India's biggest metros continue to straddle opposite worlds. The modern co-exists with the decadent, and there's no better way to experience the dichotomy than taking a ride in old world transport. Rocky Thongam in Delhi, Kathakali Jana in Kolkata, and Kumar Siddharth in Pune show you how
India's biggest metros continue to straddle opposite worlds. The modern co-exists with the decadent, and there's no better way to experience the dichotomy than taking a ride in old world transport. Rocky Thongam in Delhi, Kathakali Jana in Kolkata, and Kumar Siddharth in Pune show you how
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It is not without misgivings that I hurl myself onto a rickshaw at Kumartuli (the alley of potters), one sleepy afternoon in mid-November.
Given north Kolkata's infamous potholes, I can only hope that the rickshaw puller will not loosen his grip on the handlebar and send me flying on to the narrow asphalt road that lies beneath. For this centuries-old transport -- brought into Kolkata by the Chinese long before the British arrived -- is as whimsical as it is pocket-friendly. Perched on it, your life and limbs are in the hands of a frail man (he is always frail) manoeuvring it.
With one lurch of the stomach, I embark on a roller coaster ride through an ancient bastion of old Kolkata. Since the middle of the 17th century, the potters here have produced clay idols of gods and goddesses. But it's an idle time of the year for the artisans now, and only hay frames stand somewhat uncertainly in front of rundown potters' studios. The once-opulent houses in the neighbourhood, with louvred wooden windows and peeling-off plaster, wear a romantic melancholia around them.
When I alight from the rickshaw -- in one piece -- I'm so glad I pay the rickshaw puller Rs 40; a good Rs 10 more than he had bargained for. I am staggered by the nostalgia I feel for a time that was simpler.
Tram
Will cost you: Rs 4
An electric tramcar trundles along a narrow street with shops, temples, old mansions and a million other structures hemming in, almost threatening to choke the life out of it. Rabindra Sarani, also called Chitpur, is a part of old Kolkata that holds the microcosm of a great city gone mad. With a tram track that has been there since the early 1900s, this long, meandering thoroughfare -- probably the city's oldest -- touches base with Rabindranath Tagore's family mansion and leads to Dalhousie Square, the Bengal government's hub.
Cloaked by a thick film of hazy timelessness and oblivious to the chaos around it, Chitpur Road pulsates with the energy of a full-of-beans old man raring to go. Inside the tram, I am charmed by the gentle tinkle of a bell. It announces that the tramcar is ready to stop and disgorge its contents on the street. The ceiling is fitted with quaint electric fans encased in metal cages to keep the interiors cool. I am on a transport that is on a heroic mission to defy time. Doggedly emission-free, it rolls along its course in a laid-back manner. When I get off at Dalhousie Square, I am poorer by Rs 4 but rich with a longing for the vanishing values of an unpolluted, unhurried world.
Pune
Horse ride
Will cost you: Rs 40
Saras Baug is where you see happy faces, usually on horseback. Besides being popular with tourists, it's where kids and their parents head to once the exams wrap up. The horsemen waiting around Saras Baug Park to take you round the periphery of the stadium for as little as Rs 40. "We have around 10 horses, and we make an average of 30 rounds a day," says Wasim Shiekh, a caretaker. Unlike the tonga and ghoda-gadi joyrides around Pune, the horseback savari at Saras Baug is offered all through the year. "We have a dull season during the monsoon, and that's when we rent out the horses for theatre shoots and marriages," says Rushab Chaudhary, a horse owner whose family has been in the business for five generations.
Delhi
Tonga ride
Will cost you: Rs 10 to Rs 15
The year was 1959, and happiness was paying Delhi a visit. Waheeda Rehman in Guru Dutt's Kaagaz Ke Phool was nudging the city's aashiqs in a love pit beyond redemption. The Delhi zoo was adding an untamed twist to its character that the children relished. Theatre director Ebrahim Alkazi had his sleeves rolled up, and was helping his students build the amphitheatre at the National School of Drama, brick-by-brick. And a charismatic rebel called Che Guevara was paying the city a visit as part of a goodwill tour.
But Yash Pal Kohli had a different reason to smile. It was the year the young refugee from Pakistan received his tonga gadi driver's license from the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. The strapping Punjabi lad was finally part of a proud practice; a tradition which he would witness withering pitiably in the coming years.
The Delhi of today might have actually forgotten flipping tales and flying manes in the midst of the Skoda's purr. But there are those who still like their tonga ride. In recent years, as a part of MCD's drive to beautify the capital, tongas have been banned from plying in most areas. But some pockets like Qutab Road in old Delhi are partial to drivers like Kohli. "When I first arrived in Delhi, I couldn't connect with a city of malls and discotheques. I ended up finding sanity in old Delhi. A tonga ride through the bustling Sadar Bazaar helped me fight loneliness," says actor Sanjay Singh, who makes his debut in Anurag Kashyap's upcoming film, Gangs of Wasseypur.
Singh, an NSD graduate says he owes his evolution as an actor to Kohli and his tribe. "I used to ride through Jama Masjid, Sadar Bazaar, Red Fort, Chandni Chowk and Khari Baoli. As I started talking to the tongawalas, I saw a Delhi that existed before I was born. When men like Kohli started plying in 1959, Delhi wanted to escape the scars of Partition. Cinema was the big escape; people would visit theatres, decked up, and take a ride on these tongas," he says.
It was more than a means of transport. "The process of dressing up in finery, sitting in the back seat of the carriage and enjoying the sites on their way to the theatre -- it was a joyride that kids and women looked forward to."
The 1950s saw more than 6,000 tongas ply on Delhi's roads. "Life was simpler then. The Hackney horses came for Rs 300, and a tonga cost a little less. We use to wear a uniform, and you could take any route to go anywhere," remembers Kohli, who now ferries passengers only from Qutab Road to the railway station.
"During one of the floods in the 1950s, I saved almost 30 people in Kailash Nagar, thanks to this tonga. The cars and jeeps were useless in the water. Only these brave horses could ride through."
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