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Posted 01.12.07 Cabbie Joints Cricket scores, chicken tandoor, and commisseration By Vidya Padmanabhan Originally published on Inthefray.com, January 2007. Ashfaq Khan enters Lasani, and heads directly for the restroom at the back of the restaurant, calling out "Kya haal hai?" ("How's it going?") to acquaintances. The television is tuned to Geo TV, a local Pakistani channel, which is now showing the news, largely ignored by the drivers clustered around the tables, who look up from their conversations only for the cricket scores. In this almost exclusively male, South Asian milieu, cabbies are able to relax, chat with other drivers clustered over the tables, or speak loudly into their hands-free cell phone sets. A Hindi and Punjabi hum washes over the restaurant. Khan returns with his slow, shambling gait. His middle-aged face is good-natured, open. He lacks the on-the-ball keenness of a veteran driver, having only been a cabbie for two years after a long stint as a parking lot attendant came to an unceremonious end. He picks up his order of chicken curry at the steam table, and settles down by himself to await his fresh naan bread. "Sometimes I call my friends and we eat together," Khan, 40, says. "But I don't want to waste their time. Time is money." It is just after 10 p.m. on a Monday. Most shops are shuttered, and the crowd that swells the streets during the day is heading home to bed. As business slows down, cabbies begin thinking about dinner. Switching on their off-duty lights, they pull up to the curb along 29th Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway, where Lasani has sat for a decade now. Restaurants like Lasani are havens for the city's South Asian cabbies. While other busy urbanites spend top dollar to sit at the bars while celebrity chefs ignore them, the cabbie joints clustered around Manhattan's "Curry Hill" in the East 20s, on Church Street near the World Trade Center, and on the Lower East Side opposite Katz's Deli, have cheap food and clean bathrooms - a must for busy drivers. Here, they can exchange juicy stories about goings on in the back seat, complain about the taxi medallion system, discuss the ins and outs of the U.S. immigration system, and know they will find a sympathetic ear. Khan is no fan of the driving life, but he appreciates the fact that he can set his own pace. "See, right now, I'm hungry, so I come down to eat," he says. "You don't need to wait for a break. You are your own boss." Dreams of home According to Schaller Consulting, a New York taxi industry research firm, New York's $1.82 billion taxicab industry employed 42,900 yellow cab drivers in 2005, 91 percent of whom were immigrants. A large number of them - 39 percent - came from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. The immigrant driver will almost never possess his own medallion - an official permit required by New York State. This piece of aluminum is what separates ordinary cars from cabs. But at $350,000, the cost of obtaining the medallion is often too much for recent immigrants. So, instead of buying, they lease them from wealthier owners at around $700 a week. While the security and profit potential of ownership is a distant dream for many drivers, the taxicab industry has always been a magnet for fresh-off-the-boat immigrants, offering a ready job and the prospect of take-home cash at the end of the shift for those willing to endure tedious hours behind the wheel. In the thirties, the job belonged to Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants. The eighties saw a wave of South Asians taking the wheel, drawing friends and relatives into the industry in their wake. "They are often people with dual class identities," says Vijay Prashad, professor of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, and author of The Karma of Brown Folk, a sociological study of the South Asian Diaspora in the United States. "They have aspirations." Many cabbies come over as students, hoping to put themselves through school by driving at night, but many years later, find themselves stuck behind the wheel. Then there are cases like the small-scale farmers of Indian Punjab, who had to seek greener pastures when the government's 1980s "green revolution" initiative brought in mechanization and favored wealthy farmers, Prashad says. Many of these men leave their families behind in the hope of bringing them over when they are able to find higher paying jobs. For most, obtaining a measure of stability can take years. Until then, they drive cabs, share apartments with friends and relatives in South Asian enclaves in Jackson Heights, Richmond Hill, and Astoria in Queens, along Coney Island Avenue in