By Mo Khan

The taxis of New York City are, in some ways, an American institution. They are the fastest way to get around in the fastest city in the world, and they, much like the city, are in constant motion – relentlessly hustling for fares in a town that prides itself on hustling with the best of them. They are immortalized in film and song, and their ubiquitous presence guarantees that, in America's greatest city, anything is always possible. Taxis symbolize the freedom and vitality that is New York - the city where dreams come true, in the land of milk and honey. All you have to do is hop in a cab and you're there.

I have always been fascinated by cabs - or more specifically, by the men who drive them. Cabbies always have the best stories, about people fighting or screwing in the backseat or about nearly getting killed by thugs in the tough part of town. They always know the best places to get cheap eats, and they always know when something big is happening in their city. No matter what city I am in, from San Francisco to Singapore and everywhere in between, when I take a ride I always try to engage the cabbie in conversation. I am usually rewarded with a conversation that will, at the very least, entertain me until we get to my destination.

After moving to New York a couple of years back, my cabbie obsession took on a new twist – normal conversations with my driver of the moment began to take on a decidedly desi flavor. Over the last 15 years, taxi driving has been embraced by large numbers of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants – the latest in a long line of immigrant populations (which includes Irish, Italian, Jewish and Haitian people) to drive in the city since the famed Checker Cab Company of the early twentieth century. The South Asian takeover has been swift and obvious – a majority of the time you hail a taxi in New York now, you will get someone who speaks Hindi or Urdu.

This twist of immigrant winds left me, an American born South Asian lover of cabs, with a whole new opening. Gone were the usual ‘How’s business tonight?’ or ‘Lots’ of people out?’ questions I used to use to create the back-seat-to-rear-view-mirror connection, and in their place were ‘Kya hal hai?’ or ‘Apka nam kya hai?’ – my shoddy Urdu varying in quality depending on the hour (translate: number of drinks) of the day. Besides impressing my non-desi friends with my foreign tongue, the desi cabbies of NYC provided me with a window into a world previously foreign to my bubbled existence – the world of my struggling immigrant brothers.

It is well known that the South Asian immigrant population in America is among the most well off – indeed, MSNBC.com recently published a series of articles on our humble little ethnic group in which we are fingered as the most successful in the land (66.7% of Indian adults over 25 hold at least a bachelor’s degree, as opposed to the national average of 25%, while the median household income of $67,424.00 is tops amongst all ethnic groups). Desis are well known in this country for being educated, professional and integrated – mostly traveling in cosmopolitan circles and sporting high end budgets. We have come to the U.S. and taken a stranglehold on the American dream as perhaps no other group has, parlaying our smarts, work ethic and English-speaking abilities into plush corner offices and residencies across the land. But what of our blue-collar brethren, the ones who have taken over New York’s lifeblood and made it their own?

I decided to investigate differences in the South Asian American community by interviewing some of NYC’s finest – cabbies, that is. My unscientific survey began with a trip across the Brooklyn Bridge one February night, coming home from a night of carousing in the East Village. The conductor was Mansoor, and he informed me that he was from Karachi and had been driving 15 years. I asked him how it came to be that so many desis drive taxis in New York, and he informed me that it was a simple equation – an all cash job + complete independence + no messy paperwork meant that he and his ilk could work as they pleased, with no questions asked, and be free to make as much or as little as they want. This, he happily informed me, was the best alternative for a man such as himself – to be given the chance to work hard and earn on his own terms.

I began to ask the details of his background, but he waved me off. I felt I was crossing a fine line between inquiry and condescension, so I decided to back off and shut up. We arrived at my Brooklyn Heights brownstone, and before getting out I asked where the best place was to speak with desi cabbies. Mansoor told me to go to the desi cabbie lunch spot, on the corner of E. 1st and Ave. A. Between there and the parking lot at JFK, he assured me that I could find more desi cabbies than I would know what to do with.

Over the next couple of weeks I frequented the spot he suggested – a dhaba-style basement kitchen named Chutney’s with a friendly Pakistani couple in charge, the Qureshis. Over chaat and chai, I got to know several desi drivers as they came in from the cold and took their 15 minute break before heading back onto the mean streets, and from them I learned of a different slice of the South Asian diaspora than the one I had grown up in.

Khalid was a 21 year old fresh faced kid who had arrived in America two years back. As was the case with almost all the men I spoke with, he did not want to get in to the specifics of how he got in to the country, but he did tell me his father drove taxis and had been in the States for the last 10 years. Dressed in an NBA jacket and baggy jeans, Khalid told me he viewed at driving as a transitional job – he was saving to go to a school for mechanics in Queens. When I asked him why, he cited his father’s back trouble.

“Driving is hard, man,” he said in his hip-hop-desi accent. “It’s no good. You drive all day, all night – your back gets all screwed up, you know? And you must deal with such people – terrible people. It’s not for me – no way. I want to work on the cars, man. I’ll lay down all day under the cars – that’s the way, man.” He spoke as if it was the truth, and I believed him – when he left he told me to be cool and gave me a fist tap on the way out.

Mohammed was an older driver who wore the look of a man who had let New York beat him down. When I approached him to talk he seemed weary, and he only allowed me to sit after Mr. Qureshi vouched for me (in my time at their place I and my project had been officially adopted by the proprietors). Through heavy eyes and a receded hairline, Mohammed told me of his 13 years in the business, of how he had first come alone to America and worked in construction, on a crew with his buddy. But after they were let go, they happened upon driving and really took to the independence it afforded them. As he succinctly put it: “it is a way to make money through hard work, and this is all I ask.” He had brought his wife over from Pakistan, and now they lived with their three kids in Brighton Beach.

At the mention of his family he perked up, and I could see a fire in his eye that was not there when talking about his job. He proudly informed me that all three of his kids were getting top marks in school, and he planned for all of them to attend college and become professionals. Driving, for him, was a means to an end – a way to elevate his family as quickly as possible to the ranks of the educated. He said that on his salary he would be able to raise his whole family here, and that it was a blessing from God for him that he could give his kids so much. His father had been a farmer in Pakistan, and would never have dreamed of his grandchildren going to university in America.

Among the other drivers I met the themes were common – bad backs, sketchy fares and long hours were all parts of their cabbie existence. They all seemed resigned to their role because of lack of education or a lack of valid immigration status, but none seemed to complain. On the contrary, the weariness in their faces would quickly change to passion when I began to ask of goals or dreams. It was evident that these men, just like the rest of us, were in hot pursuit of their American dream, and had found driving the taxis of New York City to be the most direct path to their imagined promise land.

It is beautiful, in its own way – a slice of the ever-changing landscape that makes America so fresh and indefinable. Chasing your American dreams and commandeering an American institution in the process – could this happen any place else but here? Perhaps, but not with the same optimism and exuberance as I saw in these men that I met. America, for all its perceived unilateral thuggery and crass xenophobia, still holds promise like no other land in the world – the next time you take a taxi in NYC, look no further than the driver’s seat for your living proof.