Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site duke.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!mcnc!duke!sk From: sk@duke.UUCP (Sanjaya Kumar) Newsgroups: net.nlang.india Subject: Re: Mountbatten's role in India Message-ID: <6911@duke.UUCP> Date: Fri, 14-Feb-86 12:04:48 EST Article-I.D.: duke.6911 Posted: Fri Feb 14 12:04:48 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 16-Feb-86 04:58:29 EST References: <687@harvard.UUCP> <802@brl-smoke.ARPA> <334@isis.UUCP> Reply-To: sk@duke.UUCP (Sanjaya Kumar) Organization: Duke University Lines: 43 Summary: >When I came to USA, about three years back, one of the americans >asked me, whether there are still horses used for travel on the roads in >Bombay and other cities!!! Really? HORSES? Jesus Christ!! Did someone really ask you that?! I can't believe how ignorant some people can be! I mean to say, I have lived in Delhi (which, I would think, qualifies as an "other city") most of my life and I have never seen a single horse-driven tonga except in the movies. As a matter of fact, I understand that the ones used in the movies are specially imported from some third-world country where they still use this incredibly outmoded form of transport. You know what, I think I'll write to the producers of the TV show "That's Incredible" and ask them to go to this particular third-world country and do a story on this. Won't our friends in Delhi and Bombay be astounded when they see this spectacle of people actually travelling on one of these rickety contraptions being pulled by -- get this -- a HORSE! When I would go out on one of our 8-lane super-highways in my Ferrari Testarosa my grandfather would tell me stories of the old times when the people of the villages would travel in what he quaintly called "bullock-carts". "They would pile the cart high with produce, (like suger cane)," he would say, "and take it to the village market-place. More often than not, the whole family would be perched on top of the pile of sugar cane, for at the market there would also be a mela (fare) with rides and other rustic entertainment. They would have to start on the previous day because the fifty mile ride took a day as they travelled at a stately 5 mph. The richer farmers had two bullocks to pull the cart instead of just one and usually the animals wore a bell around their necks that tinkled as they went along." And I would look out through the tinted window of my Ferrari at farmers in their sporty four-wheel-drive trucks and scarcely knew whether to believe him, for I simply couldn't imagine animals being used for transport in 20th century India. Sanjaya Kumar Duke University