Pip Eastop – Hornplayer

“Kolkata”, sounds like the name of an opera by Janacek. I much prefer “Calcutta”, with its whiff of Gilbert & Sullivan and afternoon tea.

After the hotel welcoming rituals of melon juice, flowers and a friendly bullet through the forehead, the first thing that happened was that my horn broke (see “my (other) horn broke“). All I did was to pick my horn up …and the finger-plate of the first valve lever fell off leaving a sharp spike which threatened to disembowel my index finger if I tried to use it.

I had to think of a swift repair – quite a challenge given where we were. I figured that a combination of Araldite (Epoxy Resin glue) and wire ties might work. Suddenly our free day in Calcutta took on shape and form, so I sought the company of my photographic assistant and side-kick, Peter, and over a long breakfast of many curries and a masala dosa, we hatched our mission objectives.

• Take a tuktuk into the centre of Calcutta and take thousands of photographs.
• Find a shop sellling tabla, see how much they cost, try them out, make some noise.
• Get some Araldite and some tying wire.
• Eat more curries.

The “Tuktuk” is a form of transport. These tiny three-wheeled road vehicles, with a single seat in front for the driver and a double seat in the back for anything up to seventeen passengers, are everywhere in India. A tuktuk is fun to ride, and Calcutta is the funnest place to ride one. It is a cross between a taxi and a fairground dodgem and is the cheapest and most fun way of getting about in India’s cities. There must be literally millions of them, with a thousand new ones coming off production lines every day. Most owners tend to go for a fashionable beaten-up look and commonly fit special exhaust systems to make them sound like road-drills or Kalashnikov assault rifles. Custom paint-jobs lending a veteran-of-WW2-desert-battle effect are much in vogue and some of the more hard-core tuktuk drivers go even further, stripping out the suspension for a really bone-shattering ride. For fuel they can run on pretty much anything: petrol, diesel, urine, goat dung or bundles of filthy rags.

Tuktuks can also double up as mobile Hindu shrines containing effigies of, for example, Ganesh the elephant god or Fungus the Bogeyman. Obscuring the payment meter with a sacramental shroud seems to be an obligatory religious ritual of most tuktuk drivers. Not all Indians are cowboys but some tuktuk drivers are.

Rules for tuktuk drivers in Calcutta traffic:

• Change lane immediately.
• Change lane again, immediately.
• Honk your horn continuously unless stopped at traffic lights.
• Turn engine off at traffic lights and go to sleep.
• Never hesitate.
• Drive straight at it, whatever it is.
• Smile benignly and relax.
• Perform a gratuitous u-turn every now and again.
• Take your passengers to better destinations than the ones they suggest.

Rules for tuktuk passengers in Calcutta traffic:

• Keep your limbs within the metal framework of the tuktuk (if there is any left).
• Frown anxiously and tense up.
• Be open and accepting of destinations not of your choice.
• Wear spotlessly clean undergarments.
• Carry an organ donor kebab card.
• Refuse to pay.
• Make sure you know the way (because your driver won’t)

…..to be continued….