fernandes podcast

sebi fernandes: aam aadami aur mat girao

In the podcast audio, Sebi tells is a wonderful story about an ‘up-to-date’ young woman who gets in at Mahim and on the way to Colaba has him stop at Heera Panna so she can quickly buy something. She disappears and never comes back. He says that he thought she was educated but now he thinks she was just a fraudster. “What is this attitude that she isn’t educated because she was doing fraud” a very close friend asked. My friend is right of course. I wish I had asked Sebi something about that. His answer might have been interesting, especially because he believes that governments lie and cheat and fraud. But then maybe educated means something else to him, something that isn’t conferred with a degree. In the outtake below, Sebi tells another story but this time it is of a robbery, with a revolver, in broad daylight. He seems more surprised by the fraudulent woman than the gun-toting men. Are you? (3 min 52 sec)

outtake dharavi revolver

Sebi grew up in a family of 10 children, poor, the son of a mill worker who gambled away his earnings. He is a Bombay-born, hard-working man in a city without enough housing that is a siren calling out to everyone the possibilities of opportunity. He says in the podcast audio that Bombay is a city unkind, but not fatal, to the poor. Yet in this outtake, he talks about ‘those people’, the ones who live on the footpaths, who have too many children, who drink too much, who beg for a living instead of working. These representations seem to hover over our city, voiced in all areas, 1 BHKs in Parel, in 2 BHKs in Vesova, in 3 BHKs in Chembur, bungalows in Juhu, luxury apartments atop Malabar Hill, and, yes, in the 1 room chawl of a taxi driver in Dadar West. Perhaps it makes it easier to live amidst the very marginalised, the barely making it, and go about our lives. (4 min 1 sec)

outtake footpath

There is a taxi badge that every driver must have to drive taxi. Then there is the taxi permit that allows the taxi to be on the road. Permits are valuable. Without one, the taxi can’t ply. There is much jugaad around permits with the new Meru taxis. What I have never understood is whether the permit is with a person, or the permit is with the vehicle. In this outtake Sebi explains permits. (47 sec)

outtake taxi permits

The taxis over 25 years old are being taken off the road in the next coming months. I keep hearing differing totals. Some say 11,000, some say 8,000, others quote numbers in this range. Each taxi has at least one driver and many have two drivers. That is a large number of drivers without a taxi to drive, without a job. I read an article in today’s paper about this. Not of course from the point-of-view of the drivers, but from the point-of-view of – isn’t it wonderful this progression into a model modern city. The headline caught by eye. It talked about polluting taxis being forced off the road for the betterment of our environment. How dishonest. Two years ago, or perhaps its three now, all the taxis were made to convert to CNG. At a cost to the owners for which many took out loans. Taxis aren’t polluting our city, whether they are 25 years old, or the last model to roll off the Fiat production lines in 1994. In this outtake, Sebi talks about the cancellation of taxis, and what it means for the drivers, of which by he way, he isnt one. (38 sec)

outtake taxi cancel

The cancellation of taxis, the appearance of fleet taxis, the everyday problems of working and the conflicts that are born from interaction with the public while being a service and being a business. Unions are supposed to protect us, to serve us and to negotiate in our name with whomever are the powers that be. I always ask the drivers if they are in a union, the whys and why nots and the benefits or not. In New York City, where many of the drivers are South Asian, there is a very strong, very progressive taxi union conceived and headed by an India-born woman named Bhairavi Desai (more here). There is a book about her and the union titled Taxi!: Cabs and Capitalism in New York City by Biju Mathew. I recommend it. So far, most of the drivers in Bombay have not given the unions very high marks. Sebi has thrown away his life time membership card in Nav Jivan, and here he explains why. (3 min 21 sec)

outtake union card phenkdiya

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

Between Nabob Bhai and Sagir Bhai is a post called Interlude. A young taxi driver singing a ghazal. That is Jamid Ali. We have stayed in touch, phoning each other as he took his sick taxi driver father back home to the village and came back. Then went back to care for him, bury him, and complete the ritual obligations and then come back. Up until now, each of the drivers I spoke with were picked serendipitously off the street. We start as strangers. There seems to be a magic in that, the unfolding that can happen with a stranger, in a closed and intimate space, that moment when the formality melts away and the conversation opens like a bud, like a flower. So I was unsure about changing that way of doing this. A conversation with someone I know, someone whose story I know, what would that be like? So here it is, Jamid Ali, Nabob Bhai ka bhateeja, my friend, no longer just an interlude. Click on ‘jamid ali podcast’ link below to stream or right click to download or click on feed in column on right side. (24 min 54 sec)

jamid ali podcast

jamid ali: kwaish adami ki asmaan chhoona ki hoti

In the Interlude post, there is an audio file of Jamil Ali singing a ghazal about mothers, or I suspect, his memories of his mother that is no longer with him. Below is a video, taken with my little point-and-shoot of him singing the same ghazal.

