Discussing Pakistan’s unique transport has remained a favourite topic at ATP (see Rickshaw, Truck, Tram, Bus and all modes of transport together in a post).
Today I want to pose a question to our readership. What do you think is the most challenging transport ride you’ve taken in Pakistan? If you ask me then there is only one possible answer and that is the challenge of sitting and not slipping at the back seat of a tonga.
You see the tonga owners all across Pakistan, for some reason, put a vinyl/plastic back seat cover. The urdu word for this material is mome-jaama. Now most of the tongas in Pakistan travel at a tilted angle anywhere between 30 degrees and 60 degrees. This tilt angle is directly proportional to the weight of back seat passengers and inversely proportional to the weight of coachman. To get a better picture, see this forward slash that I am going to type ( / ). Now imagine sitting on the back seat of a tonga at such a tilt, with a plastic seat cover underneath and not slipping. pretty tricky – huh.
The situation is even more challenging for children whose feet do not reach the foot board. I’ve had first hand experience of facing this serious challenge many times during my tonga rides from Lahore station to Misri Shah or do-moria-pul or on the inclines of old city Lahore.
One has to grab on to anything on a tonga’s frame for one’s dear life but if you are sitting in the center of the seat then there is no other option but to grab on to other people’s clothes to avoid slipping.
rau meiN hai rakhsh-e-umr, kahaaN dekhiye thamay
na hath baag par hai na paa hai rakaab meiN
As if this problem was not enough, imagine ladies holding small children in their laps and sitting on the back seat of a tonga.
I will refer our readers to the title photo of this post to appreciate this problem.
This situation is a 3-variable problem of dynamic motion. While the tonga moves forwards, the ladies keep slipping backwards and the babies in their laps also tend to slip backward but with a different acceleration. This is all because Newton once said that a=F/m where m is hugely different for mothers and babies. Therefore to over come Newtonian law and a Draconian seat, mothers have to be extra skilfull on a tonga.
If you think this is the end of a tonga’s back-seat dilemma then I will say three times in English: no, no and no and 3 more times in Urdu: na, na aur na. There is one more test reserved only for tonga’s back seat passengers. This happens when at a traffic light the tonga behind yours cannot stop in time (ghora bhi aakhir ko insaan hai – khataa ka putla hai – or atleast he is controlled by a human). In such cases the saliva foaming and smiling with green teeth face of a horse comes dangerously close to back seat passengers of front tonga. Imagine this situation in the graphics that I will type. It shows 3 tilting tongas and their horizontal horses. ( /horse3/horse2/horse1 ). Note how dangerously close horse 2 is to the back seat of tonga 1 and so on.
I’ve heard of real life situations where people in the back seat of a tonga ran away or screamed when the face of horse from the tonga behind them came too close.
This post is not an exaggeration. May be the tilt angle of a tonga ( / ) is a bit exaggerated but slipping on back seat of a tonga is very real and quite unique to this part of the world.
kis cheez ki kami hai khwaja teri gali meiN
GhoRa teri gali maiN, nathia teri gali meiN
I’ve even read this problem in Urdu literature. I believe I read it in late Ashfaq Ahmed’s one of zaavia series books.
Do you have any experience to share from a tonga’s slippery slope?
Photo Credits:
(1) Title photo is courtesy of Nida Shams
(2) n Bazmi
(2) Sir Cam
Another excellent post Owais b/c u pick up things which are so closely related to us. I can very well relate to the experiences of sitting on the slippery rear seat of the tonga and this post has reminded me a very fond memory of my childhood. My nanoo lived in a village near Sailkot and the buses didn’t go the village so whenever we went there, she was used to send the village tongawala to pick us.(He gave us the pick and drop service both).
Once she gave us a hen with newly hatched chicks and their basket was packed under the very slippery rear seat. Next what I remember seeing was a line of chicks following our tonga, then we had to get down and round them after a lot of trouble and put them back in their basket. As a child I remember the delay and I loved it b/c I hated to part with my so loving grand ma.
Thank u Owais for reminding me something so precious and heart warming.
@Asad. Thankyou
@Adil bhai. I was thinking of linking ‘Taange wala kher mangda’ song when I was writing this post and then I forgot. Thanks for providing the link
@Aziz. Karachi Victorias/Buggies don’t have the tilt that one can experience on tongas in other cities. I also grew up in KHI so I am familiar with the Garden East-Soldier Bazaar route of Victorias. These days one can find these rides at QAzam’s mausoleum. They can get you a tour round the mausoleum – a good 3 or 4 kilometer round for Rs 75 or so.
By the time I got to school it was a Suzuki dabba that took us to school. So missed the tanga. But live the post and the discussion.
Typical to ATP the discussion is as good as the post.
Good luck ATP for the blog awards.
In “Lahore ka Jughrafia” Patras has also mentioned this in his unique style that the reason to put “momjama” at the back seats of tonga is to make slipping easy.
You are 100% on target. I had this dilemma all the time during tonga ride and btw you observation about the person sitting in the middle is also to the point.