The cabbies of New York.

This Labor Day weekend we all went to New York. Taking gasoline prices ($3.5 a gallon), toll, and parking into account, we decided to take the Greyhound into the city. Also with Anyesha's parents in tow, we didn't want to exert ourselves too much walking around. . .so we took a bunch of cabs. Anyesha's blog says that I won't write about my cabbie conversations. So I am proving her wrong.

The first cabbie was from Bangladesh. He transported us from Port Authority Greyhound Terminal to Pravin's house. He told me how he knew lots of people from Calcutta. And how he used to work for an IT company in New Jersey, and is currently employed with a smaller IT firm. How the cab actually earns him more dollars per hour worked, than his real job. How once you have the cab driving license, you can rent cabs to drive around. . .for all the non-taxable income.

The second cabbie was a Greek dude who didn't talk much. He took us from Pravin's house to Madame Toussauds later on, Saturday evening. He was angry at the authorities, making all cabbies record where they picked up passengers, and where they dropped them off on a table. Once, while he was busy writing all this stuff to please the beaurucrats, his passenger stepped off of the cab and got hit by a speeding bicyclist. The lady was fine, but his cab door had to be fixed, at his own expense. He was waiting for the day when GPS installed in cabs will automatically record his movements, so that he doesn't have to waste time on paperwork.

After clicking a bunch of photos at Toussauds and walking through Times Square to the Rockefeller Center, we took a cab with this guy from Nigeria. He guessed I was new to the cab hailing business, from the unsure way in which I apparently hailed the cab. He wondered aloud whether some of my uneasiness was because he was black. He told me about the greater physical strength that black people possess, and that in groups they can easily overpower those who aren't. "Look what is happening in Iraq", he said. I pointed out that some of the reason why the US was "winning" the war is because of superior technology. . . mental prowess rather than physical force. Then he said something about whether I really thought the US was winning, and we fell into a short silence. Before he guessed that I am a PhD student. He said he can tell these things just by looking at me and the way I talk. His day job was with a bioremediation company, and he wanted to know whether I study the immunity of fruit flies so that I can get rid of them. Flies are pests that transfer disease. I said we study flies more because of the similarities between their immune systems and ours. Then we arrived at Pravin's place.

Next Morning, this cabbie from Ghana picked us up. He works for 5-6 months in NYC as a cabbie, saving up money. So that he can go back to Ghana the remaining months to visit his family there. His kids were born in the US, and they are US citizens. But he felt that kids grow up without a sense of cultural identity in this country. . .and he wants to bring his kids back here after they have finished their basic schooling in Ghana. He guessed we were tourists because we asked him to take us Ground Zero. His other story was, that he had taken a flight out of JFK airport on September 11th. . .he was on a KLM flight headed towards Amsterdam when the incident happened. He described the ensuing chaos afterwards at Amsterdam, and how lucky he felt that he wasn't inside America with all the airports shut down, in the aftermath of the tragedy.

We checked out the financial district, Staten Island Ferry, took a subway up to Penn station, ate at Manhattan Mall, and didn't check out the Empire state Building because of a 4 hour queue to get on top. We took a cab back, and the guy didn't say much.

Monday afternoon, we were heading back to Port Authority to catch our bus back to DC. The cabbie was a Lata Mangeshkar fan from Pakistan. We got into a discussion about sound proofing ones basement, and expensive audio recording equipment. He professionally is in the music business. He spoke about how great Lata Mangeshkar, Noosrat Fateh Ali Khan, Asha Bhosle, are. He played a tape of Lata on the cab. He seemed a little disappointed that my band does modern stuff. . .that it doesn't aspire to the greatness of those original masters.