One hot, humid afternoon, I was standing on the pavement of the busy Rashbehari Avenue at Kolkata, desperately trying to flag down a cab. All of a sudden, a yellow and black Ambassador cab wheezed up to me. About to dodge the traffic and clamber into it, I stopped…and stared.
What was this? Had the cab grown a head of hair? A spicky crew cut was standing on its ends! Not even black: it was green.
I put out a hesitant hand and touched the growth covering the cab roof. O Lord! It was soft, a bit wet; it was grass! Yes. The cab had a rooftop verdant lawn. What a magical wonder!
Amazed, I went all around the cab trying to understand the phenomenon. The yellow roof supported a curved tray of a depth of ten inches that was filled with soil planted with a thick grassy mound. I pulled the door open and entered the clean interiors. The shelf behind the passenger seat was filled with potted plants. There were crotons, ferns and cacti. The dashboard held a lovely tray garden of twisted dwarf plants and pebbles in between. Only after I had my fill of this garden cab, I turned to its driver who had been watching me, all the while, with a wide smile.
‘It’s beautiful!’ I breathed reverently. His smile just widened.
‘Where to, Didi?’ he asked.
‘Mandevilla Gardens,’ I said mechanically, and asked, ‘What is your name?’
‘Dhananjay Chakrabarty,’he said, ‘but most people call me, Bapida.’
‘Bapida, you will be for me, too. But first tell how did you get such a unique idea?’
He narrated his tale.
‘I have always loved plants. Wherever I live, even as a tenant, I have tried to grow plants; sometimes in a tiny patch in front of my house or in pots. One night, I discovered an empty bottle left in my cab by a passenger. It was a beautiful blue one with a plump middle. Impulsively, I filled the bottle with water and placed a money plant in it. I kept the bottle with the plant on the rear window shelf of my cab. Everyone warned me that it would not survive. But it lived. It flourished and grew roots and young, green leaves. Soon, I added more plants in my cab.’ He smiled at me.
‘But…but this grass on the roof?’ I asked.
He laughed, ‘Well, one day, a friend pulled my hair and said, ‘What next, Bapi? Will you grow plants on your head?’
That night, when I parked my cab and ran a hand over its roof, I thought to myself, ‘Why not? After all, the air in this city is so toxic. If I grow a garden on my cab roof, at least I will add some oxygen to the air.’
‘Then?’ I was eager to know more.
‘First, I bought a metal sheet. Then I hired an ironsmith to fashion it into a tray with a row of tiny holes going all around its base. Once that was done, I lined it with fibre. Now that the receptacle was ready, I drove to the plant nursery. I filled the tray with pebbles, sand and clay. Finally, with the help of the gardeners, I planted the tray with Chinese grass. The grass took a few months to grow. We trimmed it to give a shape matching the curve of the cab roof. Finally, I mounted the tray of lush green grass on my cab roof. It fitted snugly and I used clamps to stabilize it,’ he explained.
I looked out of the cab windows and noticed passing pedestrians and drivers pointing us out to others. Some had swiped out their phones and were busy clicking away. ‘Wow! Just riding the Green Chariot is a Photo Op!’
I turned back to the real-life hero, ‘Have you faced any problems with your grassy roof?’
‘None at all. In fact, my clients have often told me that the inside of my cab is as cool as that of the AC cabs. It has been a year now that I have had this rooftop lawn. It has weathered the summer heat, the wintry cold and heavy downpours and nothing has been undone. It is flourishing just as the plants inside my cab are sprouting leaves, flowers and buds. Maybe it is due to this charm.’ And Bapida pointed to a kukri, the short curved knife traditionally wielded by the Gorkhas, hanging from his dashboard.
I looked closely at the item. Actually it was a dark glass ornamental bottle. Bapida had filled the kukri-bottle with water from the sacred River Ganga. On the handle of the kukri he had painted a dove and a self-composed Bengali verse dedicated to peace. In fact, all across the cab’s yellow body were artistic little sketches accompanying his poetic renditions exhorting people to plant more trees, shun violence and invest in serenity.
Bapida calls his cab the ‘Green Chariot’ even though he is only a hired driver of the cab. It is just that he is passionate about all kinds of plants. To him, plants breathe life and certainly they do for all of us.
.‘Why do people in the city of Kolkata complain about the pollution?’ he asks. Giving a wide smile, he adds, ‘A little greenery in every house will purify the toxic air. People say there is no space for a garden. Plants don’t need much space. All they need is love. I want my green chariot to be an example of how space can be used to green our city.’
And I thought to myself, ‘What a magnificent effort to make just a little difference! If only more people are inspired by Bapida and his Green Chariot, all these little drops would turn Kolkata into a sea of living, breathing greenery.’
All rights reserved, Copyright@ Sutapa Basu 2016
