Transportation in Gujarat

Getting around in India is hard to describe, and even harder to experience.

In auto-rickshaws—basically three-wheeled go-carts—I’ve had strangers practically sitting on my lap, because the rickshaw is moving 11 people instead of the 4 for whom seats are actually available. I’ve hitched rides in trucks, the front cabs of which are so crowded with travelers that the manual gear shift is between my legs, substantially too close for comfort when in 2nd gear. And I’ve ridden in buses that seem to have been welded together from scrap metal, with no shocks, seats missing, the diesel engine roaring so loud that it actually comes close to drowning out the passengers yelling on cell phones, the crying babies, and the angry conductor.

At the same time, though, traveling the way my friends and colleagues do has given me a lot to think about.

Once I was heading out on a long bus ride over to one of the NGO’s primary schools. It was supposed to have been an easy journey, because the bus would pick me up just a minute outside of the vocational training center where I live and work, at the local village’s bus stand, and take me directly to the town by which the school is located.

That direct bus comes once a day, at 2 pm. I waited there from 1:45 to 3, and the only vehicles driving by were massive trucks hauling timber or cotton, the local buses, and the local auto-rickshaws, which function as shared taxis with people hanging out of every opening.

I had just about cancelled my plans when the bus finally came a little after 3. I told the conductor where I was going, and bought a ticket for around 100 Rupees, or about 3 dollars—not bad for a four hour journey of a couple hundred kilometers.

Throughout the trip, different people got on and off the bus, and on and off the seat next to mine. For a while, a rather fat woman with flesh rolling out of her sari parked herself against my shoulder, her young son playing on the bus floor. Later, when she left, a man of about 25 took the seat next to mine. His hair was slicked back, and he wore scratched sunglasses, blue jeans, and a faded, stained collared shirt. He took out his cell phone and immediately began cycling through every ringtone stored in the phone from start to finish, as if the syncopated beeped muzak were anything resembling music. His phone was the same model I use now, a Nokia of the kind that was common in America about six or seven years ago. It sells for about forty dollars new, or twenty used.

After getting tired of the ringtones, he turned to me. “Iscon Mall,” he said, bringing up one of the huge malls that have sprung up out of the dust in Ahmedabad over the past three years. “Best mall.” He stressed the word “best” as if to imply that he had been to all kinds of malls, and Iscon had topped them all.

“I’ve never been there,” I said.

“Oh yes, yes,” he answered, feigning understanding. “Shopping is best.”

I had no ipod with me, and no cellphone or camera visible, but the man had seen my white skin and associated me with a kind of lifestyle that he did not have, but clearly was trying to emulate. The mega-mall and chain-store era has begun here, and people want to prove their success by establishing a connection with both.

I continued one of my favorite bus-ride pastimes—people watching—when the man got off. Many of the women on the bus wore so much gold on their ears that the top of the ear literally sagged from the weight. Each ear had at least five or six rings and ornaments in it. Maybe the permanent ear-sag is a mark of prosperity, showing everyone that you possess enough gold to accomplish the sag. Like almost all of the other women on the bus, they wore bright, sparkling saris with part of the cloth pulled just over part of the head. They could adjust the amount that they pulled the cloth over their head, so that the extremely thin cloth could function as a veil, a way to block the sun, to wipe away sweat, or any one of a number of other uses.

Though the rule has exceptions, unmarried girls and women more often wear the salwar kameez, a knee-length cut dress with matching slacks and long, flowing scarf. Schoolgirls like the ones who got on the bus on their way home from school typically wear a salwar kameez, adding the scarf once they reach about 12 years old. Girls and women constantly adjust the scarf to a position that seems appropriate; often, it is used to preserve modesty, and is pulled down over the chest.

Most middle-aged or old men on the bus wore all white, usually a long cotton kurta with white cotton pants. Many were proudly mustachioed; mustaches are a symbol of strength and manhood in India, and nearly all police officers have huge, curled and oiled mustaches. Some wore turbans, the style of which depends on the caste to which they belong. If the turban is brightly colored and the man is wearing big gold earrings, he is probably a Bharvad, or shepherd. In that case, he is probably also wearing a bright blue or green skirt-like lower body wrap, has a big mustache, and holds his head high. If the man has a white turban, no gold earnings, but the same kind of bright lower-body wrap, he is likely a Rabari, another caste.

Another time, I was on my way back from the visiting my friend Prakash’s village. Prakash is one of the tailoring instructors here, and he was with me at the time. We didn’t get to Sanand, the nearby town eight kilometers from the vocational training center, until just about midnight. After about seven or eight o’clock, the only way to get to Nani Devti, the village next to the center, is by hitching a ride in a truck. I’ve done this a bunch of times, but never as late as midnight.

As trucks pulled by, we flagged them and shouted, “Devti? Nani Devti?” But none slowed down to listen. Two trucks pulled over and stopped, but that was because the drivers were resting for the night. Apparently, drivers are worried about picking people up after a certain time. The hitchhikers always give the driver 5 or 10 Rupees for the ride, but at night it may not be enough.

Finally, after one o’clock, we got a ride in the front cab of a truck with one more hitchhiker. When we were about one or two kilometers outside of Nani Devti, we took a right onto a sandy path, and the driver turned off the engine. Construction was being done, and his dump truck had to change places with a full dump truck. We would get into the full dump truck, which would take us the additional kilometer.

We watched as a big caterpillar construction shoveling machine (I know there’s a better name for it, but I don’t know it) finished filling up the dump truck that we needed. Once full, however, it wasn’t able to drive up the sandy hill to the level path. The construction machine took out some of the sand from the truck, but that still didn’t help. So the machine got behind the dump truck, and used its shovel to push the back of the dump truck all the way up the hill. It seemed like a very India Moment.

Our new truck stopped and picked us up. “Who are these guys?” the new driver asked the old one.

“These guys are going to Nani Devti,” our original driver answered, “and the other one’s going to Bavla.”

“Fine, but who are they? Are they all right?” The new driver seemed worried that we might injure or rob him, but our original driver reassured him that we were safe, and we finally got back to the center a little before two in the morning.

Usually when I want to get to Sanand, I take one of the shared rickshaw-taxis. The twenty-minute ride costs 5 Rupees, and is really the only way of getting into town. If I’m lucky I get a middle seat. Sometimes I have to squish myself onto three inches of seat, next to the driver and three or four other men in the front, holding onto part of the rickshaw frame to make sure I don’t fall out. If it’s really crowded, I have to stand on the back rack, holding on to a different part of the frame. That’s the only way that seems really dangerous, and I try to avoid it when I can.

The trip to Sanand goes by two or three other villages, and the scenes are very much typical of rural India: women and girls carrying head-loads of water, bundles of sticks (for use as fuel), or weeds and plants (for fodder for cows and buffalos), young men tending to a herd of water buffalos and cows, a few wandering goats, and, if it is harvest time, women in the fields cutting the rice or wheat with a sickle.

Most of the houses that we pass by are small, one-story, made of brick with either a clay-tile roof, corrugated tin roof, or plastic tarp roof. As the rickshaw moves closer to Sanand, though, the Darbar houses appear on the left. Darbars are a dominant land-owning caste. Hundreds of years ago, they were local lords and nobles. They are mostly still very wealthy because of their land inheritance, and their huge, two or three-story houses testify to that fact.

I’m about typed out for now, but I hope you can get a kind of idea of what traveling has been like for me here.