I
The taxi driver wore a hairnet and had a pointed beard and a short ponytail tied with a white ribbon. I thought he might be a Sikh, since my guidebook described them as looking
exactly like that. My guidebook was called
India, a Travel Survival Kit
; I’d bought it in London, more out of curiosity than anything else, since the information it offered about
India was fairly bizarre and at first glance superfluous. Only later was I to realise how useful it could be.
The Sikh was driving too fast for my liking and hitting his horn ferociously. I had the impression he was deliberately going as close to the pedestrians as he could, and with an indefinable
smile on his face that I didn’t like. On his right hand he wore a black glove, and I didn’t like that either. When he turned into Marine Drive he seemed to calm down and quietly took
his place in one of the lines of traffic on the side nearest the sea. With his gloved hand he pointed to the palm trees along the seafront and the curve of the bay. ‘That’s
Trobay,’ he said, ‘and opposite us is Elephant Island, only you can’t see it. I’m sure you’ll be wanting to go there, the ferries leave every hour from the Gateway of
India.’
I asked him why he was going down Marine Drive. I didn’t know Bombay, but I was trying to follow our route on a map on my knees. My reference points were Malabar Hill and the Chor, the
Thieves’ Market. My hotel was somewhere between those two points, and there was no need to go along Marine Drive to get to it. We were driving in the opposite direction.
‘The hotel you mentioned is in a very poor district,’ he said affably, ‘and the goods are very poor quality. Tourists on their first trip to Bombay often end up in the wrong
sort of place. I’m taking you to a hotel suitable for a gentleman like yourself.’ He spat out of the window and winked. ‘Where the goods are top quality.’ He gave me a
sleazy smile of great complicity, and this I liked even less.
‘Stop here,’ I said, ‘at once.’
He turned round and looked at me with a servile expression. ‘But I can’t stop here,’ he said, ‘there’s the traffic.’
‘Then I’ll get out anyway,’ I said, opening the door and holding it tight.
He braked sharply and began a litany in a language that must have been Marathi. He looked furious and I don’t suppose the words he was hissing through his teeth were particularly polite,
but I didn’t take any notice. I had only the one small suitcase which I had kept beside me, so there wasn’t even any need for him to get out and get me my luggage. I left him a
hundred-rupee note and climbed out onto the vast pavement of Marine Drive. On the beach there was a religious festival, or fair, one or the other, with a big crowd milling in front of something I
couldn’t make out. Along the seafront there were bums stretched out on the parapet, children selling knick-knacks, beggars. There was also a line of motorised rickshaws; I jumped into a sort
of yellow cubicle hitched up to a moped and shouted the name of the street my hotel was on to the small driver. He stamped on the starter pedal and set off at full speed, slipping into the
traffic.
Cage District was much worse than I had imagined. I’d seen it in the photographs of a famous photographer and thought I was prepared for human misery, but photographs enclose the visible
in a rectangle. The visible without a frame is always something else. And then here the visible had too strong a smell. Or rather smells, a lot of smells.
It was dusk when we entered the district, and in the time it took to go down a street, quite suddenly, as happens in the tropics, night fell. Many of the buildings in Cage District are made of
wood and matting. Prostitutes wait in shacks made of ill-fitting boards, their heads sticking out of holes. Some of those shacks were not much larger than sentry-boxes. And then there were hovels
and tents of rags, little shops perhaps or
The taxi driver wore a hairnet and had a pointed beard and a short ponytail tied with a white ribbon. I thought he might be a Sikh, since my guidebook described them as looking
exactly like that. My guidebook was called
India, a Travel Survival Kit
; I’d bought it in London, more out of curiosity than anything else, since the information it offered about
India was fairly bizarre and at first glance superfluous. Only later was I to realise how useful it could be.
The Sikh was driving too fast for my liking and hitting his horn ferociously. I had the impression he was deliberately going as close to the pedestrians as he could, and with an indefinable
smile on his face that I didn’t like. On his right hand he wore a black glove, and I didn’t like that either. When he turned into Marine Drive he seemed to calm down and quietly took
his place in one of the lines of traffic on the side nearest the sea. With his gloved hand he pointed to the palm trees along the seafront and the curve of the bay. ‘That’s
Trobay,’ he said, ‘and opposite us is Elephant Island, only you can’t see it. I’m sure you’ll be wanting to go there, the ferries leave every hour from the Gateway of
India.’
I asked him why he was going down Marine Drive. I didn’t know Bombay, but I was trying to follow our route on a map on my knees. My reference points were Malabar Hill and the Chor, the
Thieves’ Market. My hotel was somewhere between those two points, and there was no need to go along Marine Drive to get to it. We were driving in the opposite direction.
‘The hotel you mentioned is in a very poor district,’ he said affably, ‘and the goods are very poor quality. Tourists on their first trip to Bombay often end up in the wrong
sort of place. I’m taking you to a hotel suitable for a gentleman like yourself.’ He spat out of the window and winked. ‘Where the goods are top quality.’ He gave me a
sleazy smile of great complicity, and this I liked even less.
‘Stop here,’ I said, ‘at once.’
He turned round and looked at me with a servile expression. ‘But I can’t stop here,’ he said, ‘there’s the traffic.’
‘Then I’ll get out anyway,’ I said, opening the door and holding it tight.
He braked sharply and began a litany in a language that must have been Marathi. He looked furious and I don’t suppose the words he was hissing through his teeth were particularly polite,
but I didn’t take any notice. I had only the one small suitcase which I had kept beside me, so there wasn’t even any need for him to get out and get me my luggage. I left him a
hundred-rupee note and climbed out onto the vast pavement of Marine Drive. On the beach there was a religious festival, or fair, one or the other, with a big crowd milling in front of something I
couldn’t make out. Along the seafront there were bums stretched out on the parapet, children selling knick-knacks, beggars. There was also a line of motorised rickshaws; I jumped into a sort
of yellow cubicle hitched up to a moped and shouted the name of the street my hotel was on to the small driver. He stamped on the starter pedal and set off at full speed, slipping into the
traffic.
Cage District was much worse than I had imagined. I’d seen it in the photographs of a famous photographer and thought I was prepared for human misery, but photographs enclose the visible
in a rectangle. The visible without a frame is always something else. And then here the visible had too strong a smell. Or rather smells, a lot of smells.
It was dusk when we entered the district, and in the time it took to go down a street, quite suddenly, as happens in the tropics, night fell. Many of the buildings in Cage District are made of
wood and matting. Prostitutes wait in shacks made of ill-fitting boards, their heads sticking out of holes. Some of those shacks were not much larger than sentry-boxes. And then there were hovels
and tents of rags, little shops perhaps or
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