INDIA AGAIN -- 1

Things I have seen carried on a motorcycle

Last year when I came to India, I think I was surprised by the number of motorcycles on the road.  It makes sense, in a country that is so populated, where there is a need to travel, the distances are not small and the price of gas is always on the rise.  But I continue to be surprised by the uses to which a motorcycle can be put for carrying not only people, but also goods.

So, as promised, here is a recollection of “things I have seen carried on a motorcycle”.

When I first arrived in India, I quickly realized that the roads were filled with many things – buses and trucks, some cars, people, cows, water buffalo, bicycles, and thousands and thousands of motorcycles.  Many of them carry more than one person, and it quickly became a commonplace thing to see three young men riding one motorbike.  Women ride side-saddle on the back in their saris, leaving me to wonder how often trouble or injury occurs from the long flowing fabric of a sari or scarf getting caught in the rear wheel or chain.  I have seen families on a single motorcycle; the father carefully steering with a youngster perched in front, and holding on to the handlebars, while immediately behind sits a wide-eyed child, and the mother at the back holding tightly to an infant or toddler.  Five is the largest number of people I have seen on one motorbike.

Through Hebbal, on the outskirts of Mysore, I have seen tradespeople on motorbikes, presumably on their way to or from a job with an assistant on the back.  The person on the back carries the necessary tools or material for the job.  I have seen, on the back of the motorcycle and in the hands of the passenger: six foot lengths of plastic plumbing pipe, a painter’s ladder, a wooden chest of tools, part of a car engine, rebar in twelve or fourteen foot lengths, so long that it almost touches the road in the front of the motorbike, and again almost dragging on the asphalt at the back – surely that is not safe.  I have seen someone carrying a bicycle, propane tanks, a sheet of plywood so large that the driver or passenger could not possibly see anything to the left.  And then one day I saw, slowly driving through the crowded main road of Hebbal, a man sitting on the back of a motorcycle holding a pane of glass – not just a pane of glass, but a pane of glass about four feet high and six feet wide, so big that the passenger holding it just barely had his fingertips around each edge; surely, I thought, this is not going to end well, but on down the road they went, weaving and dodging around pedestrians, cows and other traffic until they were out of sight.

I have seen motorcycles fitted to hold chicken cages, with live chickens, four or five cages high.  And one day I saw a passenger holding live chickens, two of them, one in each hand.  He had them firmly by the feet, holding them upside down, and as the motorbike darted and dodged its way through traffic, the chickens squawked and fluttered, perhaps signalling the turns to right or left.  I thought I had seen it all, until I saw someone carrying a large, fat pig (to market, to market, to sell a fat pig, home again, home again...).

Concrete in sacks, bricks, carpet rolled up but looking like it might turn into flying carpet, bags of mangoes, plastic ware (buckets and jugs and utensils), cattle fodder or hay tied in great bundles on the back, sacks of rice, chairs and once I even saw a table, raised high above the head of both driver and passenger, passing by.

It seems to be the job of the passenger to signal turns, which surely requires some telepathic understanding between driver and signaller who just seems to know what the driver is doing.

Perhaps most moving of all, one day I was standing outside the grocery store next to a walk-in medical clinic, and a motorcycle pulled up with two young men, one driving and one at the back, and between them, gently cradled in the arms of the young man at the back, an old and frail woman sitting side-saddle.  The motorbike pulled up and the young men got off and carefully helped what must surely have been their grandmother down from the motorbike to escort her to the clinic.

I am sure there is more, but that is maybe enough to describe, except for one more thing: I came out of the grocery store in Hebbal and turned towards the hostel, not quite a kilometre away, and a motorbike slid to a stop beside me and the driver simply said, hop on. I’m not sure who he was or where he was going, but for a short distance, there was one more thing I have seen carried on a motorcycle – me.