She looks and dresses like a traditional Indian woman, yet she speaks with an American-Italian Brooklyn accent.
Maria Provenzano Singh is also one of the few women cab drivers in New York City.
Recently, a young man pulled out a gun at the end of the ride in Harlem. She sped away, the cab's door slammed closed by the speed, and then continued working all day. "You can't be afraid and do this job," she says.
The 57-year-old emigrated to the US with her family when she was a toddler, but she has not spoken to her relatives for years after falling in love with, and marrying, a Sikh man from the Punjab.
"If they can't accept him, they can't accept me," she says with a calm smile.
She loves her husband, likes his religion and enjoys cooking Indian food. In August, she and her husband will leave New York to run a gas station in the Midwest state of Indiana.
In this First Person account Maria explains why Italian and Sikh culture have a lot in common:
"I'm Italian and I grew up in a very Italian household. My father and mother had a beautiful loving marriage and I had an older brother who was my best friend. I came to New York City when I was three. When I was a young girl I always dreamed that I would get married at the altar at the St. Patrick's cathedral. I married a Sikh and I got married in a gurdwara, a Sikh temple and still my heart is there. I tease my husband, I say, "When we're married 25 years, very soon, we'll get married as Americans." So I could go to St. Patrick's!
This is my Taxi. My yellow girlfriend I call it. I spend more time with her than I spend with my family. Some of the men don't respect you. Sometimes I wish I had boxing gloves on my side mirrors. It's tough. People as me why I like driving a taxi. It's the freedom of being your own boss and it's knowledge. You learn the city, you learn people's moods, sometimes you're a psychiatrist for people, you're like a bartender, or a cop without a gun.
Unfortunately my distant relatives never accepted my husband because he was Punjabi and Sikh. So if they can't accept him than they can't accept me.
Sikhs are very much like the Italians. The family structure is very much so. Everybody get's together, everybody loves each other, everybody's caring.
You name it, I cook it. It's the same vegetables we cook in Italy but just with curry. Instead of garlic and olive oil, it's curry, it's the same things. I make broccoli raw but I make it in saag. I make spinach but I make it maybe with some potatoes or chick peas now in curry. Everything is the same but the quickest way to a man's heart in any culture is through his stomach.
I think my heart is Punjabi but my heart is always Italian. I'm still Maria Provenzano at heart, not just Maria Singh."
Video courtesy of theworldvideos1.