These days rickshaws are a strange site on roads of Cuttack, the city where I spent my childhood. But back when I was a child the rickshaws were the most common and the only means of transport that was available easily.
My school was four kilometers away from my home. There was a man named Govinda who used to take me along with four of my friends to school on his rickshaw. He was a funny old man and a great story teller. Every day on our way to school he used to tell us a lot of stories. Some were fairy tales involving kings, princesses and witches but mostly they were tales of his bravery and heroism which he claimed he did in his youth.
One of his favourite story was how he had single handily fought and defeated a tiger when he and his friends were on a picnic to a forest. On another occasion he told how he lifted an entire bus so that the people could change a flat tyre. Although his tales were tall, at that time we believed them to be true. For us he was a hero.
There were two routes to reach my school. One was through the city and the other was through the outskirts along the river Kathajodi. Govinda always preferred to follow the road through the city as it was the shorter road but we always preferred the road along the river. It was our daily ritual to try to convince him to take that road.
Once or twice a week he used to take us by the river. Sometimes if he is in a good mood he would take us to a Hanuman Temple near the river. The temple had a big playground from which the river was accessible. We used to open our shoes and go running into the river, play there till it was dark and return home all wet and dirty.
On the last day of every month, while dropping us home, he would collect his monthly allowances from everyone’s parents. But he would never take any money from mine. I often asked him the reason for this. But he always replied that he never took money because I was a good boy and the most obedient of my group. Years later when I asked my father about this he told me that that he had actually bought the rickshaw for him. So he never used to charge money from us.