Kos Minar (distance markers)

We are on the old Delhi Agra highway. Here's the Kos Minar we photographed.

These were originally laid in the mid-1500's by the Pashtun ruler Sher Shah Suri along the Grand Trunk Road. Subsequently the Mughals also made a practice of erecting them.

Kos Minars served as important milestones to help measure distances in the Empire. Agra was the Mughal capital,  and from there the Kos Minars radiated outward, towards Ajmer, Lahore and Mandu (Madhya Pradesh).

All along these highways, there were forts (qilas), fortified towns (shehrs), resting places for travellers (caravanserais), stepwells (baolis), postal system (dak chowkis), and many shady trees.

The word Kos itself is confusing, because there exist in India different measures of what a Kos actually means. Kos comes from the Sanskrit krosha, and has many references in traditional Sanskrit texts. Alexander Cunningham, a British engineer, who went on to found the Archaeological Survey of India in the mid-1800s wrote about the kos measurement system in his book The Ancient Geography of India. He says that in North India, there were three widely accepted types of kos:
- the short kos, or the Padshahi kos, about 1.25 miles, used in north-west frontier and Punjab
- the kos of the Gangetic provinces, which is about 2.25 miles
- the long kos, which is used south of the Yamuna, in the Bundelkhand region, which is about 4 miles (and also used in Mysore)

Cunningham says the first two are actually part of the same system, that the Gangetic kos is just twice that of the Padshahi. Jahangir built his sarais (inns) every 8 kos, that is about 10 miles. The British, who also understood the importance of the Grand Trunk Road, chose to maintain it just like the empires before them. They  built dak-bungalows, resting houses used by officers and for postal communication, every 10 miles.

Gramin Seva - a good idea that needs stricter monitoring

If you live in a slum or village on the outskirts of Delhi, you will probably find yourself using one of these decrepit Gramin Seva vehicles for transport. 

The Gramin Seva (Village Service) vans were introduced in 2010. Licenses were granted to 6000 vehicles, mostly 3-wheelers, to ferry people from the villages and slums in the peripheral areas of Delhi. It was a great idea, to meet the needs of an expanding city. The vans offered poor people cheap connectivity to the major city junctions, from where they could further connect via metro, bus and train.

Ticket prices for Gramin Seva have always been low; they range from 5 to 10 rupees in most cases, and for longer distances it is 15 rupees. However, passengers routinely have to deal with overloading of vehicles beyond the permitted capacity of 6 adults. Owners of the vehicles say they cannot run a sustainable service, if they only take 6 people. Sometimes the vans are crammed with double the allowed capacity! The van owners do not invest in vehicle repair, and although there are norms for the quality of the vehicles, most of them are now old and falling apart.

In addition, some vehicles do not ply on their designated rural/outer routes. Instead, they choose more commercially viable routes where they are not authorised to ply (by law, they can ply only up to the Inner Ring Road; and they cannot cross the Inner Ring Road into the city). Several errant vehicles have been issued challans (traffic violation notices) by the Delhi traffic police. 

 

But if you live in a slum or farflung peripheral village, Gramin Seva is still one of the cheapest options, given the shortage of Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses in such areas. The big DTC buses cannot ply these unviable far-flung routes. In many areas, private enterprise has also stepped in to fill the gap. Many private vehicles operate as vans. In some places, there are even private bus services. 

Recently the AAP government has checked and renewed licenses for 4200 of the original 6000 Gramin Seva vehicles. Hopefully some of the really decrepit ones have been thrown out. They have made it mandatory for the vehicles to be fitted with a working GPS, so that it is easy to track whether a vehicle goes out of its assigned route. Will things improve? We can only hope!

Truck art in India - I love it :)

One of the pleasures of a driving holiday in India is the gaily painted trucks I get to see on the road.

Truck art interests me because it makes for great photography, but also because each truck "talks to me" about the owner and some of his thoughts. 