About a month ago in Bombay there was a strike by taxi and rickshaw drivers over the ruling that taxis  older than 15 years are to be removed from the roads. Many of the drivers in this blog talk spiritedly about this saying that the fiat car is strong, that it should be judged on the condition of the vehicle and not its age. And what of the many drivers whose livelihood will be taken away from them when their taxis are taken off the roads.  There is currently a case that has been moved in the high court challenging this government resolution. The papers have covered it.  http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1209579 In the outtake below Jamid Ali speaks about the strength of the lohari fiat and has his ideas of how to ensure a driver keeps it maintained. But then he tells a wonderful story about a woman, a widow, who owns a taxi and what this ruling will mean to her and her two children. (2 min 56 sec)

outtake 15 saal ki taxi

Taxi drivers are being fined when they refuse a fare. I often feel like I am asking for a favour to be granted as i walk a line of taxis, bending down to window level, saying where it is I want to go, ending the word with that hesitant inflexion and slight raising of tonation that connotes permission. But I confess, having been a driver, there is that other part of me that is in the front seat turning me down with a shake of my head. In the outtke below, Jamid Ali tells his story of when he couldnt get a taxi, a tale of tables turned.(1 min 36 sec)

outtake cant get a taxi

Films are a common denominator, a topic as easy to speak about as the weather, high prices and the traffic in Bombay. Many conversations open up from here. If I were to keep a poll, Shah Rukh Khan always gets the highest ratings. Jamid Ali is no exception. In the outtake below he talks about plot, haqeeqat and Karan Arjun. (2 min 17 sec)

outtake karan arjun

Between the time we recorded this conversation and now, Jamid Ali has gone back to UP. His brother had been bunking school. He needed the guiding hand and, I wonder, the punishing hand of an older brother to put him back on the path of attendance. It seems to be working. In the podcast Jamid Ali says that only if his brother gets a good education and a good future, then Jamid Ali’s leaving behind his badmashi days will have produced something meaningful.  I think they are already have.

Below is one more ghazal written by and sung by Jamid Ali….to his brother.(3 min 37 sec)

bhai ghazal

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

Out of the warrens of Mangaldas market and into Badshah’s for a falooda. (Shalimar’s are better) A line of taxis. Arvind Kumar Rai slouching against his door, checking his cell phone.  He is a HSC science graduate from UP. How many drivers have said they want to educate their sons so they won’t have to be taxi drivers. But Arvind likes the freedom of danda. Bosses think they own you he says and he earns more in the taxi than the naukris on offer. It was a hot humid heavy day of disappeared rains, the trough between massing storm clouds when there isn’t quite sun and there isn’t quite shadow and the light has a peculiar pewter cast. Second day of Ramzan and the day before Ganapati.  Byculla he asks and up Mohammad Ali-Ambedkar Rds, over Currey Rd Station bridge and around to Tulsi Pipe.  In the middle of the podcast where you hear him say “Madam thoda ek minute ruksakta, na?”, he is showing me his raised little finger.  We stopped at the shauchalaya at Lower Parel. Click on link below to stream or right click to download. (22 min 34 sec)

arvind kumar rai podcast

arvind kumar rai: hai ke ni

We see people on the streets, on the trains, in buses, in the markets. All around us are dwellings. Which ones are theirs? Where do the taxi drivers go home to after we hear their story?  Though this outtake is named room, its more about pani and mornings and divisions of labour. (1 min 9 sec)

outtake room

10 hours a day x six days a week driving in Bombay traffic, talking (or not) to the strangers in the back seat.  Then comes chutti ka din. This is what Arvind does on his day off. (48 sec)

outtake chutti

Below are photos of Arvind going to the shauchalaya and coming back. Its on Sayani Marg, that road that when you want Tulsi Pipe but are coming up NM Joshi and can’t go straight onto Tulsi Pipe, you turn right onto it and then left from it and you are sitting at Elphistone signal on Tulsi Pipe.

