Sri Lankan Journal - Entry #7

Riding in a three-wheeled, motorized Sri Lankan taxi is an adventure. You get the strong impression that these sturdy little omnipresent carriages are the evolutinary offshoot of the Asian rikisha. Let me tell you a few examples of life in the wild streets of Colombo.

The vehicle has open sides, a canvas top and a rear bench seat. The passenger space offers just enough room for two adults (or one portly American packing a bag of souvenirs), although the rather diminuitive locals tend to make the smallish seat stretch to family size in some mystical way. The drivers are uniformly well-tempered but opportunistic, always trying to charge the ignorant tourist twice the going rate paid by Sri Lankan natives. I was politely told by my hosts that the "bargain fare," which I had vigorously negotiated from a smiling young man who spoke no English (see picture, above), was nothing short of total surrender to economic terrorism.

The vehicle itself is basically a motorcycle with a three-wheel frame straddled by a metal-and-canvas carriage. The driver literally has no steering wheel but operates with handlebars (see picture, left). Some of them start with pull-cords like lawn mowers.

.Driving in the wildly pulsating traffic flow is an activity which requires almost a hive mind--like a friendlier version of Star Trek's Borg--among motorists and cyclists. The rules seem to be, "Honk once to say you're cutting in, two or three times to warn people not to do the same to you, and yeild if they get in their front tires ahead of yours." I am convinced that my wife, Carol-Jean, who winces when red lights flash on a vehicle 100 yards ahead, would be unable to travel more than a block or two before leaping from the taxi in mortal terror. Even Bhante, who teaches meditation and faced the aftermath of the Tsunami, says that when he returns here after a long absence he must use all his Buddhist-monk skills to stay cool in the fray. "I just have to keep out of it, let the driver handle the traffic."

For all the frantic activity, there are actually very few accidents and even fewer injuries, partly because the stop-and-go traffic flow seldom allows vehicles to get up enough speed for serious crashes. But I think Buddhism plays an important role in the non-lethal traffic mêlée, too. Unlike in America and Europe, drivers here work together to avoid crashes. Consequently, a taxi driver is perfectly confident that the truck down the street, slicing across traffic lanes with reckless impunity, will be out of the way when his beep-beeping three-wheeler shoots by. Still, there are moments I'll never forget, like the time my taxi did a hard right turn across four lanes of traffic to execute a U-turn at rush hour. I looked out the open side door; we were perpendicular to the street with busses, small trucks, and Toyotas flying right into us. Of course, all four lanes did their toot-toot and yeilded politely. If this had been Manhattan or Paris, CJ would be planting flowers over me today...

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Then there was the time my cabbie bummed 100 Sri Lankan Rupees (about 69 cents) to buy gas. He had to push the three-wheeler up to the pump. (I thought about getting out to walk, but I was paying for the ride.) Later, when we stopped at one of those ubiquitous police checkpoints, a polite guy in uniform with a loaded automatic weapon slung over his arm gestured for my driver to move forward. The driver had shut off the engine, so he got out and rolled us forward to the designated spot to save gas. I remember thinking how my cheapskate, Pennsylvania Dutch grandmother would have totally approved his frugality.

.Another driver ran out of gas while shuttling me back from the beach. He pulled over, hopped out, and fished a 2-liter plastic bottle from under his seat. He disappeared around back, then returned with it half-empty. The taxi coughed to life, and I said, "You know, guy, you're basically driving a motor vehicle with a Molotov cocktail between your legs?" He smiled and nodded, not understanding a word, and plunged back into the buzzing boulevard. I wanted to point out that a half-empty bottle of gasoline is even more dangerous due to the fumes in the empty space, but that would have been an equally futile English babbling to a Sinhala -speaking cabbie.

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They seem to adjust their flying chariots instinctively, like Chewbacca doing maintenance on the Millenium Falcon. And after about a week of riding in these ground-level starships, I finally get it. The drivers in Sri Lanka have had 2,500 years of Buddhism. They operate from a fundamentally polite, do-no-harm ethos which is not shared in the West. Even the best American drivers carry a sense of democratic justice to the highways: All people are obligated to respect the civil and property rights of others, to include the right of way. The Sri Lankans seem to operate under a different social contract: Why cause a crash, when it's all about your ego? The drivers here are simultaneously aggressive and defensive. They hurl themselves into traffic flows that scare the bejesus out of me, yet everyone knows the objective is to get there as quickly as safety will allow. So, if the guy gets his front wheel(s) ahead of you, you give way. Beep-beep, just as a reminder, but let him in. I have been a passenger in vehicles which pass uphill on a wide, blind curve. Two lane roads become four-lane as traffic shifts to avoid certain death.

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I remarked to an Indian friend of Bhante's, with whom I was sharing a ride in a hotel van, "The locals here seem to think lines painted on the road are merely suggestions." He said that India was worse, that there literally are no side mirrors on Indian vehicles because they've all been whacked off by close encounters in the street. And he agreed the difference here was kindness on the part of the drivers. I have never seen aggressive kindness before, but here is is, alive and well in the roadways of Sri Lanka.

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These reflections are jotted as I'm headed to Kandy, in the mountains about 4 hours from here, with Bhante's Indian friends. My friend the monk has sent me up here to get behind an air conditioned, mosquito-proof barrier for at least one night. More later from that location. Bhante's look launch is tomorrow, so I'll be coming back quickly...