I’ve heard people say that it doesn’t matter where all you may have travelled around the world—go to India and you will have culture shock. Last year (Nov-Jan of 2009) I had the chance to go to India with a missions team. For the majority of the time, we were in Darjeeling, a city located in the foothills of the Himalayas in the very northeast tip of India. Darjeeling itself is a very interesting city, with such a unique blending of ethnicities, cultures, and religions. (And it grows some of the world’s BEST tea) I would love to talk more about Darjeeling, but I specifically want to talk about part of our trip to Darjeeling. We flew into Kolkata and stayed a night before taking a train that took us to another city from which we took jeeps up into Darjeeling. But Kolkata was the kind of city that I envisioned when I thought of India. (Unlike Darjeeling, which is much more like Nepal than most other parts of India) We got into downtown Kolkata by taxi at about 2 in the morning, which is sketchy enough in and of itself. But as we walked around the dark seemingly abandoned streets to find our hotel, we began to notice a handful of people wrapped up in sheets sleeping out on the streets, huddled up against the sides of buildings. After just a little while it was like our eyes were opened and we realized that it was not just a handful of people sleeping out on the streets, but dozens and dozens all over the place, in front of nearly every building around us. It felt a bit eerie to be honest. (One reason it felt so eerie is because we weren’t sure if some of the people we passed were sleeping or dead. Before we left for India, some friends who had travelled to India many times warned us ahead of time that often at night, people in the poorer areas will put out the bodies of those in their family who have passed away, to be collected in the morning, because they are too poor to afford to do anything else with the bodies)
The next morning we got up and out and about to head to the train station. The same quiet streets were now jam packed with noisy traffic, crowds of people flooding the sidewalks, and local vendors who’d set up little shops and market places beside the streets. We took taxis to the train station, and I literally wondered if we were going to die on the way. I went to high school in Taiwan, and Taiwan is notoriously bad for having horrible taxi drivers—driving in the opposite lanes, no concern for speed limits, nearly hitting bicyclists and motorbikes every few minutes, etc. But this taxi ride was far, far worse than any that I’d taken before. Many parts of the road were totally unmarked, so in a stretch of payment that should have been perhaps three maybe four lines, you would have six lanes of traffic all trying to merge in together. In certain areas there was no sense of being behind another car in your lane; it was more like a mob of cars all jammed packed together trying to fight each other for positions. I remember our driver speeding out in front of an oncoming truck to get around a driver in front of us, and swerving back into our “lane” at the last second. At one intersection, a taxi in front of us, with the other members of the group, pulled out directly in front on a huge bus that had to slam on its breaks, stopping just a few feet away. Our driver then proceeded to take advantage of the opportunity and gun it while the bus was still stopped. Every few minutes, the drivers would have to swerve or hit the breaks to avoid the cows that wandered freely in the roads. It was pretty intense.
It was crazy to me, but the funny thing is that it wasn’t crazy to them; it was normal. Everyone knew that there were little or no markings on the road. That was not an issue like it would be in America, or many other countries of the world. Every driver drove offensively rather than defensively, with a common mentality of looking forward and, as long as every driver understands this shared mentality, there is a system of driving that works. My initial reaction was culture shock—I was in a situation that did not make sense to my system of what traffic rules and driving should look like. But now, thinking back on that experience, it’s easier to understand that although I felt endangered, being out of my system, the taxi drivers, as well as the other drivers, were quite at home in their way of driving which is mutually understood.
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