As part of the narrative to turn Bombay into a world-class city, our netas and babus have visited Singapore and Shanghai and other cities that model this imaginary. From the first driver, Hari Lal Yadav, up to now with Arvind, we have been hearing anxiety of impending cancel of the kaali-peeli fiats. First it was any vehicle over 15 years old. When I recently met Junaid to give him his DVD and photos, he told me at the meeting of Taximans Union (Nav Jivan), Quadros had announced the decision that any vehicle older than 25 years old will be cancelled and off the road during next next 12 months. This will take minimum 8,000 or 20% of kaali-peeli taxis off the road. 8,000 to 16,000 drivers. What will they do and where will they go?

under the hood

In this outtake, Arvind talks about why he joined Nav Jivan Taximan’s Union, and what he thinks now. (1 min 14 sec)

outtake union

These days, Raj Thackeray and his MNS goons have been taking on store owners and traders, insisting on signage in Marathi. मीतर डाअन  Is that Marathi? I say its Hindi. Thackeray is also taking on the Bachchans and Shah Rukh Khan. But what about when he was creating havoc with the taxi drivers? Arvind talks about that time which may not have passed. (1 min 13 sec)

outtake raj thackeray

Always on the road in this traffic. I am impressed at how many of these drivers have not had accidents. Arvind is not one of them. (1 min 42 sec)

outtake accident

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

Raining in Bombay, finally again after a month long disappearance. It was the monday evening after the Ahmedabad bombings and after a weekend of heavy rains. The city felt wet and still and it glistened in the street lights. I was at Kala Ghoda. The first driver I spoke to flatly refused saying he couldn’t drive in the rain and talk at the same time. I went ahead a few taxis and found Junaid. He is from Gujarat, from the Chiliya community. Many of the drivers had spoken about the Chiliya log, that they were the original taxi drivers when taxis first came to Bombay. Sagir Bhai’s taxi ka seth was Chiliya. The drivers had all praised the them, saying they were honest, jyada baat nahin karte, and kam se kam. But Junaid is 23 and he likes to talk. The smile on his face….you can hear it in his voice. Click on link below to stream or right click to download. (26 min 01 sec)

junaid podcast

Junaid: Kismat mein jitna rehta, itna milta

The dance bars are as much a part of this city as the red buses or kaali-peeli taxis. If a film has a dance bar scene, it signals the setting is Bombay. This outtake is the rest of the conversation about the dance bars Junaid doesn’t frequent. I asked him about the women that danced in the bars. His thoughts intrigue me because they don’t touch on morality, the good or bad of the women. (3 min 50 sec)

outtake bars and bar girls

The next three outtakes are one flow of conversation that due to length, I divided up and are in order from the beginning to end. In Junaid’s village, the girls aren’t married until they are in their late teens or early twenties. But the sagai is arranged years before. Junaid doesn’t think this is right and he explains why. (1 min 42 sec)

outtake jaldi sagai achha nahin

From sagai accha nahin to ladki accha nahin. The ladki is the woman Junaid is engaged to be married to in 8 months. But it isn’t Junaid saying accha nahin. It is his neighbors and his family. His feelings are soft and warm and protective. and determined. (2 min 17 sec)

outtake ladki acchhi nahin

Kismat runs through this podcast. In this outtake Junaid elaborates and embroidered into the fabric of his thoughts is a silken thread of defense of his wife-to-be. (54 sec)

outtake kismat

I ask about the leaving from home and the coming into the city. I ask about what has been left behind and how that left behind is experienced, this continuum of inhabiting here and inhabiting there. Junaid speaks of the Chiliya community in the village and I hear the story of gaon mein aisa hai and traces of sheher mein aisa nahin hota. We all have our stories of adaptation, in large ways and incremental ways, to the complexities of our lives in these times. (1 min 46 sec)

outtake chiliyan gaon mai aisa hai

The men are away working and the villages are full of women raising the children. I have wondered about that, especially about the boy children. I asked Junaid what advice he would give a 12 year old from his village that wanted to come work in Bombay. His answer gives thought to my wondering.

outtake 12 saal ka ladka

I haven’t posted in a long time. I was travelling through Spain and then back overland through Turkey, Syria and then flight to Peshawar and through Pakistan to Wagah, Amritsar and Golden Mail back to Bombay. I didn’t ride in any taxis, but I have this photo of a taxi dashboard in Damascus.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

