Reincarnation

I have probably said this before, but we had our most reckless autorickshaw driver yet last night. He must have been around 19 or 20 and he drove us home from MG Road at 10 last night. The other day our Indian friends told us that in India anyone can get a driver's license - you just have to go to the police comissioner's office and pay a fee, and they give it to you. Their exact words were "you can get a driver's license for a child here." Well. this driver may have been proof of that. He had the habit of looking to the side all the time - at one point I actually thought he might have macular degeneration or some other eye disease that made it so only his peripheral vision was usable. Then I thought maybe he had only one eye, because he seemed to have no depth perception at all. At one point he was looking off to the side and almost drove into the rickshaw stopped in front of us. The rest of the time he drove right up to the sides of large vehicles and dared them to hit him. I am not sure what this was supposed to achieve, because there was no way he was going to pass any of the huge buses that crowd the roads. He just seemed to like to hang onto them like a barnacle. Finally, after the third close call he made a wrong turn and we used that as an excuse to walk the rest of the way home. We figure he won't survive long out there. If he's lucky, maybe he'll be reincarnated as a bus driver. I hope he comes back as a cyclist, personally, or one of the dogs that has the bizarre habit of sleeping on the road.

The weather has been beautiful lately - sunny, slightly breezy, not too hot. It is really the nicest season we have seen so far in Bangalore. Hopefully it will continue a little longer. We've just replanted our garden, so it looks a lot better than it did when we got back, though the palm trees are looking a bit sad. They really take a beating in the heavy winds we've been having.

Anyway, if the rickshaw drivers behave themselves maybe they'll get reincarnated in the Alps.