Indian Samurai इंडियन सामुराई

I may be going havoc these days but I still don’t smoke nor drink and drive – someone must have sung lullabies to me as a baby for these to be so printed in my brain.

Anyways…

The other night my friend tried to convince me to take my car for Friday night (LIT night if you remember) since “it was not too far…”. My friends told me they were impressed with my “self-control” since the other night I stopped after 2 glasses of wine and had food and water before driving back. I think I gave them a shock when I explained that I would be okay going into a wall with my car but would find it difficult to live with the death of someone else on my shoulders…

Accordingly last Friday I took a taxi. Now the guy was a young brat, trying to show off, driving like mad, talking on the phone, singing, all that jazz… One has to wonder what is safer?? Him or drunk me driving?? Mmmmhhh not sure… Like this one time I was going to the airport. The driver managed fine in the traffic but once we arrived on the highway, which was relatively empty, he suddenly broke. He had dozed off. And he kept dozing off like 5 times in the next 10 minutes, like if he had some syndrome. And this is so common…

So talking of women, drinking and driving, there is this article. So for instance in Chandigarh in 2012 they arrested only 1 woman for drinking and driving against 3 000 men. One could see women going out and having fun as a good thing, but obviously not the Hindustan Times. One woman is spotted puking and the world as we know it is coming to an end… Men are in for surprises in this country…

Firstly not so many women are allowed out of the house on their own at night, not many drive, not many drink and anyways, only female constables can check them out and they also don’t come out at night! Still, drinking and driving is not a good idea. Evil tongues might say that it would be even worse with women driving…

To finish I’d like to quote the article : “The police asking drivers to roll down the windows before sticking their neck in to sniff liquor is a common sight, a practice they find difficult to follow when it comes to women drivers.” This is hilarious!!

I’m waiting for the day a cop tries to sniff me!!

The Indians are quite not too adventurous. Especially in India as a matter of fact.

Having my (female) assistant to come to a meeting in the evening was really not easy, the whole office talked to the parents and her brother-in-law came along... What are the parents afraid of I don’t know, but they were damn scared. Obviously, given the act that I am a foreign girl, all alone in India for 6 years, it is difficult for me to fully understand. Though I respect it.

And this kind of attitude is not the exclusivity of the lower middle class people. For example my upper-upper-class girl friends have “crapped me a watermelon” – this is a French expression translated by Bing and I found it too funny so I left it!! It means they made a big fuss – the other day because I wanted to drive home at 2 AM. And according to them it is not safe (for the girl, not for the others, I see you coming! – though in my case I would think I am the danger...).

They have for example asked me to put on a sweater over my dress. And I drove home safely, and without my sweater.

When I told an Indian female friend, who is now roaming around Vietnam that I intended to do a road trip from Delhi to Mumbai, she told me without hesitation "no you can’t do that! I told her to stop being an Indian mum...” That said it's funny, a French girlfriend also told me I was reckless!

A few months after buying a car, you need to get your “high security” plate.

It seemed obvious to the Hyundai staff that they were not the ones giving me the plates and they would not have even told me hadn’t I insisted. They laughed a lot, but finally wrote down the details…

I could tell another adventure was coming up…

I understood why they were laughing when I arrived to the place. I appreciated that they had given me enough details for my GPS to find the place. Because the shop was tiny. But you could guess it was there by seeing at last twenty guys pressed against the railings and holding some papers in the air.

I tried to mingle in the crowd – I am not easily scared! And I was half hoping they would be nice enough to let a foreigner go first. No such thing. We were fighting for our lives there. But I managed to catch the attention of an employee and he let me inside, took my paper, and asked me to wait in my car.

I waited. When they arrived to put the plates, I went out. One old fatty came to me and started speaking to me, too fast and too loud. I finally understood that he wanted me to remove my bag from the passenger seat as the window was open and somebody could easily fetch it!

In any case, five guys started fighting – God knows why – and I went back to the safety of my car…

But my mission was accomplished! Next: the pollution thing and the driving license. Need a few weeks to gather the energy...