I was walking down the street near Cumballa Hill just as the sun was starting to be lost behind the buildings to the west. I was looking for a taxi and I saw a beautifully decorated one just a bit further down, parked on the side of the road. Then I saw the dicky was open and the lug wrench was on the ground along with a tire. A person was standing there covered with dirt and grease and sweat. He was so young I thought perhaps he was a worker from a garage. But it was the driver, Anil Chauhan, and he looked forlorn. He is 18 years old and has been driving a taxi for 15 days. He left home in UP 6 years ago, when he was 12 or 13. All these stories we have heard so far have been told from the distance of adulthood and memory. Anil Chauhan is these stories now, he is living it now and its at the beginning. Click on link below to stream or right click to download. (24 min 1 sec)

anil chauhan podcast

Anil Chauhan: Mein kuch banoonga jaroor

He couldn’t get the lug nuts to turn. I told him to try standing on the lug wrench. That is what i do, bounce on it with all my weight. I showed him how, but the lug wrench fell off. It was stripped clean and smooth on the inside, and couldn’t hold the corners of the lug nuts. Close by was a taxi that had just dropped off passengers and I sent him to ask the driver for his lug wrench and he came back with it and the driver also. I sat on a small step near the foot path and took photos as the other driver changed the tire. Look at the tire in the last 2 photos. You can see where the rubber has split.

Anil Chauhan’s brother is getting married. Anil got married last year. The older sister is already married. A younger sister is yet to be married. Two sons, two daughters. Two dahej dena and two dahej lena. Does it come out even? Click on the link below. (1 min 55 sec)

outtake dahej

This was one of the taxis that has separate driver and passenger seats in the front and in between them a silvery pole from ceiling to floor with lines etched on it that snaking up the length to form diamond patterns. Most taxis dont have them, either the separated seats or the pole. It was also one of those taxis that has mirrors on the ceiling, a larger one over the back seat and a smaller one over the front seat. and a green or blue florescent light between them. Someone told me that they heard that it is in these taxis that lovers can ask a driver to park and walk away for awhile while they enjoy some masti. No driver has confirmed this. In these photos I am shooting up into the mirrors.

In the Dahej outtake above, Anil describes himself as from a choti jaat. I asked him about relations between barra jaat and choti jaat in his village. Listen to his answers. (2 min 37 sec)

outtake jaat

Aside from the poles and the mirrors and one of my favourite seat cover patterns, this taxi had my favourite gear shift knobs. I love the the rainbow colours and the plastic rose fully blooming inside. And the grapes hanging from the rear view mirror. At night they flash different colours from the tiny lights inside. Watch the video to see the flashing and even more for a wonderful image of Anil in the rear view mirror.

Villages have large deep wells that the young boys splash around in. Anil said he goes to Juhu Chowpatty to catch the breezes. But has he ever gone swimming in the sea there? (27 sec)

outtake swimming in sea

The rear window of Anil’s taxi has Ganapati large holding a diya and hugging a Shiva Lingum. But dont miss the words in english on (our) left rear of the license. No what? Why not?

Anil feels that if one can drive in Bombay, one can drive anywhere. And for him, driving is what will enable him to provide for his family and fulfill his dreams. People have commented that the drivers don’t have very ‘big’ dreams. Some have found that sad. But what better dream is there to fulfill other than being able to provide for one’s family and give your children a better future than your present? Don’t most parents have that dream? What is it then that some people find sad? The difference in increment? (28 sec)

outtake driving for life

And what about these dreams? A room. A flat. In Bombay our dreams always contain that anxiety of somewhere to live. That particularity of Bombay: the disquiet about a room for one’s own. (1 min 26 sec)

outtake_roomsoom

By the time we reached Bandra, it was dark. My point-and-shoot has trouble in low light and I don’t like flash. I was trying different settings. One was a long shutter speed in my shaky hands. But the photo is interesting.

Anil Chauhan was 13 when he left home. He left school after 8th class. He has worked selling fruit, making brushes in a small workshop unit, carrying water on his head and now driving taxi. He has been back and forth from UP to Bombay to UP to Bombay over and over. But what advice would he give to a 13 year old who asked to come with him back to Bombay? (42 sec)

outtake advice

I take their phone numbers and I always give mine. We stay in touch usually. This is Anil’s diary as he looks for a page to write my number.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

This time I picked with a bit of intent. I had been at Kurla Terminus taking photos of the crowds of people arriving in Bombay on the trains after the long trip from the eastern interiors of UP and Bihar. The area was full of taxis and drivers, trying to get passengers. I decided I would come back and talk to a taxi driver that worked out of the terminus. I used to often work the airport when I drove, not going into the lot to wait my turn but instead driving the lane in front of arrival and stealing tired fliers as they searched for the taxi stand in the confusion of the airport or standing by the exit door for the late nights flights. “Taxi?” “Taxi?” “Where you going?” Lal Mohammad Khan always starts from Kurla Terminus. I forgot to ask him why or any questions about things like that. Because when the conversation turned to his wild youth and then HIV/AIDs and nirodhs and safe sex and then kissing in taxis, it took on its own life. Click on link below to stream or right click to download. (20min 24 sec)

lal mohammad khan podcast

lal mohammad khan: bombay aisa saher hai yahaan jo ek time aajaata isko dusri jaga dil nahin lakta

