CMYK
A HY-HY
WHEELS
Can’t say I wasn’t warned.Friends who’d been to Dhakabefore told me not to makeelaborate plans; the traffi��cwouldn’t allow me to getaround much.
I’d thought, but traffi��c ispretty bad everywhere. Del-hi, Mumbai, Bengaluru...How much worse could Dha-ka’s traffi��c be? Well, let’s justsay that it lived up to its repu-tation.
I was participating in theDhaka Literature Festival anddiscovered that the tiniestcommute required a fewhours of traffi��c time. It tookan hour to drive a stretch thatone could walk in 20 mi-nutes. When the car didmove, it didn’t move smooth-ly. Other writers, especiallythose who were not used tothe chaos of the Subconti-nent, were made nervous by
the jerky, forward-sidewaysstyle of progress. Comingfrom India, I knew there waslittle danger at those speeds.
However, speeds are notalways so slow and there is al-ways some danger. Dhakadiscovered this in recentmonths, after an accident ledto a major political confron-tation. The city was broughtto a standstill by teenagers,after two school studentswere killed through rash driv-ing and several were injured.
Accidents are a majorcause of death in South Asia.India reportedly witnesses400 fatalities every day, androad accidents are one of thetop 10 causes of death in thecountry. But in Dhaka, so-mething else was brewing.Students weren’t just protest-ing the deaths of two kids.They were also reacting toeverything else that’s wrongon the road. Nobody ob-serves any rules; there’s no
lane discipline. There aren’tenough state-owned buses.Private transporters, many ofthem politically connected,don’t train drivers properly.Most bus and car drivers arevery poorly paid and have nojob security. Many of themdon’t even have licences.
Children were trying toshame the police into doing
their job. They turned out inschool uniforms and set up‘check points’ where theychecked licences, scoldedtraffi��c violators, demandedthat the traffi��c cops take ac-tion. Soon, the movementgot bigger. University stu-dents joined the protests and
now the government becameanxious. College studentstend to be more politicallyaware.
Perhaps, the governmentwas afraid that oppositionparties would capitalise onthe student agitation — andthere is a lot to be agitatedabout — or perhaps the lea-dership just didn’t knowwhat to do with their demon-stration of anger. The out-come, anyway, was the pol-ice aggression. Some‘clashes’ were reported, butsome of the violence was al-legedly caused by youths affi��-liated with the ruling party.Photos and videos of the at-tacks were a further embar-rassment for the govern-ment.
Again, instead of en-gaging or promising ap-propriate action, thestate tried to stifl��e allcriticism. Photogra-pher Shahidul Alam
was arrested and chargedwith making ‘provocativecomments’ after he shared avideo on Facebook andtalked to Al Jazeera about thereasons for the protests. He’sout on bail now, but thecharges haven’t been with-drawn.
All that time I was stuck inthat infamous traffi��c, Ichafed. Why are we obsessedwith motor transport in over-populated cities? Why don’tour governments move to fi��xproblems before the tippingpoint arrives? Why don’t weincentivise cheap, eco-friendly modes of transportlike bicycles? Someonecribbed about cycle rick-shaws slowing down Dhaka’straffi��c, but that isn’t true. Thesensible thing would be tocreate dedicated cycle andcycle rickshaw lanes tostreamline fl��ow, and to makesure that students and thepoor don’t get hurt.
All it would take is for theleadership to be open to dia-logue, to not panic in the faceof criticism, to not suspectpeople’s motives. They elect-ed you, after all. Didn’t they?
The author is a writer of essays,stories, poems and scripts forstage and screen
More dialogue, less suspicion Why are weobsessed withmotor transport inover-populatedcities? Why don’tour governmentsmove to fi��xproblems beforethe tipping pointarrives?
