I am probably not wrong in assuming that the design of The Rear Engine Diesel Auto is developed in India. It is no Lamborghini. It stands in the front row to win the prize for being the most unwieldy, uncomfortable, unsightly, dangerous and noisy passenger vehicle in the world. I f I introduced this beast to you all as a textile mill with three wheels, you would easily believe me.
If you have week knees and you have just got down at the
railway station with 15 kilos of luggage, it is simpler for you to walk a few
kilometres to home rather than try to get in one of these monstrosities.
You could politely ask the driver to get you a six inch high step to climb onto
before you step on the floor of the auto but the chances of getting it are
bleak. They don’t have a six inch step or any other step.
When you sit on the passenger seat and it has not started,
you get a good commanding view of the surroundings. Then the driver disappears
towards the rear of the auto and starts it with a rope. The drivers need
fairly good back muscles to start the auto because they bend and tie a piece of
rope on a shiny wheel and then pull with all their might as if trying to pull
out a fat carrot from the soil by grabbing its top. This `rope
trick’ wakes up the giant from its sleep and it goes `THUK’ one
time and then another time after a second and then many
quick THUK THUK s in a row, until the driver comes out of his hiding from
behind the auto and takes the controls. He puts his hand on the accelerator and
hell breaks loose, THAKKAAD, Thukk, chick thakkad THUK DUK Thakkadd, Thuk chick
chchick, tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk THAKKAD, THUK THUK Dhik DHIK Dhik
Thakkadd .
The only thing that separates your own batootie from this
desperate sounding machine is a thin piece of foam on a thin piece of ply wood
or metal. It is inadequate to say the least. The vibration and sound
permeates to all parts of your being, you cant hear any thing else, you are
shaking uncontrollably, you smell something burning under you and wonder if it
is the seat of your pants, the seat also gets heated . You also cannot see any
thing clearly because you including eyes are shaking, every thing is a blur.
Finally it starts to move, Please read the Thakkad thuk
chick, thakkad thuck chchick three times faster and three times louder to get
the effect right, The feeling is the direct opposite of `simply
heaven’ as described in a suiting’s advert. Also the suspension
of the bloody gizmo comes into action. It seems they replaced the shock
absorbers with two pieces of Bamboo of equal length and diameter. The
combined effect of the shock giving capacity of the auto and the
unexpected-ness and size of Dehradun potholes can shift
somebody,s vertebrae inches away from their original position. To aid
this readjustment of the spine comes the back rest which is a piece of wood,
all of ten inches wide
.
The seat is inspired by the old Hyderabad Pedal rickshaw.
The seat of this auto was designed for midgets, if you are medium height and
place your bum on the seat and your feet in the space in front , then your
thighs will be up in the air because the seat is 12 inches higher than
the place where you put your feet, you can semi squat or you can sit in a
semi crossed leg position so that the sides of your shoes are resting below and
there is no grip, you hold on to an assortment of pipes on which the canvas on
top is strung to prevent yourself from falling off.
I got into one on a cold winter morning coming back from the
railway station so I also experienced its wonderful device for preventing the
draught from hitting the body . There were two large rolled up curtains
which came down on both open sides of the auto. These things were tied up
somewhere near the floor with a long loose string. The draught was channelized
onto my face rather than getting stopped. The whole curtain also kept
flying off totally and exposing me completely, it made a large
sound, a PHACHACK SWISH PHACHACK SWISH when it
came back after flying for a minute, I was powerless to stop it
because I was hanging on for my spinal chord and my life with my frozen
hands, once or twice this huge dusty curtain hit me hard physically on my
leg. I wasn’t even able to prevent my luggage from shifting from left to
right and polishing the dirty metal floor clean because i had no spare hands or
legs.
It didn’t have to brake much because there wasn’t much
traffic in the early morning but it all had to end and it had to stop when it
reached my house, a loud screech emanated from under the auto but nothing else
happened. I thought he was going to overshoot my house, then
the screech grew louder and louder, enough to wake the neighbours
and then it stopped suddenly. So suddenly that I and my baggage got lifted from
our awkward positions and got plastered on the back of the auto driver and
the cold metal pipes supporting his seat.
Fortunately I got away with a mild backache, a head cold and
a minor dacoity. No limbs were lost and vertebrae have more or less held, but
that is only because I eat my vitamins on time.
I am going to do two things. One I am going to
strongly recommend that you first look at the auto before you agree to
get into one, reject the one described above. India still produces
low floor, quiet and comfortable autos. Secondly i am going to file a
public interest litigation against those who allowed these horrors to come onto
the road. Join the petition.
Param Jigyasu
You can write to me at paramjigyasu7@gmail.com
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