Streets are cleared of hawkers and thela-walas. Markets are moved to Vashi. Streets are cleared again of hawkers and thela-walas. And again. The push to imagined modernity also pushes the people who work on the streets away, elsewhere. This ripples across the skein of working people connected to them in ways that are not visible. The hidden hardships are felt, and in this case, articulated in this outtake. (1 min 33 sec)

outtake taxi-ka-danda

Kurla Terminus, officially Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, is a rail head in the eastern suburbs for trains coming in from the eastern, and southern parts of India. It is relatively newer. It hadn’t been built when Sagir Bhai arrived in Bombay. Back then, those trains terminated at VT.

We took the Eastern Express highway to Sion and then through Dharavi to the road to BKC that connects to the Western Express Highway. Right at the signal there when we turned left to go towards Bandra, we heard the police whistle and the havaldar jumped out and flagged us down. or so we thought. This is the view from the back of the taxi as I waited for him to come back.

Many of the taxis have florescent lights in them. The image in this blog header is a taxi driver in Mahim at night, with the green light shining from his ceiling. Lal Mohammad Khan’s taxi had a blue light inside and a light on the dashboard that shone out the windscreen, flashing and changing colours: red, blue, yellow

to see it in action and to see Lal Mohammad Khan, watch this video. The young boy who comes into the frame is the bhaji thela-wala ka ladka.

Lal Mohammad Khan’s taxi had some nice decoration.

and seat covers………..

Actually, I had a funny experience at Kurla. The first taxi I got into was with two brothers. They were Bombay Maharashtrian. I thought this would be something different and perhaps interesting, the non-immigrant experience. I had explained I would be recording the conversation and they agreed. Strangely, they insisted on showing me the taxi badge and taxi license. And a rate card that turned out to be some local printer job I think. We had already left the terminus and were winding our way through the lanes of Kurla East to reach the Expressway. I told them I would also be taking their photos and also explained how I would use the material and that they would also have a CD, DVD and hard copies of the photos. They were increasingly uneasy. No photos they said. Or, as a compromise, one brother would talk but the photos would be of the other brother. No photos of the taxi. I said lagta hai ki ap log biswas nahin karte hai issi mamla mein and if so, i will be quite happy to get down from the taxi. They pulled over to the side, I paid the Rs 13 and walked back to Kurla Terminus. There was this taxi with green decoration on the back and Lal Mohammad Khan leaning against the driver door. I explained where I was going and what I wanted to do and showed him the recorder. He smiled and said chelo.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

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10 episodes. 10 stories. This story started one evening coming out of Bombay Hospital visiting a friend from Ujjain who was here for his second operation on a broken leg. There was a line of cabs and for some reason I kept walking to the one far down the road. It was Sagir Bhai. He is full of stories and full of a sense of belonging to this city. We rode through the night and I heard his story as a young 16 year old who just failed his 10th Board Exams, running away from home, to Bombay, without even a change of clothes or an address. Just the wisp of knowledge that between 7am and 8am at a place called Maratha Mandir, he might find his sagaawalas. He found them, and like Sevalal, became a tailor and a sampler at Saat-Raasta and then a taxi driver. And now 24 years after getting off the 66 bus from Dadar Terminus at the petrol pump across from Bombay Central, he speaks of Raj Thackeray, of 1992, of 26 July, of film shoots, of his life then and now and to come.

click here to stream podcast

or here –> sagir bhai podcast and here to download –> download podcast

sagir bhai: hum log ne kabhi yeh nahin sochha ke yeh shahar mera nahin hai.

