Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
propelled me at warp 10 away from a startlingly modern new
terminal building had never heard of this strike.
'No, sir,' he kept reassuring me. 'Not striking, me. I working.'
'Not now - tomorrow.' I waved the newspaper at him.
'You want cab tomorrow? I come, yes? Vitch hotel?'
The Bustees, the slums, were still there, just beyond the airport,
but some had sprouted into concrete huts, or even low-rises. Now
you could sell a shack in the slums for three times what it cost to
erect a concrete home yourself, as long as the government supplied
the land. The way the driver told it, the government didn't have
much choice in the matter. Buildings went up overnight on empty
lots, and it wouldn't be a popular move to bulldoze homes in a city
where lack of housing was the main problem. I saw neatly dressed
men carrying attaché cases coming out of the most squalid slums
on their way to line up at bus stops.
'Office worker this mens,' the driver explained. 'Live here and
save monies.'
It was like an American post-office clerk economising by raising
his family in a packing case near some back-alley heating duct.
Even the potholed road I'd first encountered in 1974 was now a
new two-lane highway. Things were improving - slightly. The
initial effect of Bombay on a visitor was downright prosperous
compared to what it once had been, the highway teeming with
Marutis - the results of an Indo-Japanese co-venture - among the
Ambassadors and Premier Padminis.
'No one like it,' the driver said dismissively of the Maruti. 'Made
with paper, not the metal.'
The real reason drivers loathed the Maruti, I later learned, was
that no one could repair it. The engine had to be dismantled before
you could get at its heart. Anyone with a rock and a wrench could
repair an Ambassador; and anyone anywhere could make you a
spare part for one out of old motorbike engines and discarded pieces
of steam train. Maruti parts had to be ordered from Maruti - a
company that was, incidentally, the brainchild of Indira Gandhi's son,
Sanjay. Its history probably does rank among the worst instances of
Indian corruption.
FUTURE IS BLACK WHEN SUGAR IS BROWN read a sign
