A Calcutta-Yellow-Taxi ride

‘Why can’t the taxis slow down instead of threatening to kill us all?’

‘Why should they? Calcutta is no place for sissies and sluggards. Taxi Drivers are entitled to run you down. It’s your job to save your skin, by running faster than a taxi’.

The above exchange from a cult (evidently very small cult) book on Calcutta, ‘Flames of the Forest’, ensured that I chose the notorious yellow taxi to drop us to the airport, on a short stop in the city.

Time being of essence, we had made an efficient list of ‘top tourist’ places to click, on our way from Dalhousie, where we stayed at the oldest hotel in the country (check out Great Eastern Hotel – doesn’t get more old world than this), to the airport.

First, the taxi driver, Samir, summarily dismissed our list 😑
He decided our itinerary and the photos below are all courtesy Samir.

By mistake I had mumbled something about ‘trams’, so he chased every possible tram around Maidan, including the quaint WB Tourism one. So, as lives were risked to click them, I present them all, in their blurriness.

He wasn’t a fan of the actual ghat of the Princep Ghat. So he made us go to the monument instead - also because 'many films are shot here’. Though we did wriggle out and get a shot from the ghat too.

Samir was not excited about Victoria Memorial. 

I suspect he didn’t approve of The Raj. But we got a few minutes to sneak in a couple of snaps.

Volubly sneering at the Bancharams/Balaram Malliks of the city, he took us to Nakur’s Sandesh place, in deep recesses of North Calcutta. The sandesh did live up to the set expectation. Do try them instead of the usual, on your trip to Calcutta.

We were made to click Eden Garden from every angle, Mohammaden Sporting and Mohun Bagan, Writer’s Building and a Jain Temple, from his zooming taxi. Many of the photos are non-presentable but we couldn’t tell him that as he would have taken violent U-Turns. These are some of the Ok shots, from the streets of Calcutta.

We were dropped to the airport almost to the minute that we had asked of him. Ignoring loud protests from my profusely sweating co-traveller, who was convinced we would miss ours and the next two flights, Samir weaved expertly through narrow and broad roads of Calcutta, shouting ‘take photo’ with sudden swerves.

Yellow taxis of Calcutta, don’t have google maps. Nor do the drivers charge you (or even accept) extra, for a ‘personal anecdote filled’ tour of the city.  
So do leave the gadgets and Lonely Planets aside, and take a yellow cab ride, when you are here next.