The streets are dotted with Meru cabs. They stick out like pastel interlopers amidst the black and yellow taxis and in their blandness, catch my eyes. They seem to exist in the interstices of private and public vehicle. I have yet to talk to a Meru driver but often imagine what that conversation would be like, especially if accompanied by Sagir Bhai or Sevalal or, if I could find him again, Babu. How many kaali-peeli drivers have gone over to Meru? According to this outtake, probably not many because of the required papers needed for submission. Have you ever tried to shift a ration card from your native place to Bombay? But also according to this outtake, perhaps many drivers, like many passengers, would like to drive around in an air-conditioned taxi in April, in May, in the rains or in that hot October month. Yet what will happen to kaali-peeli? And what will it mean to roji-roti if they are made to disappear. Perhaps its more than we think. This is a long outtake but wonderful.(4 min 3 sec)

click here for outtake —-> Meeru taxi and kaali-peeli

Everyone told Sagir Bhai not to drive a taxi but he didn’t listen. He wanted to drive. So 11 years of taxi driving later, what advice would he give a young man just arriving in Bombay? And would that young man listen? Do we heed advice? I didnt. No regrets. (1 min 22 sec)

click here for outtake —–> Taxi mat chelao

People ask me if drivers ever refuse to be recorded. No, none has refused but there were two drivers that were so reticent I didnt use the material. One was a Gujarati driver and the other was the 10th driver I recorded, an older Sion-Koliwada Sadarji, Ranbir Singh, born here in Bombay.

Actually, Hari Lal Yadav was my third conversation. My first was Shankar Jaiswal from Jaunpur, UP, done exactly one year ago. The traffic noise is overwhelming in parts of that conversation because I didn’t know to set the mic sense in the recorder from omni-directional to uni-direction. I am clearly nervous and thus over-animated. He is wonderfully forthcoming. Perhaps I can clean it up and post it some day. The second was with the Gujarati driver. He is so reticent your can hear the sweat forming on my upper lip as I try to engage.

One year. 10 lives shared. I love these stories, these accumulating histories of the drivers in the city around them, the city around us.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli

For each driver I put their photos on a timeline with the audio and cut a movie dvd. I give this, along with an audio CD of the entire original conversation and the podcast, and hard copies of the photos. Its their words and their stories and since not one of them is yet on internet, they will have what they said and know how I used it. So I went to meet Nabob Bhai at Mahalakshmi Station to give him his story. He had brought along his bhatija, his brother’s son, Jamid Ali, who himself is a 22 year old taxi driver for the last two years. Jamid Ali took out a piece of paper, torn from those small spiral-bound notepads that fit in the chest pocket. On it was a ghazal he had written. He has always written ghazal, and had dreams to make this his life’s work. But then his mother died and he had to stop dreaming and be practical about his rozi roti. He came to Bombay and joined his father and uncle. He keeps his pen and paper with him always, so when the words come, he is ready, even at these long Bombay traffic signals. I recorded him there, on the Saat Rasta side outside Mahalakshmi Station. Remember the words “but then his mother died” when you listen. (2 min 24 sec)
click here to listen —-> jamid alis ghazal

unfortunately my camera is being fixed. so no photo of Jamid Ali. Instead here is a meter.

Samaad Ali Khan, he says in the podcast. But when I put his name into my phone, he said Nabob Bhai. That is what he goes by. I had gotten into his taxi in Bhendi Bazaar and we went up Amebedkar Rd, through Byculla to Saat Rasta and up Tulsi Pipe. You can hear the engine roaring while he is reciting Hindi lyrics as we climb the rise of the flyover. I usually ask the drivers if they ever had any trouble from the anti-bhaiyya rhetoric. Subash Chand had left the city because of it once. But mostly I heard ‘kaam-se-kaam’. Up til now, I had never included the answers. Until Nabob Bhai. I had kept my question and his answer in the podcast. And then a few days later, Raj Thackeray and his MNS goondas, in a bad imitation of his uncle’s sad, old campaign, set off this chain of maar-peeth bakwas, much of it symbolically aimed at a few drivers. We have multiple identities, from here and from there. What did Mushtaq and Sevalal say? Karmi bhumi and dharmi bhumi, but most important, Indian. Bombay sab ke liya hai. Hi speed internetwalas, click on the player. If too much buffering then click on nabob bhai podcast to listen. (20 min 5 sec)

nabob bhai podcast —> Right click here to download

Nabob Bhai: Kissi ki baap ke jagir nahin. Hindustan hamara. Hum azaad hai.

