A Drive (Part 1)

Another drive alone.

By this time I have gotten beyond being overwhelmed by the traffic and have started looking at the surroundings and the humanity. This, again, is another facet of life in India which overwhelms the senses.

Leaving Lax's apartment, wide streets are lined with shops. Tiny, traditional open air shops next to large, air conditioned stores with fabulous ethnic clothing in the windows next to mid-rise office type buildings, next to KFC. There is new construction, and empty buildings of three or four or five stories that seem to be under renovation. Sometimes an abandoned building where Keep Out signs have been broken down by the squatters now living there.

There are no side walks, and people walk wherever they can on the edge of the road, so many people, some walking in amongst the traffic, some crossing. Sometimes motorcycles or scooters drive against traffic on the pedestrian edge -- blatantly illegal behavior, but quicker than the alternative.

Every so often there is an empty lot, often with a large sign stating ownership -- "This plot is the property of Mrs. S.V. Sriwhoever". Whether it has stood that way for sometime or been cleared away for a building that never materialized, it is invariably dotted with slum shacks of corrugated metal and faded blue plastic tarps, which spring up like dandelions. There seems to be no logic to the placement of shacks. A city block-sized empty lot may have only two shacks leaning together, while one a quarter of the size may have twenty. People sit on the ground or on large rocks while children run and play.

Often a little blue tarp shack in an empty lot is a restaurant, serving the folks who live, work, and walk by. Sometimes a little shack has been constructed right on the edge of the road, forcing people to walk out into the street to get around it. Sometimes it is a tiny brightly colored temple that is placed there, in the way, remorseless of inconvenience caused due to its sacred purpose.