The Taxi Takes on Terror

I recently came across a neat site, www.tuk-tastic.com created for an auto rickshaw driver called Samson in Chennai, India. An auto rickshaw is a three wheeled vehicle open on two sides and is called by different names like, tuk-tuk, scooty, auto etc. depending on which part of India you are in.

Samson, the auto driver's website

So Samson made or asked someone to make a site for him. The site has his picture, a short and sweet intro about his work and pages on where to shop, eat, sightsee and drink in Chennai. Samson does an excellent job of selling himself as a safe driver and one who will take you wherever  your heart desires. If you are new to the city he basically provides you with info about where to go and is also the vehicle to getting you there. Knowing that he can take only up to three passengers, he has a plan for larger groups of passengers and helps his other auto driver friends get business by getting them on board too. There are passenger testimonials, a photo gallery and he’s even thought of advertising on his auto using Sticker art.  www.tuktastic.com is an inspiring website for anyone to see how you can fashion a website around any skill set you have.

Digital Entrepreneurs 2.0 was a seminar I attended recently at Fordham University in New York City. The panel consisted of successful folks like Jonah Peretti, Steve Gordan and Adam Rich. They spoke of branding, online tools, networking and social media. Many questions were asked and pens were scribbling notes furiously. I think Samson would have done a great job on that panel. He represents what can be done when we put common sense together with resourcefulness, asking people for help, selling whatever skills you have with passion and drive using digital online resources.

I’ve always stood by the concept of learning from your taxi driver or auto driver in this case. I’ve had a minor revelation thanks to Samson’s site and in the next few weeks www.thetaxitakes.com and www.vandanasood.com will be going through a re haul. If you need a good safe ride anywhere in Chennai and its surrounding areas Samson says on tuktastic.com,

“I can also be contacted by phone or text message on +919 840 842724 at any time. If you would like to arrange a time for me to meet you before you travel to Chennai then why not send me a text? I check my email every week so if you would like to email me at samson@tuktastic.com then please feel free.”

In the same vein get in touch with me on any feedback you might have on ways to improve this site. Things you feel work, other sections which don’t, anything! Just post right here or email me. Thanks in advance:)

‘The Taxi Takes’ traveled to Trinidad and Tobago recently. I had a screening there for some Trinidadians and even ‘Trini’ Indians with the help of multimedia artist Elspeth Duncan. There was another impromptu screening in Brooklyn thanks to Nicole Jaquis whose project Ascetics with Camera will be traveling to the Kumbh Mela in India this year also.

Kavita Ramdya, author of Bollywood Weddings and journalist at News India Times recently interviewed me and has written an article about ‘The Taxi Takes.‘ Feel free to read it on her site or download the pdf from my press page.  A small piece of misinformation is that I was born in New Delhi and not Mumbai. I am pleased that the core concept of having a dialogue in public spaces - taxi cabs and now the Internet is taking place in this manner!

This website will be undergoing some over hauls and is also planning larger screenings in the near future. The media press kit will be available online for download shortly. I am looking into having a screening at a public venue  in NYC for New York taxi drivers of Indian and Pakistani orign. Watch this space for more details!

Pritish Nandy says we should ’stop jabbering about 26/11.’ To quote him he says,

” Terrorists do not need to celebrate the success of 9/11 or 26/11. We are doing it for them, even as we weep for the victims and tell the world that we are better prepared to face future strikes. Let’s not kid ourselves. Terrorism is the scourge of our times and no Government, no police force is ever adequately equipped to anticipate it. The more we talk about the pain, the horror, the memories of these terrible events, the more the perpetrators celebrate, the more they go down in history as villains or heroes, depending on who is providing the perspective, and to whom.”

You can read his entire post on the Times of India blog.
Well I commented on his blog post but he didn’t approve my comment so I decided to publish it here. This is my Take.

“I completely disagree. We are not jabbering about our fears, mistakes and failures alone. To be silent would be similar to witnessing the holocaust and remaining quiet about it! Yes I agree, the terrorists do feed off headlines. But that’s where insightful journalism plays a role.
Talk, discuss, deliberate about the future, about larger issues which need to be addressed in the World community as far as Modern Terrorism goes. Give your perspective and yes speak out, in fact shout out against such inhumanity I say.
I’m working on such a project. It’s about taxi drivers and passengers in Mumbai taxis talking about 26/11 and related issues. It’s a new media project called ‘The Taxi Takes on Terror’

So Manmohan Singh and Obama will meet soon or are meeting as I write this. I’m hoping that Mr. Prime Minister of India will not be quiet about 26/11. In my mind given that one year would have gone by since the tragic attacks, no Indian citizen should be quiet.

