A Rickshaw Ride Through Kolkata

Cars, carts, clattering trams, bicycles, motorbikes, people – everything and everybody sharing scarce street space, creating abundant traffic noise.

And in all that chaos a small bell, two feet and two hands pulling one of those hand-pulled rickshaws one only finds in Kolkata. The two (sometimes bare) feet are at steady pace – even the smallest gap is used to slip in and gain another few meters in this dense chaotic chaos. The small bell in the rickshaw driver’s hand is constantly ringing, trying to make itself heard in an overwhelming ‘noise carpet’. And the passenger – trying to keep some balance while hastily being maneuvered across cobble stone, tram tracks, squeezing through between trucks and modern cars, left and right into bumpy bylanes and over one or the other pothole.