Sanjay Dutt, Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachan, Hema Malini, Sridevi, Meena Kumari. We had a very filmi conversation. When I asked him the difference between Bombay ke log and UP ke log, he ended up talking about the film Coolie. Listen in this outtake. (1 min 24 sec)

or click here coolie film

I keep probing the idea of home, of desh, of mulak, of the multiplicities of belonging that saturate any act of migration, of leaving and arrival. I probe the drivers. And listen for clues to myself. I asked Nabob Bhai about Bombay and desh. He earns his do roti here so its also his desh. My answers are different. But then it wasnt majboori that brought me. (28 sec)

or click here ->desh

Nabob Bhai is a driver. He doesn’t own his taxi. It is the drivers that are the most vulnerable to the changes to the taxi trade. The taxi owners can sell their fiats for junk, and sell or lease their permit, to the fleet companies perhaps. The drivers can only find another taxi to lease. I asked Nabob Bhai why he doesn’t buy his own taxi. (35 sec)

or click here ->new vehicle

I have yet to find a taxi driver who wanted their son to drive taxi or even would advise a young man from the village to get into taxi line. Nabob Bhai is no different. In fact he woudn’t wish it on an enemy. Listen to how he says that in this outtake. (1 min)

or click here -> advice to young men

Still hoping the Hindi translator/transcriber can start at the end of the month.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli.

I was in Govandi, and it was evening and I realised that I had never talked to a driver starting from the eastern suburbs. So instead of getting on the train I found Lallan Prasad Singh’s taxi and he was the first driver not from UP. He is from Jharkhand. Though his accent is different, his story is not so different and yet of course, it is unique. We speak about the day he left his village, alone, at 16 or 17 years old, just after taking his 10th boards, father and son walking from the village to the station. The facts of migration are daily and commonplace in their repetition; I was 16. I am from a village. I got on a train, alone, to go to a far away iconic city where I don’t know anyone, with just an address of a lodge in my hand, a name with no meaning. What would that feel like? A wrenching of the heart? Terror? A sadness that seems bottomless? And now years later, a story. Click on the player icon to stream. If it buffers too much, click on the file name lallan singh podcast below to stream from WordPress or click on the name Lallan Singh under Podcast Feed in the sidebar to the right. (16 min 27 sec)

lallan singh podcast

Right click here to download

Lallan Singh: aanewala din main nahin gaya tho mera baccha jasakta hai

Lallan Singh said these words above when we were speaking of the changes to Bombay, to Saat Rasta where he worked in a Mill, to Lower Parel and Parel. He has never been inside Phoenix Mills or any of the new malls in Mulund or Malad or anywhere else, though he has dropped passengers at these places. He says he gets happy looking at them. Yet somehow he couldn’t articulate why he never goes in. But he said that even if he doesn’t go inside, someday his son will. This new Bombay might not be his, but it will be his son’s. I don’t know but I am somehow humbled by his words.

Lallan Singh explained why his son is in English medium and his daughters are in Hindi medium. If a daughter is English medium educated, she will need a husband that is equally educated, or better. Then dahej will be Rs. 12L. He can’t afford that so the solution is to lower her potential to match the dahej price he will be able to afford. In this outtake, he further talks about his daughters’ marriage and how is he looking for someone ‘medium’ like he is. (2 min 48 sec)

outtake_ladki_ki_shaadi.mp3

Sion subway out the front window

Lallan Singh described his coming to Bombay. After he came and settled, his younger brother came, the one who owns the taxi permit. In this outtake he talks more about his brother’s coming to Bombay. (25 sec)

outtake_bhai.mp3

Where is ghar, where is desh, where is mulak? Lallan Singh was born and lived in Jharkhand and then came to Bombay. In the podcast he answers these questions. But what about his son who was born here and raised here? In this outtake, Lallan Singh tells us what his son says. (36 sec)

outtake_ladka_ka_mulak.mp3

We talked about the day he left the village. But there was more. What about the day he landed in Bombay, a city in which he knew no one. Getting of the train amid the masses at VT. Where did he go? How did he know to go there? In this outtake Lallan Singh speaks of his arrival. (1 min 12 sec)

outtake_landing_in_bombay.mp3

Lallan Singh has 5 brothers and they are all still one chulla, one joint family. In this age of families that fracture so easily, how do they manage to stay together. In this outtake, he explains.

outtake_5_bhai_ekata.mp3

I keep testing this blog and it seems that the audio files were buffering more and more, more than the podcast feed. Up til now, they were uploaded to a hotlink site. In this posting I have parked the outtake audio files here at WordPress which doesn’t give me a URL for them so the player icon isn’t created, just the link. I hope the speed improves. Let me know if there is a better way to do this on a wordpress.com site.

I am still searching for a translator/transcriber. I might have one and it seems I do have one at the end of February. In the meantime, no Hindi transcript and no Hindi blog. If anyone has a name, please pass it on. Email me or post it in the comments section.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli.