Famous Anti Nazi Slogan translated into Arabic

“We Will Not Be Silent” was the slogan of one of ‘The White Rose Society‘, one of the few anti Nazi societies which existed in Weimer Germany. This slogan was taken up and became the anti war slogan for several organizations like The Artists Against War.I did a presentation about them and was gifted a T-shirt which has that slogan written in Arabic. Read about Raed Jarrar who was stopped from boarding a flight at JFK for wearing the same t-shirt on Democracy Now.

Nope Mr. Nandy, ‘We Will Not Be Silent.’

It’s important to understand Mumbai and what it’s all about. Recently a fantastic fifty reasons were penned down by Kanika Parab & Mansi Poddar on CNNGo about why Mumbai should be considered the greatest city in the World. The list includes six features which play a relevant role in ‘The Taxi Takes on Terror.’

So at number three there is the Famous Ladies Specials which even got press in the New York Times article I posted. Yes it’s good for Indian women to have a hassle free commute.Though I think woman, all around the World have commuting stories of alarm and horror that they could share.

Leopold Cafe, and it’s distinctive charm and toughness is at number 24. I know that people still throng this bar and the 26/11 attack didn’t make any dent in it’s popularity. In fact more people probably go to see the bullet holes and shattered glass now more than ever.

And at number three we have the taxis! The ‘kalee peelee’ or black and yellow cabs which are fun and noisy, old and sacred, tarnished and decorated, sturdy and yet unfortunately slowly leaving the landscape of the city. The Government has passed a law that forbids taxis that are older than 25 years to stay on the streets. So the iconic Fiat taxis are being replaced by zippier Omnis, Santros and Marutis. But you’ll get to see a lot of these soon to be vintage classics on The Taxi Takes. So stay glued:)

The ‘dhobhi ghats’ of Bombay are a historic place where the laundry of Bombay comes to be washed at row upon rows of stone wash pens. A ‘dhobhi’ is a washerman and nearly two hundred ‘dhobhis’ will wash clothes together at any given time. I met two of these ‘dhobhis’ who have been washing clothes in Bombay as part of a profession that has been passed on to them by their grand fathers. At one point when the taxi driver and two washermen were talking in the taxi, I chuckled to myself thinking I really had an incredible slice of the working class! So at number 37 we have the Dhobhi ghats.

Haji Ali , the miraculous floating Dargah comes in at number 43. Built in 1431 by Sayed Peer Haji Ali Shah Bukhari, a rich Muslim merchant it is one of the most recognizable structures off the coast of Southern Mumbai. I have some wonderful footage of the taxi driver Jamid Ali standing near the mosque , by the water’s edge as the sun was setting behind him. He sang a song he had written in dedication to his mother, who died when he was nine. I’ll put a clip of him on his profile page eventually.

The last reason was because there were so many holidays in Mumbai. Due to it’s multi cultural, multi ethnic and secular nature India houses every religion in the World. So at any given time of the year Indians can expect to have a holiday celebrating either a Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Parsi, Buddhist, Sikh or Jain tradition.

The other reasons are also fun, brilliant and definitely worth a read for anyone who has heard of Mumbai but never been there. A great city in a wonderful country. More on Mumbai later.

Today, October 2nd 2009 is the hundred and fortieth birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Today I will place a flower at the feet of his wonderful statue that stands at Union Square in New York City. His legacy and life will influence the World forever. I have always been in awe of him.
Another fact which always astounded me was that at the same time in history there lived a man who managed to compel masses of people towards non violence while another being provoked them towards genocide. Mahatma Gandhi and Hitler were contemporaries. Imagine a movie with a split screen showing the peace and self will involved in non violence (ahimsa) alongside the holocaust, simultaneously in India and Germany. A horrific image that makes my heart beat faster. I wonder what it is that can drive one human being towards peace and humanity and another towards the extreme opposite? But then again, why must I look back in time with a sense of disgust and horror when the World around me still hasn’t yet blown out those demonic fires of terror and violence.

