SRINAGAR, Apr 20: When a Valley-wide strike by private transporters paralyzed road connectivity across north Kashmir on Monday, an unlikely beast of burden came to the rescue: the horse-drawn tanga.
As thousands of private buses, mini-buses, and inter-district cabs stayed off the tarmac to protest the government’s proposed expansion of Smart City bus services to district routes, the 19th-century carriage—long marginalised in urban planning—morphed into an improvised ambulance and public transport system in Baramulla and Sopore.
For Bilal Ahmad Rather, 22, a resident of north Sopore, the sight of a tanga outside a mosque meant the difference between life and death. His 60-year-old father, Mohammed Sultan Rather, was turning pale.
“I called three drivers. Either they did not pick up or said they could not enter the main road due to the strike. Then I saw the tanga. The driver did not ask for money. He said, ‘put him in’,” Rather told Kashmir Convener.
The tanga took 25 minutes to cover a distance that normally takes 10. “We reached the hospital alive because of that tanga,” he added.
In Sopore, students said they waited upwards of 40 minutes before resorting to the horse-drawn carriages.
“I usually leave home at 7:30 am. Today I waited 40 minutes. No vehicle was plying. I was already 15 minutes late for my tuition. The tanga became my relief. I reached my tuition during the next batch and also reached school on time,” Saika, a secondary school student, told Kashmir Convener.
Outside Government Girls Higher Secondary School in Sopore, at least a dozen students said they had arrived by tanga—some for the first time in their lives.
Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, a tanga driver in Baramulla, said he earned nearly three times his daily wage on Monday.
“Normally people shout at us for slowing traffic. Today they were waving frantically. We don’t have bank loans on our vehicle. We don’t go on strike. Today that made all the difference,” Bhat told Kashmir Convener.
He said he took an elderly woman with breathing trouble to hospital for free.
Fatima Begum, 58, was brought to Baramulla District Hospital from a village nearly 5 km away. Her son Waseem Ahmad said no auto-rickshaw or taxi was available.
“I paid the tanga driver double. He did not ask. He just said, ‘she is someone’s mother, lift her up’,” Waseem said.
Ghulam Jeelani, a shopkeeper in Sopore’s old town, said his business was cut in half as customers could not reach. “The few who did—they all came by tanga. One customer travelled 6 km by tanga just to buy his blood pressure medicine because the chemist near him was shut,” he told Kashmir Convener.
Jeelani himself used a tanga to reach his shop from his home two kilometres away.
Meanwhile, Officials said government buses and auto-rickshaws were technically operating, but many remained off the roads fearing backlash from striking private operators.
Comments are closed.