Mum’s the Word

8:23. Not bad for an 8:00 am start in India. I gave up on punctuality a long time ago, so I’m not stressed, just looking forward to a day at the hill station of Mussoorie with Evi. It took some effort to arrange the cab, but with the help of the manager at my guest house, I have a decent car for the 90-minute trip.

The driver speaks some English. A short time after we reached the main highway, he pulled over, turned off the engine and announced “Urine out.” Fortuitously, there was a monkey on a rock next to the car so I passed the time snapping pics and tried not to enrage it by smiling.

As we neared Rajpur, the village where I was to meet Evi, he asked for the 5th time the name of the hotel. Because, as is always the case with Indian taxi drivers, he had no idea where he was going. He finally asked me to find it on Google maps, depending on me to give him directions. I’d had enough, so called Evi and had her connect him with someone at the hotel who could speak Hindi. Good thing, we were going in the opposite direction.

Only one thing could have made me long to return to the confines of that taxi, and that was the experience on the bus that followed. Mussoorie is a hill station, and that means one hour straight up on hairpin switchbacks that are scary in a car and terrifying on an overloaded bus driven by a 20-something with delusions of invincibility. As we boarded, I saw that we would have to stand, and it soon became apparent that I would kill the woman seated next to me if I didn’t lower my centre of gravity. So I sat on a sack of something – cabbages maybe – for the remainder of the journey thereby saving two lives. Since I don’t pray, I spent the time silently apologizing to my mom. No mother needs to hear that her child died careening off the side of a mountain in a bus that would never pass inspection if indeed there were inspections.

But we made it! And we took a taxi back because I try never to make the same mistake twice.