Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi

Far from the congested alleys and cacophonous markets when you step on highways there is a completely different world waiting for you. But it is amazing to notice that each highway offers more or less the same panorama .Same petrol pumps, identical road strips , sign boards just differ in contents otherwise the style is the same and the most important aspect of this different world it's citizen the Truck waalas (we all who travel once in a while are just like tourists).


Myriads of times we see trucks passing by and think it was just facsimile of one that passed previously. It hard to differentiate between the trucks. Most of them are painted red, have this antenna kinda thing attached to the bonnet usually wrapped with red cloth which has some religious significance, and then they have this silver number plate with vehicle no. written in black (this is on the front side at the back it is yellow) , if you have ever been into driver's cabin you would have notice numerous small idols and lots of stickers on top of the glass, even the way they are sticked does not vary too much usually in contiguous fashion and one with greater importance placed separately to specify its significance. You will never find a water bottle instead will see a big water container for the purpose. Not going into the tools and all. Sideways, they are painted in three colours white at the top, red in between and then orange or green at last. But the best thing about them is the quotes that are written at back of the truck on wooden plank that is tied to chains.

Whenever a truck passes by I try my best to look for the caption at the back of this monster vehicle. While most of the time you will find them same sometimes you will get reward for your search. The most commonly used tags are:-

"Buri nazar waale tera mooh kaala"

"Maa ki dua"

"Fir milenge"

The one that I liked the most and have found it just on one truck goes like this

"Buri Nazar waale tere bhi bacche jiye
Bade ho kar desi sharab piye"

I later came to know that truck owner had a small liquor shop so that's great way to create customers. You bless your foes and get their kids as customers.

We have frequent encounters with truck waalas in Bollywood movies and they always depict them as jolly characters invariably having a great vocal chord. Well, I haven't met a single truck driver who sings while driving. At times they are as jolly as Parikshit Sahani in Kaala Pathar (one of my favourite movies) but they are never as cool as Shahrukh Khan of Chalte-Chalte. One movie that showed a different but close to real side of truck drivers was Dushman Chacha starring Rajesh Khanna. Then we have movies such as Gadar and Mama Bhanja (starring Randhir Kapoor) where truck drivers are heroes of the community.

These men live in two different worlds one with loads of disturbance and is moving aimlessly and one which they drive on their on own. Always wanting to beat the scorching heat, chilly winds, turbulent rains, intruding check posts, fellow trucks and most important of them all the deadlines. Reaching destinations just to plan for another voyage, meeting close ones just to tell them about yet another parting and igniting the engine just to shut it off on reaching the destination this is all they do and in the process they gather knowledge that none of us can ever achieve about the "Real World".