Midwood, and Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. They try to stave off loneliness among the comforting sights of sari and gold jewelry shops and with people like themselves. This homesickness leads them to the humble, hole-in-the-wall South Asian cabbie cafes of Manhattan, with evocative names like Pak Punjab, Lahore Deli, and Chutney. Among these restaurants, little regional touches dictate where cabbies choose to stop. Nuances like the channel playing on television, the newspapers on offer, and the language of banter make these restaurants a home-away-from-home for many drivers. Then there's the food. Bangla Curry on Church Street at Reade Street, and the Shipa Kasturi Pavilion on Lexington Avenue at 26th Street, for instance, feature a good selection of fish curries, favorites of Bangladeshi drivers weaned on a diet of rice and fish on the Ganges-Brahmaputra River delta. Pakistani restaurants make a fine art of naan bread, and a few restaurants offer only vegetarian entrees, catering to Indian vegetarian drivers. Some places, like Lasani and Chandni, located on either side of the A.R. Rahman Mosque, enjoy a more diverse patronage. At Lasani, a calendar from the Tayyab Brothers Grain Market in Pakistan adorns one wall. Another bears a poster advertising prayer timings at the A.R. Rahman mosque. Several times a day, devout Muslim drivers drape their jackets on chair backs at Lasani, wash up for prayers in the restroom, and then go downstairs to the basement mosque. "Then they come upstairs to eat," says Komal Sultana, Lasani's co-owner, who employs Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Arabic cooks to serve up regional specialties. "That's the most important thing. If they don't get good food, they won't come." On her steam table, spicy red tandoori chicken (in the authentic style of the town of Lahore in Pakistani Punjab) and lamb gosht keep company with whole fried fish for Bangladeshis, and mild, aromatic squash and eggplant stews in the Arabic style for African drivers. The spread is tempting, but cabbies have to watch what they eat, Ashfaq Khan says, as he carefully consumes a side of shredded lettuce that most other diners ignore. "If you're gonna be sitting a long time, you get a lot of diseases," he says, echoing the concern of a number of drivers, who, since they have to pay out-of-pocket for health insurance, often forego it altogether. Cabbie stresses Khan works for 10 hours on weeknights and 12 hours on weekends - Friday and Saturday nights being the most lucrative for any driver. He pays $700 a week to lease his medallion from a private owner, and an additional $50 a day for gas - a total cost of $1,050 a week. During the week, Khan can make a profit of $80 to $90 on a good day. On bad days, he may break even. Weekends are better, yielding a profit of $200 a day or more. Even so, it takes two incomes to make ends meet. Khan's Trinidad-born wife is a travel agent, and is gone during the day when he is home. "Sometimes we'll see each other during the weekend," he says as he pops a few candied fennel seeds - an after-dinner breath freshener - into his mouth. "Sometimes I go home early, wake her up, and we talk." On top of the bad hours, he has to deal with the Saturday night revelers. "They're drunk and spend all the money in the bars." With stresses like these, Khan is not long for the taxi industry. He plans to someday get an automobile or refrigerator mechanic's certification, and then buy a house. "A man can dream," he says, half-smiling. It's the hard aspects of the driving life that have convinced Bangladesh-born Mamnun Ul Huq that cabbies need to band together. Ul Huq, a 44-year-old cabbie, often visits cabbie joints to get drivers to enroll in the New York Taxi Workers' Alliance. He eats most of his meals at home - he pauses to blow on his coffee at a Curry Hill Dunkin' Donuts - visiting the restaurants only to meet his cabbie brethren. "It's good food, but too much oil," he says with a grimace. Since its inception in 1997, the NYTWA has been trying to organize yellow cab drivers. So far, it has gathered around 7,000 members, Ul Huq says, about 16 percent of his fellow drivers. Besides visiting the restaurants, Ul Huq often uses the Bangladeshi Citizens' Band radio network to announce NYTWA's plans of action. "People need to unite to get what they want," he says, "especially in a job with unreliable working conditions, where a man can get stabbed on duty." In March 2005, a passenger plunged a knife into Ul Huq's neck, missing his aorta by centimeters. It took a 10-hour surgery to treat the wound, he says. These "crazy guys," as they are called, can strike without warning. As late as last year, two Bangladeshis - a yellow cab driver