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More than just a picturesque conveyance, the Indian rickshaw is both a testament to personal dignity and an object of idiosyncratic beauty. Chitra Divakaruni considers the enduring bond between a wallah and his ride.

Masum, a rickshaw wallah in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which has nearly 400,000 rickshaws. Greg Vore

For some years when I was a child, we lived in a Kolkata suburb with unpaved roads and rudimentary schools that did not meet my mother’s standards. So she enrolled me in a different, distant school, for which I had to travel several miles. Since there were no convenient buses, Ma arranged for me to take a cycle-rickshaw. When I stepped out of the house each morning, my white-haired rickshaw wallah, Manik, would be waiting with his bright-hued rickshaw, the silver metal of the footboard and pedals polished to a shine, the yellow resin seat buffed and clean. I loved checking out the back of the rickshaw, painted with elaborate images of goddesses. On rainy days, Manik would carefully pull open an accordion-like hood to keep me dry. He always got me to school on time, and when I was released, he was there to greet me with his gap-toothed smile. I was fond of Manik in my careless, childish way, but I did not spare him much thought. I did not wonder where he lived, or how. Nor did I realize how remarkable his dependability was in a culture where things rarely go according to plan.

Fifty years have passed since that time, but the Indian rickshaw (probably the descendent of the nineteenth-century Japanese jin-riki-sha) remains alive and well in Kolkata and Varanasi—as well as in Allahabad and Dhaka, Bangladesh, where Greg Vore photographed the images in this gallery. Both the cycle-rickshaw and the hand-pulled tana rickshaw (which is used in the more congested areas of Kolkata) continue to be popular, despite ongoing debates regarding ethics and traffic-flow efficiency. Perhaps this is because during the monsoon, when the streets flood regularly, only the rickshaw can get one where one needs to go. It is also regularly used by housewives for shopping, by small businessmen to carry merchandise, and by families like mine to get their children safely to school.

Despite the indispensability of the rickshaw puller, his life is harsh and lonely. Often from a far-flung village or a neighboring state, he sends the bulk of his earnings back home. He sleeps in an overcrowded dormitory or under his rented rickshaw, and bathes, cooks, and eats on the street. He must regularly bribe policemen who threaten to throw him in the lockup. He is likely to fall prey to heart disease, asthma, malnutrition, and premature aging. And yet most of the rickshaw wallahs I have met over the years have been pleasant and positive, taking pride in their work and in their elaborately decorated rickshaws.