Monsoon Season

I am walking down the streets of Nizamuddin, a neighborhood in Southern Delhi, in a navy blue rain jacket. I am praising myself for having had the foresight to buy said rain jacket. I am slopping along through the puddles of filthy rainwater, and piles of mud and shit – some of it animal, some not – to find a ride home in shorts and thong sandals. The sensation is an unpleasant one.

There is a brief pause between the monsoon storms as I hail autorickshaws from the side of the rode. They pull over cheerfully enough, all bright yellows and earthy greens. With their small size and arched roofs, I think of them as Volkswagons without doors. I have less favorable thoughts about their drivers.

One of them pokes his head out at me inquiringly. “Neeti Bagh,” I say. “Challengue?” Will you go?

Many have refused me outright already. It is too far, or too far from good business, or they don’t feel like heading in that direction this morning. Their reasons are endless, each of them mystifying to me. A New York cab has never turned me down.

Some try to cheat me by fifteen or twenty rupees. Some days I wouldn’t care, but today, with hours to spare and feeling defiant of the rain, rather than browbeaten by it, I am determined.

Many try to charge me horribly overinflated prices, three times what a local would pay, and what I have paid in the past. I wait to see which fate awaits me now.

“Neeti Bagh,” the driver repeats, stroking his chin thoughtfully for a moment. “One hundred thirty rupees.”

A hundred and thirty rupees. Fucking autowallahs, I think. What I say is a measuredly more polite take on, I’m not a tourist, stop fucking with me. The Hindi sounds awkward in my mouth, softer on my tongue than I mean it to be, not yet familiar, I am not yet intuitive with my conjugations and intonations and a dozen other things. He gets the message anyway, and drives off with an angry shout.

I have been doing this for twenty minutes.

It will take another ten before a man I had haggled with and refused previously catches me walking by again, nodding finally and holding up four fingers. Forty rupees – the meter price.

I breathe a sigh, air mixed with frustration and relief. “Hanji,” I say, and hop into the back.

It is five kilometers to August Kranti Marg, the highway off of which I live. But on these days after classes when I am on my own, and tired, and wet, and determined – on these days, the road home always seems longer.