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yellow cab when the first blow came. A meat cleaver sliced open the
back of his head and everything flashed white. The sun had not yet
risen over the stretch of attached brick two-story houses on 62nd
Street in Woodside, Queens; it was 5 a.m.
Debindra Chhantyal and Pema Sherpa both attended the same taxi-driving school in Jackson Heights, top.
The cleaver came down again,
this time on Mr. Sherpa’s chest, chopping through the layers of
clothing he had donned against the early-morning chill. And again,
slicing gashes into the rubber soles of his sneakers.
Bleeding on the pavement, Mr. Sherpa beheld his attacker: Debindra Chhantyal, his mild-mannered partner and countryman.
Each
man had come from Nepal over the past decade, and attended the same
taxi-training school in Jackson Heights. For a year, they had split the
$1,400-per-week leasing fee on a yellow cab, Medallion 6M83, trading
12-hour shifts behind the wheel, seven days a week.
They seemed
to be running side by side on a familiar treadmill. But their lives
were actually mirror images of the immigrant experience in New York.
Mr.
Sherpa, 28, drove days, chauffeuring strivers bound for business
meetings, power lunches and auditions. Mr. Chhantyal, 30, shepherded
the denizens of New York’s nightlife, the decadent and the dangerous.
Mr.
Sherpa, also known as licensed taxi driver No. 5301202, had succeeded
in attaining his asylum visa, and recently married a cheerful Nepali
woman here who encouraged his Buddhist faith. He adored playing with
their baby daughter, and spent evenings on the soccer field with
friends. Mr. Chhantyal, driver No. 5303727, had grown increasingly
worried that he would be deported after his coming immigration
hearing. He had few friends, shared a small, spartan apartment with two
other night cabbies, and suspected that his wife, back home in Nepal,
had taken up with another man.
And Mr. Chhantyal was about to
start being Mr. Sherpa’s employee instead of his partner. Mr. Sherpa
had just secured a loan to buy a 2010 Ford Escape hybrid for $30,000,
and a small metal medallion riveted to its hood: a city-issued
concession that cost him $575,000 but turned the vehicle into a 24-hour
money-making machine.
Nepali people pride themselves on being peace-loving, but also fierce fighters if provoked. They cite their countrymen known as Gurkhas, after the eighth-century Hindu warrior-saint Guru Gorakhnath, who have been part of the British Army for decades.
That
September morning on a Queens sidewalk, Mr. Chhantyal finally had the
upper hand, swinging the cleaver that he and his roommates used to chop
vegetables. Until Mr. Sherpa, on his back, somehow managed to kick the
big blade from his hands, sending it skidding under the cab.
Bleeding
profusely, the day driver leaped to his feet and ran to a nearby gas
station; he spent five days in the hospital, but survived. The night
driver hopped back into their cab and drove three minutes to the Robert
F. Kennedy Bridge, where he pulled over and leaped to his death in the
East River.
A short account of the attack appeared in The
Everest Times, which comes out every other week and has a circulation
of 2,000 — it was the newspaper’s first New York City crime story. At
first, the rumor among Nepalis was that the attacker had used the
traditional kukri dagger; soon, the details were well known and much
discussed among the patrons of the Himalayan Yak and other Nepali restaurants in Jackson Heights that double as community hubs.
Friends
and relatives of each driver said there was never any bad blood between
them. Still, Mr. Sherpa stunned Mr. Chhantyal’s relatives when he
turned up at his memorial service, cuts from the cleaver still fresh.
“There
was never any problem between us,” Mr. Sherpa said. “We are both
Nepali, but we never had much to say to each other — he kept to
himself.”
•
Mr. Sherpa received Mr. Chhantyal’s usual
wake-up call at 4 a.m. on Sept. 12. He said his morning prayers before
the Buddhist shrine he had built above the TV set, then grabbed the bag
with his soccer gear, for after his shift.
Typically Mr.
Chhantyal, to avoid complications from one-way streets, would park and
wait for Mr. Sherpa on busy Broadway, which comes to life early with
cabs and service vehicles headed toward Manhattan. But on this morning,
Mr. Sherpa saw that his partner had parked on deserted, residential
62nd Street. As usual, Mr. Chhantyal stepped out to give Mr. Sherpa the
driver’s seat. But, strangely, he let the door close and lock. As Mr.
Sherpa fished for his duplicate key, he recalled, he felt the first
blow.
“I could not understand what was happening,” Mr. Sherpa
said. “This man, my partner from my own country, he’s trying to kill
me. He was a crazy man, like he didn’t know me. He said nothing — he
just kept chopping me.”
The two men had shared little of their
personal lives, but Mr. Sherpa had never seen his partner excited or
unhinged, not even the one time Mr. Chhantyal visited his home. He came
with a mutual friend, stayed late and left drunk on the homemade rice
wine that Nepalis call chhaang, Mr. Sherpa said. Mostly, they exchanged
pleasantries for a few minutes twice daily; each Wednesday, they went
together to Woodside Management on Roosevelt Avenue, passing $700
apiece under the bulletproof glass to Sabur, the dispatcher.
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A version of this article appeared in print on December 13, 2009, on page MB1 of the New York edition.