In 1950, the great Jewish physicist, Albert Einstein, a genius and noble being in his own right recorded an interview in his study in Princeton, New Jersey. In this United Nations radio interview he said about Mahatma Gandhi, “Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth. ”

These words ring like a loud Buddhist temple gong reverberating into the air for minutes. These are my favorite words about Gandhiji. They are inscribed in stone at the Gandhi museum in New Delhi. They came to my mind when I spoke to taxi drivers in Bombay. I had earlier thought of calling my project, ‘If Gandhi were a filmmaker.’ I wondered what his insights and documentary recordings would be while driving around the country. What would he make out of this fine Nation of ours that he had strived so hard to keep from partitioning into Pakistan and Hindustan.

Mumbai Taxi drivers said that if the great man had existed in today’s day and age, no one would give him the time of day. Materialistic, superficial people would laugh at his ascetic lifestyle and flimsy loin cloth and no one would heed his call to non violence and ’satyagraha.’
Taxi drivers cursed the current politicians and literally spit on them as they were driving around. They spoke of how not one politician had it in them to lead a country to Independence from 200 years of British colonialism like Gandhiji yet alone help us get out of the shackles of terrorism that India is facing now. In fact it is the people in power, they said, who have brought on these acts of terror and violence for the common Indian citizen.

I know that Mahatma Gandhi, may his ‘great soul’ rest in peace was a great champion of women’s rights and empowerment. In 1940, reviewing his twenty-five years of work in India concerning women’s role in society, he had said:
“My contribution to the great problem lies in my presenting for acceptance truth and ahimsa (non-violence) in every walk of life, whether for individuals or nations. I have hugged the hope that in this women will be the unquestioned leader and, having thus found her place in human evolution, will shed her inferiority complex.”
“…Woman is the incarnation of ahimsa. Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering. And who but woman, the mother of man, shows this capacity in the largest measure?… Let her translate that love to the whole of humanity… And she will occupy her proud position by the side of man… She can become the leader in satyagraha..”

I know he would find great solace in the young breed of women taxi drivers who can be seen on the streets of Mumbai nowadays.

It’s nice to come to a foreign land and find that the taxi drivers speak your language! It’s a good feeling and as a documentary filmmaker I jumped to the chance of doing something with this observation. In 2007 I went out on the streets of Manhattan and interviewed Indian and Pakistani taxi drivers about what they felt about New York, how they came here, 9/11, the War in Iraq and the War on Terror.

I started my prowl with the camera at the famous ‘Punjabi Deli’ on Houston streets where you’ll always see a bunch of taxis parked. This is a huge omen of how good a place is. Similar to when you look into a restaurant or cafe and can judge how good it is by the volume of people dining or waiting outside. ‘Punjabi Deli’ has affordable food and it’s home cooked Indian food. My uncle in Jersey has been known to drive down, pick me up, take me out to a fancy bar for a drink and then head to Punjabi Delhi for food he describes as ‘dil khush kar deta hai’, literally translated to mean ‘makes my heart happy.’

So I’m rambling away from the taxi drivers and point. Eventually I made a short film titled, ‘Street Smarts’ which focuses on racial profiling post 9/11 and my short got selected to the Sikh International Film Festival.
I’m heading out to the venue now and hope some of you can make it. Take a taxi to Asia Society and tell the driver about the film. Who knows maybe he’s in it. Once when I got in a cab and spoke to the driver about my project, he’d seen my taxi film on youtube! Keeping my fingers crossed for some synchronicity in the city this week:)

My first text message for today was from my friend Alci telling me about a cover story in today’s New York Times. Something about Indian women and women only compartments in trains. “Indian Women find New Peace in Rail Commute” talks about how the Indian Government has started ‘women only’ compartments in trains in the big urban cities of New Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Chennai as a way of providing more safety to larger numbers of working women who have entered the work force in a country that is patriarchal and gender dictated in many ways.

Now I know that ‘Ladies Specials’ as they are also called have existed for a while in Mumbai local trains and some seats are even reserved for ladies in buses in different cities. When I was in Bombay I would travel by the general compartment, only if I had a male friend along and even then I got glares and stares my way. The one exception was one late night after filming when I got on and started taking pictures with my camera. I ended up making friends with two mothers and their children on their way back from a wedding which is a separate incident all together.

