No Problem…

I have been trying to find a way to describe the experience of being in this culture. Its such an impressive mix of noise and silence, of tastes and colors.

Shortly after arriving here I found myself being driven around in a small van through the city. From the way we were cruising and relating to the other cars, you might have thought it was a race… an all out race. There are dotted lines on the street that to you and me would indicate lanes, but no… they are just markers that signal a vehicle’s claim to the road.

But not to worry, the drivers here are not set back for long by such measures. They have finely tuned the use of a little known (in rural America) car dispersing tool, the horn. It seems to me that people here believe it serves almost as a magical wand to just make the other vehicles disappear… if only it where so.

The widespread use of this device, however, does add an element of excitement as you criss-cross through the streets passing within millimeters of the other vehicles as though they were not even there. The back and forth of horns between all ten vehicles vying for their place on the three lane road becomes like a modern day symphony.

Everything here has this kind of magic. When the driver had asked me where we were going as we left the airport. I gave him the directions and asked him if he knew the place.

He said, “No problem.”

I sank back into my seat and prepared to enjoy the view of the city. Though after a few minutes he asked again, so I did my best to repeat the directions I had been given.

And he just nodded at me and said “No problem.”

I mentioned, despite knowing now for certain that there was no problem, that I could call the place and have him talk to the people and get directions. To which he just simply responded “Ok, no problem.”

So I called and passed him the cell phone. It was a heated conversation during which he showed his amazing aptitude at staying in the race, honking away and taking note of the directions to our destination, all at the same time.

I couldn’t help but laugh at watching all of our near misses with the other cars. I wondered if I should worry or say something, but I found it hard to imagine that either would be of any use. So I just enjoyed it and recognized that this is just how it is here. He was like a duck in water…

When he handed me back the phone I asked him if he knew now where it was.

Yes, you guessed his answer. “No Problem.”

In the end he seemed to have a pretty good idea, though he did stop to ask a couple of people when we were just a few blocks away.

Yet the best was when he stopped next to a boy who was washing his hands on a spicket by the sidewalk. My driver calmly walked out of the car and went over to the spicket. He washed his face a little, drank some of the water and said a few words to the boy. As I watched this I could not help buy smile, if you can’t find the address, why not stop for a drink?

The driver got back in the car and said to me, “He doesnt know,” he paused for a moment and then thought to reassure me, “No problem.”

So we drove a block or two more along the road that the last person had indicated and sure enough we were there.

This was my welcome to India, my first taste of Delhi and now I know that no matter what, there is one simple answer here… “No Problem.”