Laura Pedersen - Planes, Trains, and Auto-Rickshaws: A Journey through Modern India

Critical Acclaim for Laura Pedersen

Buffalo Gal

This book is compulsively readable, and owes its deadpan delivery to the fact that she has performed standup comedy on national television ( The Oprah Winfrey Show , Late Night with David Letterman, Today, Primetime, etc.).

ForeWord Magazine

Best Bet

The books laugh-out-loud funny, and readers will find themselves rereading lines just for the sheer joy of it.

Kirkus Reviews

The Big Shuffle

Although its a laugh-out-loud read, its an appealing, sensitive, superbly written book. One you wont want to put down. I loved it.

The Lakeland Times

Be prepared to fall in love with a story as wise as it is witty.

The Compulsive Reader

The Sweetest Hours

To call The Sweetest Hours a book of short stories would be like calling the Mona Lisa a painting.

Front Street Reviews

Pedersen weaves tales that blend humor, sorrow, and sometimes surprise endings in the games of life and love.

Book Loons

Hearts Desire

Funny, tender, and poignant, Hearts Desire should appeal to a wide range of readers.

Booklist

Prepare to fall in love again because Laura Pedersen is giving you your Hearts Desire by bringing back Hallie Palmer and her entire endearing crew. In a story as wise as it is witty, Pedersen captures the joy of love found, the ache of love lost, and how friends can get you through it allwin or lose.

Sarah Bird, author of The Yokota Officers Club

This book will make you laugh and cry and like a good friend, youll be happy to have made its acquaintance.

Lorna Landvik, author of Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

Last Call

Pedersen writes vividly of characters so interesting, so funny and warm that they defy staying on the page.

The Hartford Courant

This book is a rare, humorous exploration of death that affirms life is a gift and tomorrow is never guaranteed. Pedersen writes an exquisitely emotional story. A must-have book to start the new year.

Romantic Times

Beginners Luck

Laura Pedersen deliversif this book hasnt been made into a screenplay already, it should be soon. Throughout, you cant help but think how hilarious some of the scenes would play on the big screen.

The Hartford Courant

Funny, sweet-natured, and well-craftedPedersen has created a wonderful assemblage ofwhimsical characters and charm.

Kirkus Reviews

This novel is funny and just quirky enough to become a word-of-mouth favoritePedersen has a knack for capturing tart teenage observations in witty asides, and Hallies naivet, combined with her gambling and numbers savvy, make her a winning protagonist.

Publishers Weekly

A breezy coming-of-age novel with an appealing cast of characters.

Booklist

Going Away Party

Pedersen shows off her verbal buoyancy. Their quips are witty and so are Pedersens amusing characterizations of the eccentric MacGuires. Sentence by sentence, Pedersens debut can certainly entertain.

Publishers Weekly

Play Money

A savvy insiders vastly entertaining line on aspects of the money game.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Also by Laura Pedersen

Nonfiction

Play Money

Buffalo Gal

Buffalo Unbound

Fiction

Going Away Party

Beginners Luck

Last Call

Hearts Desire

The Sweetest Hours

The Big Shuffle

Best Bet

LauraPedersenBooks.com

Text 2012 Laura Pedersen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval systemexcept by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a reviewwithout permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pedersen, Laura.

Planes, trains, and auto-rickshaws : a journey through modern India / Laura Pedersen.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-55591-618-3 (pbk.)

1. India--Description and travel. 2. Pedersen, Laura--Travel--India. 3. India--Social life and customs. 4. Women--India--Social conditions. 5. Children--India--Social conditions. 6. India--Social conditions--1947- I. Title.

DS414.2.P43 2012

915.404532--dc23

2012005900

Printed in Canada

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Design by Jack Lenzo

Fulcrum Publishing

4690 Table Mountain Dr., Ste. 100

Golden, CO 80403

800-992-2908 303-277-1623

www.fulcrumbooks.com

In memory of Nina Kohnstamm (19402011)

teacher, traveler, friend

Contents

Bewildered, Bothered, and Bewitched

My introduction to India came through that bedrock of American recreation during the latter half of the twentieth century, the television. Specifically, the 1960s sitcom. Bewitched starred the stunning, nose-twitching actress Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stephens, a good witch who decided to forego her magical powers (most of the time) in order to achieve the 1960s version of the female American Dream as an average suburban housewife. However, when otherworldly symptoms arose, more often than not caused by the bumbling Aunt Clara and her spells gone bad, it was necessary to call on the family witch doctor, Dr. Bombay. Thereby my first association with all things India at the impressionable age of five was in the form of Welsh-born character actor Bernard Fox, appearing out of thin air dressed in outlandish costumes, surrounded by a coterie of sexy nurses, cracking corny jokes, and providing questionable cures.

India next appeared when I started kindergarten, in 1970. There werent any students who hailed from the subcontinent in my Western New York elementary school, but American Indians were going from being called Indians to Native Americans , except by actual Native Americans who, by and large, preferred being called Indians. So when someone said the word Indian , kids often asked, Dot or feather? This was just before political correctness came into being (Need any Helen Keller jokes?).

However, such nomenclature confusion existed for good reason. Indian was the name Christopher Columbus (the Italian who got funding from Spain to discover a country that would be taken over by England, only to gain independence with help from France) gave the people he found in the New World, believing hed arrived in the Indies, which was the medieval name for Asia. To further befuddle things, islands in the Caribbean Sea came to be called the West Indies when it turned out they werent the Indies of the East. And, just for fun, the islands known as the Lesser Antilles are located in the eastern West Indies.

In the neighborhood where I grew up, people regularly headed off to play bingo at the Seneca Indian Reservation or the neighborhood Catholic church, despite the Corinthians 1:36 edict against ill-gotten gains. The Seneca Reservation had the advantage of tax-free gas and cigarettes, while the church offered nonalcoholic refreshments and guilt. In the 1980s and 90s, American Indian tribes around the country were busy expanding their gambling enterprises by building actual casinos with hotels and stage shows. Meantime, India Indians in America were taking over 7-Elevens, Carvel stores, and roadside motels at a rate that provided a gold mine of material for stand-up comicsthe likes of which wouldnt be seen again until Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot his hunting partner in the face and Osama Bin Laden was found to have more pornography than Times Square in the 1970s.