This 1996 article was printed in Little India, a magazine that was established in 1991 and has become the most widely circulated Indian American publication in the United States. Little India covers a wide variety of topics related to the experiences of being of Indian heritage in America. This piece describes a historic auction of taxi medallions in New York City in 1996 that led to unprecedented numbers of “taxiwallahs”—men from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh becoming licensed to drive cabs in the city. The author’s reference to “Cabelot” is a tongue-in-cheek comparison with the mythical kingdom of Camelot, often associated with President Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who is mentioned at the opening of the article.
Transcription:
“The Taxiwallahs: Life in the Shining City of Cabelot”
To the 43 South Asian men with the winning bids for New York City’s taxi medallions, it was a chance to make their own future. For these men, it was the opportunity to drive away in their own yellow cabs on the highway of success to that wonderful destination, the American Dream.
[Inset/photo and caption: Hamesh Kumar: ‘There is nothing here. I would tell them that instead of using your money to come here, live with that money over there (in India). Eat little but live in contentment. I had not thought of what I would do here and I do this work reluctantly to support my family.’]
Unlike the Jackie O. auction at Sotheby’s, there were no frenetic paparazzi nor television crews to immortalize this bidding war. The glamorous Ladies Who Lunch were not there nor was Cindy Adams on the curbside to give a blow-by-blow description of the event. The lines of anxious buyers did not exactly snake around the block, and no items went for a zillion.
In fact, the world could have cared less about this other auction, but it too sold dreams, longings, euphoria. And if it did not sell Camelot, it certainly sold Cabelot – a shimmering land where a man could be Master of his own Destiny - and his own taxi.
The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) auction in a gritty, unpicturesque part of the same city that held Sotheby’s glittering event, sold 53 medallions to the highest bidders. So what? Boring, prosaic, you say? But to the men with the winning bids, it was not the acquisition of someone else’s past or accomplishments, but a chance to make their own future. For these men, it was the opportunity to drive away in their own yellow cabs on the highway of success to that wonderful destination, the American Dream.
What was particularly noteworthy about the TLC auction was the fact that of the 53 winning bids, 43 came from taxi drivers from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
In their world it was quite a landmark event because this was the first time since 1937 that New York City had held such an auction. The auction was Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s attempt to raise some funds for the city’s coffers and it did bring in million for the TLC. In fact, there are plans to hold two more such auctions over the next two years to hawk 400 new medallions.
Source: Lavina Melwani, “The Taxiwallahs,” Little India, June 1996, 10.
