1. Back in 1994, this was an easily forgeable folded pink slip with a glued-on passport picture, stuffed into a plastic sheath. My only form of portable ID for many years, it got me duly laughed out of pubs and clubs the world over, and flatly denied entry into some of the more pedantic drinking venues in the US.
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/world/asia/08ihtroads.html?pagewanted=all
3. This was the figure in 2009. The number of road deaths in 2011 jumped to over 140,000. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-06-08/india/32123122_1_road-accidents-road-fatalities-road-deaths
4. WHO Global Status Report on Road Safety, 2009.
5. http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/Tata-Nano
6. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/01/09/how-green-is-a-mini.html
7. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/worlds-cheapest-car-boon-or-bane/
8. http://ibnlive.in.com/news/ratan-tata-will-be-a-hero-if-he-made-a-bus-like-nano/56973-11.html
9. http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/sunita-narainisright-right/353011/
10. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-04-20/mumbai/31373302_1_lifeline-poles-accidents
11. Indian National Crime Records Bureau.
12. Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, 2011.
13. World Bank.
14. I later discovered that five vehicles per kilometre of road is a national average made from wildly disparate statistics. In fact, the number of vehicles per kilometre of road in Mumbai stands at 674. http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Mumbai/Mumbai-has-674-vehicles-for-every-km-of-road/Article1-829604.aspx
15. My Mumbais and Bombays were in a perpetual muddle; and not just here, but in every city that had recently changed its name in India. What I realized was that within the cities, opinion was split as to which name to use, and so a mixture of both appeared to be the norm. Hence, Bangalore can be Bengaluru, Madras can be Chennai and Calcutta can be Kolkata, depending on your (or my) mood and/or political inclination.
16. Pavan K. Varma, Being Indian, Penguin India, 2005.
17. One crore = a hundred lakhs or 10,000,000.
18. Though not cows. I was beginning to understand that cows were a whole different story, exempted from the directives on account of their divine standing.
19. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-01-14/ahmedabad/28122955_1_inter-state-gang-gang-of-highway-robbers-gang-members
20. A popular clothing and fabric chain.
21. Persons of Indian Origin.
22. I’m not counting the rather outlandish and clearly erroneous results for Dadra and Nagar Haveli, a Union Territory squished between Maharashtra and Gujarat whose death rate is 100% based on a reported 45 accidents in all 45 of the state’s registered cars that resulted in 45 fatalities, or the Lakshadweep Islands’ 200% based on a single accident in 2009 that killed two people.
23. It could also mean quite simply that Malayalis are more diligent in reporting minor accidents to the police.
24. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-11/india-to-pay-for-highways-for-first-time-in-14-years-freight
25. http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-MBQ2AW0D9L3501-03KFPD9FO6DULNCQ08IA3IP0CI.
26. In my defence, the light was a superfluous item placed in an inconspicuous (I could almost say hidden) spot along a one-way, intersection-less road that had no discernible reason to require traffic to stop at that particular point. I sensed a crafty fundraising drive on the part of Chennai’s traffic department.
27. He is now India’s Prime Minister.
28. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/55427.stm
29. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080111/jsp/nation/story_8769282.jsp
30. http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-05-09/inside-the-tata-nano-factorybusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice
31. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Engineering-the-Nano/articleshow/2693758.cms?
32. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-28/lingerie-delayed-as-517-billion-india-jam-idles-trucks-freight.html
33. I later found out that by ‘summer’, historians in fact meant the time of year we in the West traditionally refer to as summer – that is, from June to September – and not the actual hottest time of the year on the subcontinent, which would be April and May. This means that Buddha and his buddies were escaping the incessant rains of the monsoon (for the sake of not harming any wee beasties during the course of their travels) and not the ferocious summer heat; so Buddha was infinitely more hardcore than me, as we all initially suspected.
34. A religious ritual, in this case performed in the waters of the sacred river Ganges.
35. ‘Mandalay’.
36. ‘Gunga Din’.