Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [38]
"How much farther?" she asked the driver in Hindi.
Without turning his head, he answered at length in one of the South Indian languages, extending his arm in an all-encompassing sweep. The only words she understood were "soon-soon" and "MG Road." Another MG Road. Peter Champion once said, "Every American town has its Main, Oak, and Elm, just like India has its Gandhi-Nehru-Shastri." But Bangalore retained British place names too, like Kew Gardens and Cubbon Park.
"Hindi?" she asked. "Don't you understand Hindi?" The auto-rickshaw was moving erratically through fast-moving traffic on a wide artery flanked by office buildings, government offices, and shops.
Finally the rickshaw lurched to a stop by a muddy puddle a couple of feet from the curb. All the buildings on that block were office towers, with street-level showrooms and fancy shops. It was barely eight in the morning and the shops were still shuttered. High-rise office buildings in Bangalore indexed their tenants' names on signboards visible from the street. The tall building immediately in front of the rickshaw boasted corporate logos of companies from twenty different countries, marked by their flags.
"This isn't Kew Gardens," Angie snapped. "I'm looking for a house, a private home. Bagehot House."
"MG Road," said the driver, smiling shyly.
He got out of his vehicle and gave the back tires vicious kicks. It was clear that the rickshaw had died. He held out his hand for the fare. "One hundred rupees," he said, this time in Hindi. She stayed put. He checked the rate card against his meter and asked again for one hundred rupees. It wasn't fair that he was demanding to be paid for dumping her who knew how far from Kew Gardens. A hundred rupees would pay for a month's to-ing and fro-ing in Gauripur. But before she could decide whether to complain or haggle, she got out on the street side, and the driver grabbed her suitcase with both hands and dropped it with a thud into the puddle in the gutter.
She flung a ten-rupee note at him. "Go to hell!" she screamed in English, startling herself for saying something she would never have said in the old days. The driver's actual competence in Hindi, expressed in fouler words than any movie villain's, came pouring out, but he was quick to scoop the ten-rupee note out of the puddle and dry it on his shirt.
Angie rolled her suitcase past three buildings, wondering if Kew Gardens was anywhere within walking distance. It was not quite eight-thirty in the morning; the sidewalks were still relatively empty. No one to ask for the right way to Kew Gardens. No one who looked Englishor even Hindi-speaking. She'd seen only one major road in the center of old Bangalore, and she began to imagine the sheer extent of the city in every direction.
From the sidewalk she could make out an outdoor coffee bar with patio umbrellas on an elevated plaza between two skyscrapers. A gaggle of voices floated down to her, tinkly voices of hyperconfident break-fasters, chattering in American English. Finally, a language with familiar cadences! She climbed the stairs to the plaza and found herself in a crowded coffee shop. Not just any coffee shop, not another Alps Palace with mold blooming on water-stained walls: this was a Barista. Most of the small round tables were occupied by large groups of noisy patrons her age, dressed, like her, in jeans and T-shirts.