One night I was at a photography exhibition on Bombay. The artist spoke on a panel with Shyam Benegal and Shilpa Phadke who made a wonderful presentation on gender and space and Bombay. There were questions from the audience and a man introduced himself as President of City Taxi Union and spoke about how taxi drivers know every nook, cranny, lane, market, neighborhood and visual in the city. And if people want to take photos or movie makers to shoot movies in Bombay, the taxi drivers are really the best location scouts. He’s right. Strangely, on the way down to the venue, I had seen a taxi with City Taxi Union written across the back windscreen and I had written down the name and number. This is Mushtaq Qureshi, President and founder, City Taxi Union, and this is what he has to say about the changes to the taxi line and the problems and future of the kaali-peeli drivers. Click on player below to stream the podcast. Right click on link to download. (19 min 10 sec)

right click here to download

mushtaq qureshi: for the betterment of the passenger service and for the upliftment of the taxi trade

Since there is so much discussion about the private fleet taxis, here is a photo of a Meru taxi in line at the CNG petrol pump at Tardeo.

backfront

This ‘modernisation’ project that is engulfing our city has ramifications that ripple into the daily details of our life and work. Since the domestic airport is now in private hands, the land use needs to be commercialised in order to create revenue and profits. This outtake describes one effect on the taxis and one on people who drive cars. (1 min 53 sec)

Mushtaq thinks our Bombay taxi drivers are the best in the world given………… (13 sec)

Mushraq and his son, Tabrez

Some management types might call this the City Taxi Union Mission Statement (44 sec)

Since Mushtaq doesn’t have a taxi to photograph, I am putting a little thumbnail gallery. Click to see the words on the backs of the taxis, like passing reminders or signs, one word poems.

There is no Hindi transcript and no Hindi blog entry for this. Sadly, I seem to have lost VS Rawat. Both were his ideas and his work. He has brought so much to Meter Down. I am still very grateful to him and intend to carry on his ideas. Hopefully by the next posting, Hindi will be back. Kindly bear with me til then. Ma’af karna.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene , Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.

Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli.

Abdul Wahid Khan was standing by his cab in the shade of a lane in Tardeo. It was that mid-afternoon lull when there seems to be more space between and a tiny bit of quiet as if the city is taking a breath before spiralling toward the evening cacophony. Adbul Wahid Khan is full of stories. He spun one after another. I kept two stories in the podcast and the rest are in the outtakes. One of the podcast stories especially delighted me because, long ago and 12,000 miles away from Bombay in another large and far-flung city, I experienced the same thing when I drove taxi. Abdul Wahid Khan doesn’t like the changes he sees in this city that he has lived in for 30 years. He tells of his son who is in 12th and we hear the pride and tension of board exams. Click on the player icon below to hear the podcast, or the two link choices below it and listen to the outtakes on the player icons that follow his photo below.

Click here to download transcript Right click here to download podcast

abul wahid khan “humaaraa dil bahut saadiq dil”

Cheating Stories Outtakes

This outtake is a long story about a cheater that tried to present himself as a ‘do number’ guy but got himself ek numbered. (5 min 2 sec)

This outtake is a story about some man who tried not to pay, but paid the price personally when he was caught and beaten. But as it often is in Bombay, it was too much trouble to take him to the chowki. (1 min 29 sec)

the bank that held the loan on purchase

More Outtakes (not about cheaters)

Abdul Wahid Khan spoke with great feeling about Khuda and life. (3 min 12 sec)

Abdul Wahid Khan’s unhappiness is not so much with they physical changes in Bombay. He finds that much has changed in the hearts of people. I have combined two separate parts of the conversation into a whole. (3 min 55 sec)

Abdul Wahid Khan misses UP as does his wife. He wants to go back there one day and farm. He says the pani there is the best in India. But will it happen? A 1/4 part of 6 bigha? And if his future grandchildren are here in Bombay? Migration can split one into two parts. There is home and then there is that other home. (1 min 55 sec)

Not all passengers are bad or cheaters. Here is a story of a good passenger. (2 min 28 sec)

Rawat has been transcribing the previous podcasts. I have added the transcript for Guptaji on the hindi transcription page. Soon, due to his kind efforts and excellent skills, there will be downloads for all released podcasts. I am very thankful to him still and always. If you would like to write him, you can leave a comment or send him an email at vsrawat (at) gmail (dot) com.

The intro music in the podcast is the song Boombai Nagari from the movie Taxi 9211, sung by Bappa Lahiri, Merriene, Nisha and Vishal Dadlani.Music by Vishal Dadlani and Shekar, lyrics by Vishal Dadlani and Dev Kohli.