TANGENTSBy Ihtisham Kabir
A Tale </i>of Horses </i>
Nizamuddin with Pakra. Photo: Ihtisham Kabir
Horse-drawn carriages are a timeless feature of old Dhaka. You can find them transporting passengers from Gulistan to Sadarghat for twenty taka. Holding their own among trucks, rickshaws, and thelagaris, they add exotic colour and sounds to the road. But who takes care of these horses? Where do they live? And die? I find the answer when I run into a horse being washed and fed near Siddiq Bazar on a rainy Friday morning. Its empty carriage stands nearby. As I start photographing horse and carriage, a man comes up to me. “There are more around the corner,” he beckons. Following him into a twisted alley I come upon several more horses, happily eating piles of fresh grass. A large black and white horse stands at a corner by himself. “Pakra here is big for a three-year-old,” says the man, Saifuddin. “My brother owns these horses.” Soon I am talking with Nizamuddin, who owns eighteen horses in the neighbourhood. His business is inherited. “My grandfather, originally from Madras, started this business in Kolkata. My father moved to Dhaka in 1950,” he says. Nizam's day of glory came in 1983, when he won the second place in a horse-carriage race in Manik Mia Avenue. President Ershad himself presented him a shield. I ask about his horses. What work do they perform? “Six are used for running my three carriages,” he says, “and the rest serve at functions and festivals: weddings, parties, circumcision ceremonies...” He charges a few thousand Taka for weddings, enabling the groom to make his entrance on a horse. Bride and groom can also ride away from a completed wedding in one of his carriages. The horses need basic items for their work. Horseshoes for their feet, called “Nal,” are made locally, but the four pins attaching them to the feet are imported. Each shoe lasts about a week. There is a blanket to cover the backs of the horses; a harness ties them to the carriage. Several horse aficionados have gathered around us. I learn there are 29 carriages and 200-300 horses in Dhaka. One issue repeatedly comes up: the dearth of space for horses. “We have to park them in alleys and small streets, where we are constantly hassled by others. These horses need open space with grass to graze, but there is none.” What happens when they get sick? “We take them to the Animal Hospital nearby. But even there, there is little space for keeping them. When they die, we have trouble burying them,” they complain. The burial site is in Kajla near Jatrabari. We approach Pakra to take pictures. The crowd mills around. A boy of ten or eleven stands next to Nizam, who poses with him and Pakra. “This is my son, Ador,” he says. Ador studies in class five. Can he ride? “Of course,” he said, “my father taught me.” And yes, Ador thinks riding bigger horses like Pakra is a lot more fun.
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