Some get nostalgic when they see cotton candy or watch old movies but for me a tonga (horse-drawn vehicle) ride unfailingly evokes myriad memories of yore.
Though it was an old world, long dead, it still has left an indelible mark on my childhood memories, impossible to expunge.
The rhythm of the horse's hoof beats … clip-clop, clip-clop reminds me of my Montessori days when the horse-drawn vehicle used to ferry me from Montessori school to home.
I still remember the tiny tots covered in baby powder, saliva and fears of the strange world cling to the cart amid the putrid smell of long-stored hay and straw stacked under the cart seats to feed the horse. Thanks to the open structure of the cart and the breezy ride, the children on the front seat gaped at the way the rider held the reins of the horse and wielded his whip.
Though we knew that using the whip made the horse move faster, still our gullible minds were not left untouched by the thought of pain it might have caused to the horse. In other words wielding the whip may be the rider's forte but in my mind it created an impression of an insensitive man.
The children sitting in the back seat envied the fat lady caretaker sitting beside them for her freedom from academics. Nobody appeared luckier than her. I could still feel the caretaker's fleshy hands holding us to the cart like straps across our chests, preventing us from slipping down those slippery red seats. As the cheap artificial leather couldn't breathe, the accumulation of sweat made it extra slippery.
My Montessori from day one was a place where I used to go to late in the morning and come back late in the afternoon.
Tired of the new world's wooden puzzles, picture dictionaries, rhymes, discipline lessons, toilet training and the stone-hard cart seats, most of us tiny-tots wanted to skip back into our warm familiar cocoons.
Playing hide-and-seek
Gone are the days when the late afternoon sun seemed to frolic with us while the tonga made its way back to drop us home. Sun filtered through the branches of the banyan tree and made patterns akin to jigsaw pieces on our bare, dangling legs. It played hide-and-seek with the buildings and trees along the way. In the evening, children who got home earlier waved goodbye happily to the woebegone-faced ones.
This joy-ride, the most common means of transport in urban India and Pakistan until the 1980s is not a commuting option any longer. Now it has become less popular for utilitarian travel and more popular for pleasure rides for tourists.
Amid whistles of trains, pom-pom of cars and whoosh of metros, the clip-clop joy ride, synonymous with the old-day charm has faded away on a sour note.
A tonga seems to be an anachronism and might be placed as a curio in our museums in future. I feel lucky to be born in that era where I have seen the transition: a vintage lifestyle with tonga and rickshaws to the modern fast-paced automobiles.
Ritu Dokania is an author based in Dubai.
