Cabbie Update

Although our hours and hours spent in cabs are due to diminish soon, some cabbie-time is necessary, and we have decided to include the “Cabbie Update” as a regular feature on this blog. Some of these guys are just too hilarious not to share with you. For today’s fare we have:

1. The Bigamist--Mr. Bigamist showed up for a solo trip I made to yet another mall in search of house-wares. At first he seemed normal. A Pakistani police officer from Lahore, here in Dobby because being a police officer in Pakistan right now is basically a recipe for death or permanent injury. We talked about Pakistani politics, and after a while he asked me where I was from, surprised by how much I knew about Pakistan (thanks to Harry and all our other cabbies).

Once I told him my husband is Indian, this guy launched into a long soliloquy about his college girlfriend, how much he loved her, and how his family would not permit him to marry her because she was not the right caste. I made appropriate compassionate noises, at least until he came out with how he is married to his first cousin now, and has two children that he loves, but he actually can’t stand his wife because he has known her all his life. That’s when I stopped being understanding and started thinking “asshole…..’. But the real kicker was when, in all seriousness, he told me he is looking for another wife. Not a replacement wife; an additional wife. By this time my eyebrows were at my hairline with sadly no place to go when he asked me, “so, do you know any US women?”

I told him we don’t tolerate that kind of arrangement, paid him, and basically fled the cab.

2. The Giggler—If only I had a recording of this completely incomprehensible cabbie from India. Harry and I got in his cab after looking for a taxi for almost two hours on a busy Sunday (first day of the workweek) morning. Both of us were pissed-off, hot, and Harry was over an hour late for work. We climbed in the back, and Mr. Giggle immediately started talking about something; I later found out even Harry could not understand him. He looked at our faces, started giggling, and then turned on the radio to Sheryl Crowe’s “Everyday is a Winding Road” bull#*@* song about feeling fine, which we were not. All this while he continued talking and giggling, and we giggled back at him, with me thinking Harry understood what he was talking about.

After a while Mr. G asked where we were from. Harry said India, and she’s from America. The guy got this glint in his eye and said: “Made in India”, “Made in USA”, giggling and pointing at each of us respectively. I had to crack up for real at that one, at least until he pointed out the window at an ad on the side of a truck picturing a white woman in a sports bra. Here he gave an evil giggle, said something like “she made in USA too”, at which point Harry was not laughing and thankfully we arrived at the office soon after. Bastard.