In California, there were no lorries painted primary colours of blue, red and yellow, no automobiles that recklessly weaved around each other, no trails of smoke and dust that illustrated in which direction each car was headed, as if writing the story of their vehicular lives. It was so different to where we lived in Pasadena, California, where the roads were wide and evenly paved and the white and yellow lines clearly demarcated where cars belonged, the sleek sedans and beat-up Camaros. I watched people on autorickshaws, men on scooters, the way all the cars and trucks kicked up dirt and formed a never-ending cloud of dust. I imagined men taking my mother somewhere into the jungle and irrevocably harming her. I somehow knew the definition of rape, how it was a violation of skin. I wondered if they were filled with men who might mutilate us with their long knives. My skin melted into the tattered vinyl of the seat my sweat mixed with the heavy air.Įvery hour or so, I would carefully raise my face to the windows and look at all the lorries that drove past us. Instead, I watched the scenery of India pass us by as we drove from north to south. I curled my body onto the back seat, but I did not sleep at any point during the 24-hour car ride. A long, clean machete sat next to him as he drove. She found a taxi wallah, a kind old man dressed in a tattered lungi who warned us of bandits who kidnapped women during the night and stole from tourists. She wanted to make sure he was someone she could trust, someone who would not rape or rob us.
She dragged me along as she approached taxi after taxi outside the airport and peered into each car to assess the driver.
A private car must have been too expensive.
Possessed with a mad sense of urgency, my mother’s next plan was to find a taxi. Madurai was the nearest airport to Kodaikanal, only 120km (75 miles) from where Sathya Sai Baba resided. We were visiting India from the United States and had been in Mumbai for two weeks. She ran through the Mumbai airport and checked each airline.
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