Kolkata

What is happiness? This is relative, and one could argue endlessly about it. At the moment, however, there is one thing that is definitely a component for me: finding a taxi driver in Calcutta who doesn’t want to rip you off. That would be so good for my peace of mind.

The great advantage of Kolkata (as the Indians themselves call the city) is its people with their incredible friendliness. There is just one exception. But a very big and very significant one: the taxi drivers. For they can really infuriate even the most peace-loving individuals.

Not because of the tremendous rattling and shaking of the old Ambassadors as they race from pothole to pothole, nor because of the risk of an accident from one second to the next. One could even accept that when stopping at the traffic lights, they buy a bag of some indefinable powder from a street vendor, tip their heads right back and pour it into their mouth, chew on it for a few minutes, only to then spit it out of the open window while driving at full speed. That’s the way things are here. By the way, according to Debashish Mukherjee, my colleague from the graphics department, this stuff is probably chew tobacco.

The outrageous thing is that these fellows in their hazardous old rattletraps take it as an absolute given that people with a white skin (who, of course, can thus be easily identified as foreigners) are here – first and foremost – to be ripped off by them. At the Hugli they demand astronomical fares. And their ingenuity knows no bounds.

“Only travel by taxi-metre!” my colleagues advised me. And, after a few unspeakable experiences, this is what I do. At first the cab drivers make a fuss, but when you put your hand on the door handle to leave the vehicle, then they do press the metre switch.

An asking price of 250 rupees, five times the actual fare, is the rule rather than the exception. Those who only double the price can almost be regarded as the decent ones. If it so happens that Aditi Guha, who will come to Nürtingen in spring as part of this exchange, or our editor Bob Roy calls me while I am arguing with the taxi driver, then I simply hand my phone over to the man at the wheel. For I’m not in any way as fit as Dr. Martin Kämpchen, the literature scholar and Rabindranath-Tagore expert, who lives most of the year in Shantiniketa (home of the Nobel Prize winner) and speaks perfect Bengali. After the first few words in their mother tongue the Ambassador drivers no longer dare to be quite so extortionate.

Yet in spite of Aditi’s and Bob’s unequivocal words, one must, of course, always beware of new tricks. Recently, for example, I wanted to go to the temple of the goddess Kali in Dakshineswar in the north of Calcutta. It all started as usual with the argument about the 250 rupees. After a tongue-lashing by Aditi my adversary in the front seat on the right sullenly switched on the metre. At the bus station a friendly gentleman had told me that it was not far.

But the man at the wheel swerves busily to and fro, sometimes through narrow alleys, sometimes along six-lane highways. And at the city gate of Dakshineswar he does not simply let me get out and tell me that I could walk the rest of the way; instead he plunges with absolute relish into the thronging crowds in the narrow little street. From there he heads towards a car park, and since this is a dead end he has to grudgingly declare that the trip has come to an end. We have been travelling for three quarters of an hour, but, nevertheless, he has still not made it to 250 rupees.

The cleaning rag just happens to fall on the taxi- metre

According to my mental calculation (one has to double the sum on the metre and add two rupees) the fare comes to 130 rupees, but he wants 160 because he claims that he will have to drive back with an empty car. Which is sheer bamboozlement, and anyway he is bound to find someone among the thousands of pilgrims on this Sunday who wants to go into the city. Now my patience is at an end. I insist on the correct price and hand him a 500-rupee note. His comment: “I haven’t any change.” But when I open the door and say that I’ll buy something from one of the many souvenir shops and then pay him his fare, he finally pulls the requisite notes out of his pocket. I feel that I am the moral victor in this war of nerves, even though he has, of course, still conned me although I only pay 130. “He’s bound to drive Jürgen all around town,” said Aditi’s husband Samarjit to her as she put down the phone. “Normally that costs 50 at the most.”

But you can always go one better. A couple of days ago I was at the puppet theatre in the Goethe-Institut. Afterwards I had been invited to a party hosted by the marketing department of the Times of India in “Shisha” – actually just a stone’s throw away. The cab driver wants 80. I say “Taxi-metre!” The device is switched on with the worst possible grace. Then the windowpanes have to be cleaned from the inside. The cleaning rag just happens to fall on the taxi metre. Three minutes later we have reached our destination – since I had made it clear to him that I knew exactly how to get there.

The driver says “70!”. But as the back door was stuck, I am sitting beside him, and I lift the rag off the little black box. In red figures it says “10,00”. Now I am furious and pay no more than the correct 22. I get out of the Ambassador to the accompaniment of a tirade in Bengali. This may seem petty. But sometimes you’ve really had enough. A running battle, live. What was it my German teacher once said to me - “I’m not as stupid as you think I am!”

There are moments - as in the cab rides in Calcutta – when I feel quite close to the good Florian Vogt.