This truck above is a great example of typical Indian truck art

There are so many interesting things that this truck is telling me. For example, I know that the owner of the truck is called Choudhary. This tells me something about his ancestors. The word Choudhary originally referred to landholders who collected tax on behalf of the king, and were entitled to withhold 25% (Choudhary means "holder of a fourth"). So this particular Choudhary obviously has diversified from agriculture into the trucking business :)

Agriculture is still very much the major theme of the truck. Under the sacks of onions which the truck is carrying, you can see a scene of bucolic plenty. Buxom prosperous women with lots of jewellery, green fertile lands, plenty of water, lactating cows, fruits, vegetables, well-built village houses - each of these is a symbol for prosperity and plenty. This is Indian representational art at its folksy best.

Scenes of almost unreal rural prosperity are a common theme on Indian trucks

The Choudhary surname is widespread across North India, so just going by the name, I cannot tell where this particular guy comes from. This village scene gives me no specific clues, except that the costumes of the women are the North Indian ghagra-choli. Besides, the vehicle says it has a National Permit (NP), so it could literally be from anywhere. But the truck art gives me more clues: 

Under the title Choudhary the truck says "Veer Tejaji" in Devnagri script

Veer Teja is a folk hero from Rajasthan, so now I have my next little piece of info :) This is probably a Rajasthani Choudhary. Now I see the semi-hidden license plate, and find out it is a Goa license (GA = Goa). So maybe this Rajasthani Choudhary currently lives in Goa. Or, more likely, maybe he bought and registered the truck there for some tax break. There are two names, Vishal and Anurag, also written. Probably his sons. 

Apart from these "identifying marks", there are interesting homilies and sayings painted on the truck. 

• "Maa ka aashirvaad" (Mother's Blessings) is a very common feature of all Indian trucks, and refers to the almost divine status accorded to mothers in popular culture (many Bollywood movies have this theme too). 
• "Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram" (Truth, God, Beauty); this is a traditional philosophical statement that has entered the mainstream because it is also the title of a famous 70's Hindi movie. 
• "Soch kar socho saath kya jayega" translates to "Think! What can you take with you when you go (die)?". It's another philosophical statement which suggests that too much attachment to material possessions is meaningless.
• "Jai Hind" (Victory to India) - another popular theme, expressing national pride and patriotism

As you can see from the above, truck art is not just about painting a truck. It is a fairly complex expression of the cultural background, community, personality and belief systems of the person owning the truck.

Another common feature of Indian truck art is what I can only call "driving instructions". Horn, Please or Horn OK Please is the most ubiquitous one, asking those following the truck to honk while overtaking so that the truck driver is alert to their presence. Drivers use their hand - they stick it out of the window and wave - to signal to people behind them that they may now overtake the truck. At night this system doesn't work, hence the somewhat baffling "Use Dipper at Night". You are supposed to flash your dipper (high beam), and then "Wait for Side" (which the truck driver will signal using the blinking red light signal). Then you can overtake. For much of India's trucking years, we have had narrow highways and side-roads, often permitting only one vehicle in each direction. So this kind of signalling is essential.

Here is another gorgeously painted truck, that I photographed near Jaipur:

A charming find on the Jaipur Highway :) :)

You can tell by now, that there are lots of similar elements between the two trucks, right? This one has the same buxom woman, signs of prosperity and plenty and identification markings showing the trucker's community (Meena) and his favourite god (Hanuman). On the top of the truck it says "Dekh Saheli tera aashik aaya", which brought a smile to my face. "Look, says the heroine's friend to her, your lover has arrived". And it has the ever-popular warning "Buri nazar wale, tera muh kaala" (Oh you person with the evil-eye, may your face be blackened).

If you are travelling in India and come across beautifully painted trucks, do send me some photographs! I am creating a facebook album for them, and would love to add to my collection. You can email them to deepa at delhimagic dot com and I'll send you an invite to the rest of the album. Thanks in advance :) :)