Luckily, it appears that the university will pay for us to have a driver.
Great.
A few weeks prior to getting our car, our smiley and adorable security guard, S****l, asked in broken english if he could be our driver. We thought we would give him a chance. So for a week (while we waited and waited for the car purchase to be sorted) he sat outside of our house, with a fresh driver haircut wearing his civilian clothes, waxing poetic to his junior entourage, and otherwise polishing his motorcycle for hours and hours. He would just sit on it in the driveway and fake-drive.
Fake-driving is something I am a bit of an expert in as Zazie has perfected the skill.
Vroom.
A few days after that our maid, G**ta, comes in and asks if her husband, K****n, can be our driver. She says that he is a very good person, not a "drunkard" or a "chainsmoker" and very trustworthy. I tell her that S****l asked first and that we are going to give him a chance.
Finally Vik goes into Delhi to pick up the car and S***l comes too. The car is delivered after much hassle. Vik gives S***l the keys. S***l looks like he is going to throw up. White knuckles grab the keys and cold sweat sits in the drivers seat. He grinds the gearshift around like a mortar in a pestle. He hits a curb and makes a point of never reversing, he leaves the radio on static, and doesn't adjust his seat or any mirrors, just straight ahead across six lanes of Indian traffic to a fuel station. He pulls into the most convenient petrol pump, and the attendants laugh and point him to a diesel pump, not quite as convenient. He pulls the car up about three feet from the diesel pump at an awkward angle facing the pump. Instead of backing out he turns the wheel as sharp as he can as he heads for the pump and then back into traffic. The steady din of horns become more unsteady and confused, and for the first time, Vik sees the other cars not as a chaotic swarm but a complex hive, with every car swerving in coordination with every other, mostly swerving around his own vehicle. Within a kilometer, Vik asks Sunil (or at least thinks of asking), Do you know how to drive?
At that very moment at home, K***l, Usha's driver is telling Usha and I that S***l has never driven before and just that he "fancies" driving, everyone in the village knows. The WHOLE village is worried for our lives.
When they arrive at our door step, I walk out to greet them and Vik looks green. I don't even see the new car. I grab Vik and say, K***l said S***l can't drive. Vik says, I can confirm that.
That night we make sure S***l can still work as a guard and then sack him (via translator). Firing someone via a translator is awesome. I just look sympathetic and sweet and they (poor Usha) take the heat. S***l is dejected. He is probably thinking that he should have let the dragon stay in the boot room.
While not a driver, we conclude that S***l is--like a peanut butter enthusiast or a calculator enthusiast--more like a "driving enthusiast."
Supervisor-ji the head security guard, agrees that S****l is a nice boy, but no he can't drive at all, he's just fond of cars. With that, he offers to find us another driver. We mention that G***ta had volunteered K***n. Supervisor-ji says, no, no, he will find the best driver, a straight-laced, over-30 non-smoker from the village, as good as his own son (who is Usha's driver K***l by the way; nice guy, but prone to smirking. Vik said he seemed a little too amused seeing S***l pull in).
The next day, Driver No. 2, S###r turns up, adorable, smiley library science graduate. He looks nice. He speaks a little English (which is 100% more than S***l) and claims to have been driving for eight years. So we give him a try. He shows up on time, tries to get a little leeway on his hours ("for the gym") and drives forwards and backwards (again, one direction more than S***l). It seems that things are settled. Great.
No.
This morning our maid, G**ta, comes in looking grave, sallow and very sad. She tells me something in complete confidence (you won't tell anyone will you?) that our driver is a "very third class character." She says that his character is no good and that he is a "defaulter." She implies that he is a womanizer. She says her husband knows this about him--that the whole village knows about him--and that because Lacey Madam is such a good person she had to tell me. She apparently stayed up the whole night worrying about us. Her husband said he didn't think we would believe her. She was very grave--like Aunt Sharon telling us about the night the Crazy Purple Lady died one rainy night in the country--big eyes, low voice, long pauses. Then she begs me not to tell anyone in the village. Because this boy will come to her house and try to fight vigilante style. The moment is portentous. I have goosebumps just thinking about this third class character in our Ford Fusion weaving in and out of traffic, eve-teasing and defaulting. Really, chills. Then she throws in that S***l was a ganja chainsmoker and drunkard and it is very good we gave him the boot.
So then I tell Vik about this and he tells me that he has been reading a lot about real vigilante justice and honor killings in the Jat communities of Haryana (which includes our local village). He says, we should take any threat seriously. Then I really get goosebumps.
So what to do? Who to trust? Who to believe What to do? One of the women in our village (um Ashleigh, another colleague-sort here) questions G**ta's impartiality. She thinks that we should ask her again while making clear that we will never hire her husband. She asks whether it could just be a matter of S###r not being part of K***n and G**ta's trusted inner-family.
S###r picked up Vik today and as the Ford Fusion pulled out Vik saw K***l in the rear-view mirror smiling mischievously again. On the drive home, he confirms that S###r can drive, that he is in fact a proud Jat, that he knows K***l well, and that at the casual mention of G**ta and K***n, he jumps in that their names don't ring a bell.
Usha asks her maid, D***a (who has a rivalry with G***a and is somehow related to K***n) about S###r , she says that if there were any rumors going around about him (or anyone in the village) she would be the first to know. Supervisor-ji guarantees he has watched him grow up from childhood, and he is first class (not third class). The guards outside say that they will keep their eye on him and drive us anywhere in an emergency. All we are able to confirm is that everyone in the village has prior dealings with everyone else, and no one is neutral about anyone. And in the never ending soap opera of the village, we're the newest characters.
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