:: Annie Zaidi
Students raise slogans During a protest over the recent traffi��c accidents that killed a boy and agirl, in Dhaka, Bangladesh * MOHAMMAD PONIR HOSSAIN
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The sensible thingwould be to creatededicated cycle andcycle rickshaw lanesto streamline fl��ow
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TAIL LIGHT
COMMUTER KNOW-HOW
Dhaka is known to be theworld’s RickshawCapital, with morethan 8,00,000rickshaw pullers inthe city.
October 15, 1923 was yet anothermellow Monday morning inBombay, but the city’s centraldistrict of Grant Road was ablazewith blaring music. The erst-while Bombay Weightlifting Clubhad organised a send-off�� for sixof its young members — Adi BHakim, Gustad G Hathiram, Jal PBapasola, Keki D Pochkhanawa-la, Nariman B Kapadia and Rus-tom B Bhumgara — all of themParsis in their 20s and readyingfor their cycling expeditionaround the world, a fi��rst suchfeat by Indians.
What had inspired them toundertake this seemingly-impos-sible journey? “It was a publiclecture at Bombay’s Oval Maidanin 1920 by a French man whohad walked from Europe to In-dia,” reminisces 75-year-old Ro-hinton Bhumgara. Rohinton isfoggy about the name of theworld-walker, who eventuallydied of malaria in Assam, on hisway to South-East Asia. Says Jas-mine Marshall, granddaughterof Adi Hakim, “There was an ex-traordinary zeal of adventure inmy granddad. ‘Nothing is impos-sible’, he would often tell me.”
The fi��rstAdi, Jal and Rustom pedalled71,000 km over four-and-a-halfyears — at times in 60oC, for dayswithout food and some dayswithout water, across pirate-in-fested territories and in swamplands, through dense junglesand “up 6,600 ft amongst theterrible solitudes of the Alps”,avoiding the sea and traversingover most diffi��cult routes, whereno cyclists had been before. “We
wanted to know the world moreintimately and to acquaint theworld with India and Indians,”they noted years later.
Not all six completed the ride,though. Nariman returned homefrom Tehran “for personal rea-sons” after giving “us companyfor 5,000 miles”, and Gustad de-
cided to make the US his home.Disheartened by this, Gustad’sclose buddy, Keki sailed homefrom New York.
On their expedition, the cy-clists pedalled through Punjaband Baluchistan, crossing Pros-pect Point in Ziarat, 11,000 feetabove sea level and in snow,
reaching Iran and then Baghdad.Braving sandstorms, parchedthroats, temperatures over 57°Cand saved from imminent deathby Bedouins, they set a record bycrossing the 956-km Mesopota-mian desert from Baghdad toAleppo in Syria, in 23 days.
They sailed to Italy, rode overthe Alps, across Europe, fi��nallyreaching Britain. Three weeks la-ter, they sailed to New York. Thethreesome cycled 8,400 kmacross the East to West Coast ov-er fi��ve months and boarded S STenyo Maru to Japan, a leisurelycruise after months of grillingrides.
Continuing their journeys,they reached the ‘Hermit King-dom’ of Korea — the fi��rst bikersto do so — and on to Manchuriaand China. On their last leg, theycycled through Vietnam, Cam-bodia, Thailand, Burma, NorthEastern India, Calcutta andSouthern India, returning toBombay on March 18, 1928. Theyrecalled being “surrounded bypeople who had come to receiveus… and garlanded till we wereburied in fl��owers” and hopedthat their city would welcome“Scouter F J Davar, who is short-ly due in Bombay on the conclu-sion of a similar enterprise.”
Going soloFramroze Davar, 30, was to re-turn home only in 1931. His was afar more adventurous, lengthier,and in-part, solitary journey for“rational curiosity”, beginningin January 1924, and totalling1,10,000 km, 52 countries andfi��ve continents. The 30-year olddid not compress his account ina single volume, as it could be “abook of geography gone mad”.He chronicled his arduous rideover the Andes Mountains in Cy-cling Over Roof Of The World(1929), risky passage throughSahara in Across The Sahara(1937) and crossing of the Ama-zon in The Amazon in Realityand Romance (1960).
