The worst season to travel by taxis in Mumbai is upon us.
Actually it's a tossup between sizzling summer and wetwetwet monsoons. As someone who has endured both in equal measure, I am hard put to decide which is worse.
Let us see how bad summer gets. With a few days left for the rains to come down, the civic administration's contractors are on overdrive, reportedly trying to make the city's roads safe from the rains. But everyone, including the contractors, know this is only a sham, and is an annual exercise meant to hoodwink the public while their bank accounts are being lined with gold. Our gold.
Anyways, with so much of road work going on, you can bet the sky is full of dust particles. There are patches of road where it is a virtual dust-storm, believe me, as vehicles plunge through half-done roads. The only way you can escape this is by rolling up your windows, but then this makes the taxi a hot oven on wheels. After some time you realise there is no escaping the heat, so resign yourself to your fate and lower the window and let the dust come in too.
The net result is that by the time your destination comes, your hair is tousled, clothes are drenched in sweat, and the nice aura of perfume you left home with is no longer in place. Instead, you look unkempt and unwashed, as though you have just stepped off a tour of duty in Iraq.
Given this, the monsoons, when temperatures come down, must be a blessing, right? Wrong. For the rains are when the vehicles come to a halt even in a couple of inches of water. The drivers tell me the CNG vehicles are particularly vulnerable during rains, though I have yet to come across a scientific reason why it should be so.
But taxis breaking down is just one problem during the monsoons. The other is that since the windows are mostly left open, the rain water comes in, making the seats soggy as hell. When you lower your backside on the seat you feel like you are perching on a waterbed, with a squelch. And slowly you can feel the wetness climb into your trousers, up the back of your shirt, etc. So when you get off, your backside looks like you have been in the rain, while the front looks dry and normal.
But the biggest problem, for me, during rains is the poor condition of the wipers in taxis. Have you noticed that most of them don't have one? For they have been removed and kept in the glove compartment by the drivers, since they are the first target of urchins. So when there is an unexpected shower, most drivers are caught without wipers. A few in my ken have pulled it out of the glove compartment and tried to fix it on the windshield, while the taxi is in motion! Most drivers, however, have given up, and pull out a phatka (rag) with which they wipe the outside of the windshield with their right hand, managing the steering with the left, with visibility being low to poor.
And poor me, lolling in the backseat, with my backside wet as an ice-cream in summer, watches in silent horror, wondering when the driver, through his ministrations, hurtles into the vehicle ahead while trying to fix his wiper.
Maybe this monsoon?
