The New Nation - Internet Edition

BSS, Dhaka

Horse-drawn carriages, popularly known as tomtom, said to be introduced by a local king and once the major mode of transport for the then elite of the historic city of Dhaka, are now limping to survive.

The carriage owners fear that in the near future there will not be a single carriage available in the city as their next generations are not interested in continuing the trade of the traditional transport due to soaring costs and the lure of other professions to earn more.

Once a regular mode of transport, the horse-drawn carriages are now patronised on different occasions like wedding, Eid Day or Pahela Baishakh. Besides, the carts are used in ferrying passengers in the old part of Dhaka city and rented by filmmakers and producers of dramas.

Nizamuddin, a driver of a carriage, told BSS that carrying passengers, they can earn only the feeding cost of the animals and pay remuneration to the drivers. "Our main source of income is letting the carts to filmmakers or drama producers. Giving rent to marriage parties also fetches a good amount," he said.

The city, which stepped into its 400-year, once had about 800 traditional box-type carts which had disappeared, decades back, failing to compete with paddle-rickshaws and mechanised three- wheelers. Now the city has only 26 of the rickshaw-type carriages.

No wonder, conscious of the unequal competition they would face, the horse-drawn carriage drivers had bitterly opposed the introduction of the paddle-rickshaws, still a popular transport mode, when they arrived from an East Asian country early in the 1940s.

The horses are emaciated, as the owners cannot afford to feed them well due to fodder costs, said Abul Hossain, another man in the trade. "You see, price of fodder has gone several times higher. In such a situation we can't afford to offer the animals enough to keep them healthy," he said.

Usually the carriages do not come to new Dhaka and if they come, there are hundreds of onlookers on both sides of streets watching the mode of transport, the body of which are decorated with fauna, film stars and other natural beauties. When asked Joynal Abedin, a man around 80 plus, who has four carriages, said, "So far I know the transport was introduced by the king of Bhawal, who survived a killing plot by his wife, around 45 km north of Dhaka. He used this mode to come to Dhaka often, but I can't say the exact time. Only I can say it was during the British rule."

These carts were out of reach of general people at the initial stage as they were used by the rulers of Dhaka and the elite, said Joynal, who migrated to the then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, from India after the British left the sub-continent in 1947.

"It has become very difficult to continue with our forefathers' trade as we have to import the animals from India as they are not available in Bangladesh and as the price of the horses have jumped up several times," he said.

Joynal, father of three sons and five daughters, said only one of his sons is now engaged in their forefathers' trade as the rest are not interested in continuing it because of poor income.