So to be perfectly honest this cover story on the New York Times front page comes as a surprise to me. Yes I admit that many westerners might find this story shocking and news worthy in many ways. Being victimized and asserting their rights is an issue that Indian women face on a daily basis thanks to a legacy which consists of traditions like ‘sati‘, where women would burn themselves along with their dead husbands on the funeral pyre, female infanticide and foeticide, notions of purity and pollution from the caste system that lead to maternity deaths, dowry and even dowry deaths. The fact that Indian women are empowering themselves, becoming financially independent and standing on their own two feet to get to work and earn for their family is a step that is in effect a giant leap across decades of norms and traditions. So yes I think it’s a positive step to ensure ladies have a safe commute to their workplace.
And why not?! It’s what the New York City MTA is trying to enforce through their new anti harassment ad campaign that I saw the other day in the subway. Enough ladies in New York have a hard time in public spaces and this too in a country that championed female empowerment and suffrage half a century before India even became free of the shackles of colonialism.

So I still wonder why the NYT’s put this story on it’s cover today and that too without even mentioning the efforts made by it’s own Mass Transit Authorities to ensure a peaceful commute to ladies. The ‘white man’s burden’ was what the British called their efforts to help educate and empower the masses in India. Under this guise of charity work they enacted a subtle and enslaving colonialization. Talking of the distress and oppression of women in India or Afghanistan can also be the perfect PR war cry to ensure independence to Afghanistan and its women. History has proven that women are often used as pawns in some man’s game of power politics.

Which makes me think of Sameena, a woman who plays by her own rules. She is 23 years old, Muslim and divorced her husband because he would beat her. She stands up for what she believes and wears a burkha most of the time. Except for when she sits in the front seat and drives a taxi in Mumbai. A woman that represents great independence and shatters many stereotypes in one drive. You’ll hear more from her soon.

Being a woman sitting in the front seat with a male taxi driver is something else.

But before I talk about getting into the front seat and driving along with taxi drivers you need to understand and explore the stage itself. The stage is Bombay, a city that merges both diamonds and dirt in one stroke. I discovered this city with my new friends, the drivers. And who better to help you discover a city than a taxi driver, who spends his life navigating the streets.
Coming from New Delhi it felt like quite an accomplishment to be in this very male dominated space and feel respected. A recent study conducted by the National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science at the behest of the Indian home ministry’s Bureau of Police Research & Development showed that 80 percent of women in New Delhi feel unsafe. So of course my mother warned me against any filming at night and even my male friends advised me to get a car to follow us at night.

Well I didn’t hire a taxi to follow me around as you guessed but one of the many things I learnt about Bombay was how women felt safe and could travel late at night without worrying. One taxi driver even went to the extent of telling me that if a woman was walking naked on the streets of this city, no one would even try and touch her. And he took his hand off the steering wheel and pointed his finger straight ahead when he said this. Several drivers made similar comments and after a month and a half I think I shed a lot of my Delhi inflicted influences and came to settle into a very comfortable and commanding position in the front seat with my camera.

I know that several people will think that the power of the camera might have also played a role in demanding that respect and yes it probably did to some extent. But being an Indian woman sitting in the front seat with the male taxi driver, with a camera in my hand, in Bombay will have to be another post.

Most of March went capturing, downloading, editing and subtitling. The footage I have till now was unplanned, both in terms of the questions being asked and the way in which it was shot by me. However the compliance of the passengers and the audible footage gave me proof that the concept works and that the logistical details can be ironed out. I am inherently intervening in the space between the driver and passenger and then facilitating a dialogue between them. It’s a tricky thing to handle, especially in Mumbai where class distinctions prevent conversation to take place. A driver will rarely ever initiate a conversation and he will only talk if the passenger speaks to him. This premise is turned on its head in this project.

I am currently working on a list of comprehensive questions to be asked by the taxi drivers to their passengers. These questions decide the focus of the conversations and the key issues that will be addressed with regards to Modern terrorism. So I’m all in favor of inputs and feedback. This is my list. Feel free to edit it by posting your comments.

Q1. Have you ever experienced terrorism? What do you think terrorism is?

Q2. Can terrorism be avoided/ prevented?

Q3. After the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai how do you think the:

(1) state (2)media (3) security forces

should have responded?

Q4. If you were a politician what would you have done?

Q5. As ordinary citizens how can we reduce terrorism?

Q6. What kinds of things make a person into a terrorist?

Q7. What can Muslims do to remove misconceptions about Islamic Terrorism?