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Tuesday, August 01, 2017

Rickshaw Tales


Rickshaws tell tales





Dont know how many of my FB friends have seen this antiquated and unfair transport where a human being pulls another !
Strangely in the sixties in madras todays Chennai it wasnt frowned upon at all !
None of us felt bad about it too ...
It was just a way to get around nearby places and a livelihood for many .
 


 





In fact we had regulars
I still remember one vadivelu who was was our resident rickshaw man .
In the days of no mobile iam wondering how he reached in time for any need
Probably his local rickshaw stand conveyed him the info if he wasnt around .
As a child i had gone in them too but mostly we were made to walk and not take rickshaws .

My father who was working in Madras Secretariat ,there was no Tamilnadu at that time ,also walked to the bus stand to catch the city bus to his office .
He used Vadivelu only when he wasnt well , to go to the clinic of his doctor nearby .
My father unfortunately had many sicknesses though he neither smoked nor drank and had very clean punctual habits .
I rememeber his last journey too in the rickshaw .
As a ten year old i used to like going with him to the clinic and watch Dr Mohan Kumaresh his physician crack jokes with him as to the young doctor my dad was more of a friend and a neighbour as his in laws were our neighbours .
Never did I think that it was during one of those visits my father would be declared dead by the same handsome doctor !
Never did i also realise that the same doctor would recognise a shy me standing with the new third MBBS students in his OP in Royapettah hospital years later and would tell in front of all students
now Hari will answer the question
for he rememberd the child me walking to his clinic with his dad years back .
On that fateful thursday evening my dad wasnt feeling too well and as usual i prepared to go with him to the clinic
I kept his slippers to be worn on the wrong side and i remember my mother telling me
hari ur dad isnt well today keep it properly
which i did and then by intution my dad asked my mother to go with him and me to stay home with my sister .
They both got into the richkshaw and on the way my dad just dipped his head and said goodbye to all .
A life of scholarlines simplicity honesty and hard work for his family disappeared in a second .
A perfect intelligent loving person who i had seen only for ten years in my life but still remembered after 5 decades left the world in a rickshaw
http://hariwrite.blogspot.com/…/tale-of-narayanan-kutty-it-…
How can i forget the Rickshaw ?
The fotos of rickshaws were taken by me in kolkata when i went there three years back
Rickshaw tales





1 comment:

Maddy said...

I remember the ones we used to take in Chalappuram,
in case the kids were a bit sick with a cold or something, we would have a rickshaw man pulling us from Chalappuram to Ganapati school.

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