Happy Days for Hitler

Nicole Fox got to India last fall. Once she found an apartment and started her American India Foundation Public Service Corps placement at Y.R.G. Care, an AIDS research and outreach clinic, she signed up for a few extracirriculars. “Mondays and Fridays are my gym days, Tuesdays and Thursdays are my hip-hop/Bollywood dancing days… and Wednesdays are Tamil lessons,” she wrote to her stunned friends and family. After a quick stop in Hanoi for a World Health Organization conference on dengue, she returned to work, took trips all around the subcontinent, and found time for a little rockclimbing. That’s who Nicole is.

Hitler… well, let’s start right there. “English people are not liking my name, because of German Hitler long time ago,” he cheerfully explained to Nicole the day they met at a busy tea stand. “But people here are not knowing,” he reassured her, “so Hitler is okay in India.”

Fearless and forward, Hitler drives an autorickshaw, a kind of motorized taxi, around the streets of Chennai. In his effusive “smoker’s gargle,” he delivers pronouncements like, “All life good life. Happy days!” He has a unique gift for loving life, and passing on that appreciation. Everyone who gets on his auto leaves smiling.

A few chance encounters turned Nicole into a fast friend. Once, Hitler spotted her at the bus stop and pulled over. As they drove, “fast even by normally crazy rickshaw standards,” he filled her in on his sick wife, the school for handicapped children where he sometimes works, and his life philosophy, dodging streetlife and livestock the whole time. Numbers and invitations were exchanged. “I think God think very well of Hitler today, to see my friend again,” he said. “I very thankful for good luck and wonderful life. All good life always!”

You can read Hitler’s story at Happy Days for Hitler, where Nicole is chronicling his struggle to purchase his own auto; about $660 USD would change his life. His wife’s medical bills, the debts from renting the rickshaw, and a new baby on the way won’t make it easy, but Hitler is unflappable. He will write “Happy Day” across the front of his auto when he gets it, he says. “Because now is today, and today is happy.”

“If you can spare a few dollars, all of them go so far here,” Nicole writes. You can donate here. “No matter what else I do this year, I would be most proud if my last view at the airport was Hitler waving from his own auto.”