Dr. Mushtaq Soomro
This is everyday scene of a busy shopping mall of a capital city, while you stroll around a wide street, you can see several luxury cars and jeeps among buses plying on a wide road with well known branded shops on both sides. People of different races and colours and speaking several languages being seen and suddenly the loud music of popular Arabic music draws your attention when a colour full cycle rickshaw passes by carrying women and children of middle eastern looks. You can’t believe that it is not an evening of modern Middle east city, in fact it is cool evening in Europe. This is our good old and famous London and we are on the Oxford Street.
Adjoining Edgware road is more like a part of Arab country on which several Turkish, Iraqi/Kurdish and Lebanese restaurants are full of diners till early hours of morning. Outside these eateries, they have managed to provide the ‘service ‘of Shisha (tobacco smoking in a Hookah). Many people, both men and women are enjoying there by exhaling the clouds of shisha smoke. On this road one can see various aspects of Arab culture, although Pakistani, Indian and African people are all seen but dominant population vividly evident is Arab.
Women dressed from traditional ‘Abaya’ to tight jeans and wearing strong perfumes making the surroundings pleasantly fragrant, is a common scenario. In some quite corners of dimly lit superb coffee shops, a bunch of nicely dressed elderly men looking busy in chatting in Arabic language, one can only guess about the accounts of their cherished memories of their long time abandoned towns and villages, thousands of miles away.
On the glaring shopping mall , Oxford street; most of shops are suitable for the pockets of middle class people but few shops are highly luxurious, in which rich gentry of middle east along with wealthy Japanese, Chinese and Koreans can be seen as shoppers and sometimes Bollywood actors also; who are seemingly trying to shop in a hurry to avoid gathering of big crowd. Pakistani politicians can be seen busy in shopping at Oxford street. Sometime before I came across there, on same evening Shahbaz Sharif and Sharmila Farooqi busy in purchasing their suits.
The cycle rickshaw is a small-scale local means of transport which is opposed to the rickshaws which were pulled by a person on foot (now a thing of past in Pakistan), cycle rickshaws work by human power of pedalling usually a tricycle
Another type of rickshaw is the auto rickshaw, which is still common in Pakistan. The first cycle rickshaws were built in the 1880s, before that pulled rickshaw was said to have invented by Mr Jonathan Goble an American missionary to Japan, made the first human hand pulled rickshaw in 1869 to transport his ill wife in the streets of Yokohama.
In London, to ride on rickshaw is a luxury habit if somebody can afford, at some places the cost of rickshaw is £20(Equivalent to 4000 Pak rupees) for 100 yards down the road, so expensive, only rich Arabs can afford and enjoy. Even native English people are reluctant to have this ride.
It was noted also that the drivers of these rickshaws use offensive and aggressive language with passengers if any body refuse to pay such high fare. When a journalist in London asked the odd behaviour of drivers few of them confessed that some customers run away without paying the fair.
That practice is tolerated, probably because of non-regulatory status of this means of urban transport. According to spokesperson of TFL (Transport for London), rickshaws are not currently licenced by any government body, the only form of public transport in London which remains unregulated.
For long time cycle Rickshaws were considered a symbol of poverty and poor economic condition of a country, one can recall when during November 1991 cycle and pulled rickshaws were banned in Pakistan and those people who propelled these were give auto rickshaws by government.
It seems ridiculous that these type of cycle rickshaws are allowed in London, New York, Toronto and Chicago. Some people think that rickshaws are eco-friendly way to travel and they could help to reduce the carbon emission. It seems clear that the consideration of environmental pollution occupies a little space in whole situation, the rickshaws in London are more for fun and enjoyment by well off travellers.
