The Greasy Handshake

This is a picture of our driver Ulhas. We just hired him and share him with another guy that Brent works with and he drives us around where we need to go. The story of a driver and the traffic in India is a whole other post in and of itself. I will explain those in detail later because this story is too good!

So Ulhas is driving our family the other day on the first day he was working for us. The car is a compact car so we totally don't fit (it looks like a clown car and we all pile out...but that's not unusual for here!) Brent was in the front seat because we were dropping him off at work and then Ulhas was going to drive the kids and I to get my phone fixed. We turned off our road onto the first main street and we immediately got pulled over.

**Let me 1st explain "getting pulled over" here:

1. The cops hide on the street corners & when they see a nice car, they jump out and run to you blowing their whistle & pointing at you so you have to pull over (you're never going fast b/c of traffic)

2. Almost every traffic cop is corrupt

3. They make you pay traffic tickets on the spot so they pocket the $$ for themselves

4. Not one single traffic law has ever been obeyed in India, so there are really no laws for them to actually to enforce... they can ticket you for whatever they chose to make up

They pull us over and start asking for registration, our driver's license, paper work, etc. The kids started panicking and asking if we were going to jail! :) Ulhas just keeps yelling at them in Hindi and then turning to us going, "Do not worry, Sir, do not worry. I will take care." He & Brent both argued with them off & on for about 15 minutes (all the while I'm in the car with the kids and Bennett keeps going, "Ohhhh man, this is NOT good! Why are they being so bad & picky? This can NOT be good!"- his commentary was hilarious!) The cops would fight for a few minutes with Ulhas & then come over to the window & make googly, smiley faces at Sutton and then go back over and argue some more. It was the craziest thing.

Then finally we watched as Ulhas shakes one of the cops' hands while slipping him some money and gets back into the car & says, "Okay, sir... everything okay." They were trying to ticket us 500 rupees (~$10) because the car still had the dealer tags on it (which was perfectly legal!) and Ulhas slipped them 50 rupees (~$1.20) and they let us go. Brent called it Ulhas' greasy handshake... Unfortunately, that kind of corruption at every level is a very common aspect of their culture.