Taxi drivers from around the world

In response to one of my recent posts about Swedes, Nikhil Sukhlecha (Fall 2009) wrote: "Reading the article i realised that every country has its own ettiquetes which have positives as well as negatives but a country develops its image by capitalizing on its positive side and negating the negative side to least." (sic) I liked this insightful comment and it led to this post on taxi drivers.

When you get into a cab in the US or in most European countries, you are likely to have a driver who has immigrated from another nation. This leads to a lot of interesting hours, interesting discussions, and interesting insights. Let me start with a few anecdotes from this visit and then go back to some previous interesting cab rides.


When I landed in Stockholm this week, the driver's name tag read "Nasser" and he looked Egyptian but I did not talk to him as I was very tired. Still, I thought of the famous people with that name.

The next day, I had a taxi driver whose name was "Halwaaei Esmail Esse". I asked him where he was from and he said Iran. I said I had guessed he was not Arabic because Arabs tend to write "Ismail". He said, yes, "Arabs write it with an 'I' as they pronounce it 'ISHHmaayil'." Thus we got talking about how close the Iranian language is to Hindi because of the connection via Urdu, and how even the beautiful Taj Mahal has Persian influence. Then I asked him what "Halwaaei" meant. He said, "Halwaa is a sweet thing that we eat". I laughed and said, "We have halwaa too - I grew up having halwaa on every Sunday morning! And for us a halwaaei is a sweetmaker." This was news to him and we talked some more. We talked about the meaningless Iraq-Iran war in which a million people (yes, million) people were killed and about the US-Iraq wars and about the theological hardliners in Iran. "I think man should stop making weapons", he said, and he must have suffered more than many of us on account of these tools of death. I said, "I also think one must often meet people from other countries. Then one realizes we are all the same!"

In Frankfurt, I once sat in a cab driven by an Afghan immigrant. I came to know this young Afghan through a German friend who had grown up as a child in Afghanistan. The Afghan's name was Enayat, meaning mercy in his language. Enayat is also an Urdu word, of course! He talked about the two main languages of Afghanistan - Dari and Pashto. Dari is like Persian, but even Pashto has a lot of commonality with Hindi (with words like khwaish, kitaab, kitaabkhaanaa, khoshqhalaa (happy), kaafi, imteqhaan, intezaar etc.) He also added that Enayat was in fact also a part of a common Arabic name, "Enayatollah" - the mercy of God!!

Whether we like it or not, the world is a small place and changes seamlessly, from Iran to Afghanistan, to Pakistan, to India, to Sri Lanka and beyond, to Thailand and Indonesia and on and on!

Last evening I was driven to the Stockholm Arlanda airport by a driver with the last name "Bemmet". He was from Eritrea. He talked of the decades-old struggle for independence from Ethiopia which culminated in independence in the 90s, the beauty and safety of the Italian-built capital Asmara, and of how the Eritrean military dictatorship enjoys the support of its people at least for now. (We also talked about how power corrupts, and how absolute power corrupts absolutely!) He said that there are many Indians in his country involved in teaching and helping build the country. This is our silent diplomatic corps! I once had a Nigerian taxi driver who said the same thing about Indian teachers and educators in Nigeria.

Some months ago, I had a Kurdish Iranian driver in the German city of Freiburg. I told him about how I had been growing up in Iraqi Kurdistan in the early 80s, when Saddam still ruled Iraq and the Kurds were in open rebellion. We talked of Iraqi Kurdistan now being connected by flights to Frankfurt and how it was booming. It was like meeting someone from my own village!

I often get to sit in cabs driven by Pakistanis. We talk of how my mother was born in Lahore (sometimes they tell of how their parents were born in what is now India) and of how we are almost one people. The Pakistanis are usually very complimentary on how India has pulled itself up in the last decade or so, mainly on the strength of IT and BPO. But once in a while I meet a Pakistani - very infrequently - who doesn't really want to talk. Most are very friendly and very welcoming.

Once I sat in a New York City cab driven by a Sardarji who had left India after the 1984 Sikh riots. I could feel his pain and his bitterness, even a decade later. My mind went back in time to how there used to be a taxi stand run by some Sikhs just outside the South Delhi colony where we lived, which I would pass every evening on the way to the Mother Dairy milk booth. When sometimes I was late making my trip, I remember how I would feel secure once more when I would reach the taxi stand and see those strong cheerful Sikhs. Later in those dark days in 1984, when I saw from our windows thin columns of smoke rising from the horizon, I did not know that some of the fires below contained the bodies of those friendly Sikhs. I could not talk normally to my Sikh friends for some years afterwards.

It's not always that one finds commonality with the taxi driver. I was being driven by an Indian in New York City right after the World Trade Center bombings. No matter how much one may hate historical US foreign policy, the sheer human tragedy of those bombings hung over every street like a cloud of gloom and unspeakable despair. Mumbai must have felt like that after the terror attacks last year. But the taxi driver had other thoughts and said of his host country, "Serves them right, they had it coming!" I felt like asking him to go back to India if he felt so strongly about this... and to stop the cab and let me get off.

I can go on and on. It's a revelation to meet these people around the world, still in tenuous touch with their home countries, still drawn to the lands of their birth but unable to do more than visit once in a few years. Most are very nice and friendly to an Indian.

I try my best to make a connection and spread some goodwill because in this dangerous tinderbox world, we all need all the goodwill we can get.