and a livery cab driver - were sent into a coma when they were attacked, victims of what are believed, from eyewitness accounts, to be hate crimes. The difficulties of being a cabbie are so great that even Ul Huq, as involved in cabbie-welfare work as he is, may quit the industry. "After the stabbing, I can't sit for hours," he says. "I'm trying to get some business plans together. Let's see." Life behind the wheel Faisal Butt, 32, isn't an Alliance member - he prefers to fly solo, and by and large, doesn't have too many complaints. Wearing a tight sweater to show off his muscled torso, with a shaven head and trendy patch of hair under his lower lip, Butt is the picture of a young American on the make. One of his regular stops is the Punjabi Grocery and Deli on East First Street at First Avenue where he emerges after a meal of spinach curry and cauliflower curry with naan, clutching the requisite superheated cup of spiced tea enjoyed by his fellow drivers. (Cabbie joints often serve their tea scalding hot, so that the drivers can nurse their cup until their next stop.) "I eat lots of different kinds of food," Butt says. "My BP (blood pressure) goes up. So sometimes I eat simple like this." Yellow cabs throng this spot. Parking is relatively plentiful, and there are two good restaurants here: Punjabi Grocery, an Indian vegetarian takeout place with a metal counter at which drivers eat standing up; and Chutney, a Pakistani-run establishment with space enough for two tables. Like most cabbie joints, both restaurants stock supplies such as receipt paper rolls, trip-sheets, engine oil, wiper fluid, pain-relievers, and antacids. Punjabi Grocery also stocks CDs of Bollywood hits and Sikh devotional music. Its window boasts a poster of a dreamy-eyed Sikh saint, Guru Nanak, and the Sikhs' main shrine, the Golden Temple of Amritsar, India. A large number of Indian and Pakistani drivers in New York come from the state of Punjab, split between the two countries by the 1947 partition. So Faisal Butt, a Pakistani Punjabi, has a lot in common with the Indian Sikhs, not least the language. He exchanges hearty greetings with the men behind the steam table again before he leaves. For a visitor riding shotgun, he's an entertaining guide to the various aspects of cabbie-dom. A first lesson is that drivers keep each other informed. Although cell phones - even those with hands-free sets - are prohibited by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, almost everyone uses them to share information about the demand for cabs on the street. It's also the perfect time to catch up with family back home, for whom it is now daytime. Butt's plan offers him free nighttime calls, so why would he waste them? "JFK is stripped?" he confirms with his friend Umar Patel, whose call is signaled by a loud blast of a recent Bollywood number, "Kajra Re," a song exalting the kohl-lined eyes of the beauteous Aishwarya Rai. John F. Kennedy International Airport has just two lines of cabs at the stand, he learns, so he heads there. "$50 in an hour, easy," he announces. On the way, he volunteers the information that his friend "Patel," a Pakistani, has earned the sobriquet because of his penchant for Indian women from the state of Gujarat with that ubiquitous surname. He passes a street hail to whom he yells that he's headed to the airport. "I'm not supposed to refuse him, but he's smiling, having a good time," he says. "That kind of guy - he understands." Having come to the United States at 16 with his family, Butt became enamored by the Western life he saw friends and relatives his age enjoying. While his family returned to Pakistan, he stayed on and is now a citizen. He describes a tortuous route through the immigration processes, including marriage to and subsequent divorce from a Japanese-American woman. He lives by himself - displaying a rare extravagance - paying $1,000 in rent for an apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. "Roommates got a lot of issues," he says. "I've been living by myself for a long time." The medallion owner from whom he leases his taxi offers the seventh night's hire free if he pays for $600 for six nights, but he doesn't take it. Unlike many other drivers, he is just earning for himself - his family in Pakistan has its own means of support. In the little free time that he has, Butt works out for two hours almost every day. "Feel my bicep," he says. It's impressive. He's also recovering from a broken heart - his Pakistani girlfriend of five years recently left him to marry a doctor from Pakistan. He was devastated, and took three months off to visit his parents and convalesce. Now he's back, and "hitting on" two girls who work at two different Dunkin' Donuts, he says - one