Caterpillars I know

Arjun Mukherjee

Flashback
Is it farcical or simply stupid to imagine that Calcutta once had a bunch of thousand horses to yank trams?
The first horse-drawn tram rolled out on a metre gauge track on February 24, 1873. Enterprising!
Steam locomotives were once deployed to haul trams as a matter of consequential examination.
We were the only trams in the world to still use the foot for the foot gong. Soul-stirring in terms of advance achieved!

A Toast to Trams
Trams to me were good-natured caterpillars.
Genteel, the exact word.
The ‘conductors’ were mostly of the agreeable, easygoing species. Their laid back attitude suggested a sociable, friendly company.

Well mannered
The caterpillars remain cleansed.
An untainted, upright, exemplary champion on Calcutta’s pollution standards.
They have the decency and straight lines to follow and do not add to the unsystematic, slapdash, chaotic traffic hodgepodge.
Why does Toronto or Honk Kong believe that trams are imperative and not dispensable?
Why are some of us so averse and disinclined without an option or substitute?
Must we remain perpetually obstinate and blind?
One hundred and forty years of endurance in a city that has chaotically travelled towards the past and in reverse, is not for nothing.

Tailpiece
Has anyone seen a Sikh tram driver? Just one of Calcutta’s oddities!
I knew of a warmhearted industrialist who used to take morning walks just for the joy of taking a tram! Freakish?
Not a heinous crime if you still have liberal doses of romance left in you.
You don’t have to be quixotic either.