here,there & elsewhere. Coffin chic

Now that he has a taxi licence Bins claims he must buy himself a car. “It’s necessary to practise! I must build up confidence before I can be a cabbie here,” he says. “In India, we dodge the cows, run over the cyclists and bribe the police. Here? People dodge the police, get run over by cyclists and never see the cows.” He taps his forehead. “These Americans are crazy.”

Still, he has to admit he’s enjoying himself. Every day, he roams the streets, making friends with motorcycle gang members, homeless people and fellow pot-smokers. When the sun’s out, there are so many under-dressed teenage girls jiggling their way towards the beach that even Bins has grown jaded. “I don’t notice them any more,” he tells me, with a sigh. “Sad!”

We can’t afford a new car. But Bins scrounges money from a cousin in Canada and consults his friends on the street for good deals. This morning, he bursts in the front door, all excited. “Come out and see what I have bought for you!” Whenever he buys something for himself — which is often, since he loves to order online — he pretends that it’s actually for me even though it never is. “Yeah, yeah,” I say, putting down my paint brush to go outside.

“Ta-daaa!” says Bins. Standing in the middle of the parking lot is a monstrous vehicle, painted bright blue with white clouds. Written on the side in psychedelic lettering are the words “Cloud Nine Funeral Home.” It’s a hearse. “Isn’t it fabulous?” asks Bins. “So big! So chic! And practically free! No-one wanted it!” I say, “No surprise. It’s utterly grotesque. Take it back at once.” Bins almost falls over with shock. “Are you joking? It’s the most beautiful car I have seen in my whole life.”

He spends the next half hour telling me it’s the hearse of his dreams, he has always wanted one, that only the most bourgeois, marshmallow-brained, anti-intellectual stick-in-the-mud would resist the charms of a sky-coloured coffin-chariot ... I fold my arms and say, “NO WAY, EVER-NEVER-EVER am I riding around in a corpse-buggy!” Bins folds his arms too. “Oh-ho! Somebody’s feeling superstitious, is she? Somebody’s afraid of the ghosties sitting in the back of the car?” I fold my arms tighter. “Don’t talk rubbish. You know I don’t believe in all that guff. Just take it back.”

But Bins has a crafty look on his face. “I know how to change your mind,” he says. “Impossible,” I snort. “Well,” says Bins. “When I told Jiggs about the hearse, he was horrified. ‘Mrs Manju will say NO. She is a good, respectable Indian lady after all. She will say it is against our Indian customs, our Indian values, to sit in the same car that is used by dead people.’” Now Bins is grinning broadly. “So I will just say to him, he is right, huh? You’re deeply conservative, god-fearing and traditional?”

I sigh and clutch my head. “Alright, alright,” I say. We have a hearse.

Manjula Padmanabhan , author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

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