Think of any crowded shopping mall you might visit during the peak Christmas shopping season. Have some of those people push wooden carts of food and clothes around. Allow the dogs, goats, pigs, and cows from a nearby farm to intermingle with the shoppers. Redirect a bike lane into the shopping mall down its corridors, make sure you don’t mark off any special lanes for the bikes. Open up the mall to all the scooter, motorcycle, and car traffic so it can pass through. Have every vehicle beep its horn every time it approaches another vehicle. You will have the beginnings of the chaos of a typical road in Delhi.

Driving down the street is a test of will. The driver plays flinch (or perhaps you call it chicken) with every approaching vehicle. To use your turn signal or to allow a gap between you and any other object is a sign of weakness. The distance between any two moving objects is centimeters. I could easily open my window and have a face-to-face conversation with the driver next to me. I could reach out and shake his hand, “Namaste! Hey, how’s your day?” Except he’s too busy talking on his cell phone as he navigates through the target rich environment of the on-road shooting gallery. Any crack or crevice or break in the traffic is filled up immediately with a taxi or a car or a motorcycle like an endless game of tetras.

Intersections are the ultimate test of will with traffic weaving in and out like the crossing strands of a wooden basket. A lady guides her mother fearlessly across the street at an intersection never pausing. A dog crosses the street at the roundabout following rules of engagement I haven’t quite solved yet. A cow lies indifferently in the middle of the street.

Just another day for the drivers that transport us from here to there. Nothing to do for us passengers but cringe at the chaos and watch the endless parade of sights on the streets of India.

• A scooter with three rusty propane tanks hanging over the edge of its seat.
• A makeshift bumper of tire and iron bars on the back of a scooter.
• Homes made out of airplane fuselages.
• A women passenger in a green saree, riding side-saddle on the back of a bike talking into her cell phone.
• On overloaded hay bin toppled onto the highway.
• A driver standing on the wooden cart holding the reins of his camel while talking into his cell phone.
• Decorated farm tractors masquerading as a form of transportation.
• Sun decomposed plastic black bags at the bottom of piles of litter.
• Two Brahman cows eating garbage at the side of the highway next to a pile of burning trash.
• A woman in her green scarved outfit carrying a twelve-foot branch in front of a wall that hides a transformer farm from the high tension power lines.
• Troops of monkeys on the road, on the top of walls, and on the roofs.
• A white turban, black jacket, purple pantaloons dressed man with a thick white cane walking down the highway.
• Men sitting around in dirt parking lots on brown plastic chairs passing the day.
• A triangular white-grey bearded and mustached man with a turban looking every bit like the quintessential guru.
• Trucks with tassels and hand-painted sides.
• A man sweeping the dirt off the dirt.
• Two monkeys humping and preening on the crumbled cement roof of a shanty shop with corrugated steel doors.
• Green, red, orange, yellow burka wearing women in a line weaving their way through the jam of tooting and honking cars and trucks and motorcycles
• A frozen semen bank
• A boy listening to his phone laying in the luggage rack section over the seats of a passing bus.
• Goats feeding out of a hay bin strategically located in the median of a road.
• A man taking a bath out of a five-gallon plastic bucket on his front porch.
• Hanoi towers of tires stacked in front of stores.
• Women in flower print shawls and silk dresses gardening the plants on the median.
• People hanging off the back rail of a minibus, sitting on the bumper and in the luggage rack on the roof.
• A wedding truck full of furniture dowry and movers. Are they part of the dowry? “The good news is you have a new couch. The bad news is that it comes with people already sitting in it.”
• Bamboo scaffolding for building construction projects.
• A cow folded in half tied to the back of a jeep.
• Yellow flowers heroically growing out of the packed dirt on the side of a dusty highway.
• A self-employed camel pulling its own wooden cart.
• Tiled cow patties drying in the sun for fuel
• An elderly lady’s exposed breasts in an outdoor shower by the road
• Bristle-haired black-grey pigs nosing through their own crap at the side of the road.
• A monkey sitting on the seat of a parked motorcycle.
• A camel train on the road bobbing their heads up and down in synchronicity
• A man in the doorway of his shop ironing cloth with an iron iron.

The smell of India is overwhelming. It’s tempting to keep the window closed. The haze is thick, it makes my eyes burn and throat hurt. Burning garbage rises into the air. The smell of urine passes by. Cooking food and incense lift into the air in a cacophony of smells that even my underpowered nose can smell. The composition of smells is the smell of India.

Always the honking. So often you don’t notice. Buses and motorcycles and cars warning cars and motorcycles and trucks and pedestrians and bike riders and cows. Whether you like it or not, this driver has intent and resolve. Make room. Get out of my way. An impatience of horns? A rudeness of horns?

The sights and smells and sounds of the street. If you want a hint of the experience, try here: https://www.facebook.com/michael.david.angel/videos/10214752551780443/?t=3