He had cycled more than5,000 km entirely on his own,for 11 months! In Vienna, he metGustav Sztavjanik, his cyclingmate for the next seven years.The duo cycled through Westernand Eastern Europe, rode overthe Alps and Mont Blanc moun-tain, pedalled through parts oferstwhile Soviet Union, Balticcountries, Poland, and Scandi-navia, including Lapland, andreturned to France 18 months la-ter, to sail to Algiers in Africa.They tortured themselves
through the Sahara, counting156 camel skeletons along theway, surviving eight sandstorms,and a malaria attack. After cy-cling through Africa for anothersix months, they boarded a shipfrom Dakar to Rio de Janeiro, totake on their next big challenge,riding over the mighty Andes.Six months and 2,700 km later,they reached Argentina fromBrazil, and scaled the Andes upto a height of 5,200m.
America was a relief. They gotback to their saddles, cyclingfrom the East to West Coast, lec-turing and meeting dignitaries,including President HerbertHoover and tycoon Henry Ford,before sailing to Japan. Theysailed to Shanghai, cycledthrough Hong Kong, Singapore,Sumatra, Burma, Calcutta andBombay on March 22, 1931.
The last lotLuck and the exciting accounts
tempted yet one more — and thelast — group of cyclists, Keki JKharas, Rustam D Ghandhi andRutton D Shroff��. “We were allthoroughly and hopelessly af-fl��icted with wanderlust,” theywrote in Across The Highways OfThe World (1939). Setting off��from Bombay in 1933, they cy-cled through central and north-ern India, Punjab, Kashmir, Mul-tan and Baluchistan (then a partof India).
“In Afghanistan, we were ma-rooned in the desert for threesuccessive days and nights with-out either food or water and tra-versed on camel and donkey
tracks; we were snow-bound innorthern Iran; and were suspect-ed as British spies in eastern Tur-key,” they wrote in PedallingThrough the Afghan Wilds(1935).
Keki, Rustam and Rutton cy-cled through Bulgaria, Yugosla-via, Hungary, Austria, Germany,Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Bri-tain, France, Spain, Switzerlandand Italy. They sailed to Alexan-dria and pedalled “twenty-onemonths across Africa, from Cairoto Cape Town, a distance of12,000 miles (nearly 20,000km). We were fortuitously savedoftener than we can recall.”
In 1937, the trio sailed fromSouth Africa to Argentina andcruised through South and Cen-tral America until they reachedMexico and rode into USA fromTexas. They spent a year cyclingthrough the ‘New World’ andtouching the borders of Canada.From USA, they sailed to Japan
and cycled across Japan, China,Australia, Singapore and Burma,before reaching Bombay on Ja-nuary 29, 1942. In slightly lessthan nine years, Kharas, Ghand-hi and Shroff�� had traversed84,000 km, spanning fi��ve conti-nents.
Our Saddles, Our Butts, TheirWorld is a photo exhibition ofthe cyclists, to be held in Reel-sOnHeels, India’s First-ever In-ternational Festival of Films onRunning, December 1 and 2,2018 at Ravindra Bhavan, Mar-gao, Goa, curated by formerMumbai-based journalist andnow avid cyclist, Anoop Babani
360°Between 1923 and 1933, 10 Indians in theirearly-to-mid-20s — all of them Parsis andfrom Mumbai — undertook cyclingexpeditions around the world. Seven ofthem, in three diff��erent journeys,succeeded in their pursuit
:: Anoop Babani
on a bicycle
Cycling chronicles (clockwise from top left) Kharas trio in New York,Framroze Davar after crossing Sahara, Hakim Trio back in Bombay in1928, and Kharas trio in Bombay at the start of their journey *SPECIALARRANGEMENT
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Q AND A WITH HORMAZD
Hormazd Sorabjee is the Editor of AutocarIndia. Mail your feedback and queries [email protected]
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