Abject poverty, sheer highway terror, and camels.
I’ve been outside of the airport for an hour now, and it’s
been amazingly interesting already. To begin, I found the
cab arranged for me from the airport. It’s some little 4-door
hatchback Tata, proudly proclaiming it’s V-2 engine on the side
fender. This is where I learned How Indians Drive. Did you know that
two of these size cars will fit side-by-side in the same lane? Or
that you can more or less get two auto-rickshaws and my cab
in the same lane? Or that you only need approximately one meter of
clearance between two trucks carrying OMG HUGE SLABS OF STONE to cut
between them at 100 kph? Upon learning this, I tried finding my
seatbelt. While the belt is there, it was lacking a buckle. Figures.
Anyway, once we got up to speed, traffic is a bit more calm and
orderly; you’re only sharing a lane with one other car at a time.
This gave me the chance to look around. As we were leaving the
airport, everything was under construction. Not in the Chicago
“everything’s under construction Just Because”, but
because everything is being created where there once was
nothing. Vast expanses of red clay, palm trees, and half-built
things with their attendant cranes and other construction gear. As we
got into the city, things stopped being built, and more like some
force had given up on tearing it down. I honestly don’t know how to
describe it, and something tells me I haven’t seen the worst by a long
shot.
It’s now 10:55 am, March 26th, 2009 (Indian Standard Time), and I
just took my shoes off. The last time I took them off, it was around
3pm on the 23rd at O’Hare Airport. I was tempted on trying an
international call to my parents, but I just checked my world clock,
and it’s past midnight where they are. Weird. It
doesn’t feel like I’ve just come completely around to the far
side of the world. I’d try getting online about now, but the power
died to the building just as I was about to connect. Welcome to the
3rd World!
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