a Pakistani, and the other an Indian Punjabi. He has the New York idiom down pat. "You're dealing with a pro, schmuck," he yells out his window at a hapless civilian trying to shift onto his lane in front of him. A waiting life As we enter the airport taxi lane, Butt starts pointing out the sights. Adjacent to a taxi lot, there's a concrete clearing set aside for devout Muslims' prayers, on which a couple of African drivers are prostrated on prayer rugs as they await their turn to move up to the dispatcher. "And that's where we play cricket when the lot's full," Butt says, pointing to the other side of the road. The lot, as his friend had informed him, has just two columns of cabs. Drivers stand around in the balmy night air, stretching their legs, chatting. Butt catches up with his clique of young drivers, and proceeds to rag a visibly jet-lagged Indian Punjabi, Surjinder Singh, who is back on the job after his wedding in India. While other drivers take advantage of the wait to enjoy the warm night, Bangladesh-born Mohammed Islam, 50, remains in his cab. "I don't like this job," he says bluntly. "The passengers treat us like we're fourth-class citizens. The TLC treats us like we're from another planet. They do things for the garages and the passengers, but never think about the drivers." Islam takes a gloomy view of the Taxi Workers' Alliance's efforts to organize the drivers into a union. "It will help if drivers have an organization," he says. "But people from different countries, different languages, can never be united." His wife and younger son, who studies electrical engineering at the State University of New York at Farmingdale, live with him. He has an older son in Bangladesh whom he is trying to bring to the United States. "I'm here for my sons," he says. "My wife doesn't like it here; I don't like it here. Maybe five years, I'm going back to my country." Older drivers, and those whose family responsibilities are a concern, have an outlook that often contrasts with that of drivers like Butt. "Only people who don't speak good English have problems," he says with casual arrogance. It helps that he gets along famously with passengers, sharing styling tips with a well-gelled male passenger, or consulting a female passenger, a fellow tattoo-wearer, on how he can remove his ex-girlfriend's zodiac sign (Sagittarius) that he has tattooed on his back. Like other drivers, Butt dreams of returning to his homeland, but his dream has more to do with what he can buy than returning to a familiar place. "You make money here, you can live like the prince of Pakistan," he says. He's getting there, but wants more. He has just invested in a vast area of land in Pakistan that he may resell for a profit or use to build a house that he may let out. He also plays the Mega Million lottery every week. Other cabbies travel a more cautious route. Amjad Iqbal, 35, and many of his relatives who are also drivers prefer to take the slow and steady route to comfort, and have seen relative success. Long nights behind the wheel paid for Pakistan Tea House, the restaurant on Church Street at Reade Street that Iqbal manages. His father and uncle, who co-own the restaurant, are veteran cabbies. It is set up in authentic cabbie-joint style - four tables squeezed together. A 1998 review from The New York Times ("Perfect for cabbies who need a fix of tandoori chicken at 4 a.m.") lies under the glass tabletop. In a corner, a rare tandoor (clay oven) bakes naan the authentic way - a specialty of the restaurant. His father and uncle also own the Super Punjab Auto Shop in Queens. And the crowning glory: His father owns his own medallion, for which he recently completed payments. All of this entrepreneurial adventure has come at a price. Iqbal lives with his cousin and another roommate on the first floor of a house in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. His father and uncle live on the floor above. The rest of the family is in Pakistan waiting to join them. Iqbal's mother has been waiting for 19 years now, and Iqbal's wife since 1998. "She used to argue with me about this," he says in Hindi. "Now she says, 'Just make a decision. Stay there or come here, just decide.'" Until he makes a decision, he has his community of cabbie "brothers," he says, with a wave of his hand. As he speaks, a driver ribs the woman at the counter, asking her in Hindi to put his tab on the house. "Yeah, why don't I also pay your medallion lease?" she says with heavy sarcasm. "You're very kind," he says gravely, pretending to put away his wallet. Finally settling his check, he picks up his cup of tea and leaves, once again, to trawl the night until the next break. |
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