Down memory lane in a rickshaw

Stephen Prins recalls the golden days with Pichcha-Muththu, the rickshaw man from Thunmulla

We are in the 1950s. You are dressed and ready to go to your first school, the Kindergarten Class at Holy Family Convent, miles away. Your conveyance is a beautiful black rickshaw with a scarlet plastic seat. Your rickshaw-puller is Pichcha-Muththu. All that shiny blackness makes you think of crows. Even Pichcha-Muththu is crow-like, so dark is his skin. He is an old man, or so he seems. His face is crinkled and his little beard and moustache white.

Smiling, he helps us into our seat. Our legs stick out in front of us, too short to bend at the knees. Pichcha-Muththu picks up the shafts of his vehicle, and off we go. We bump along pleasantly up Queen’s Road, across Selbourne Road, into Alfred House Avenue and on to the great, wide and thrilling Galle Road. Along the way we take in the sequence of gardens and the grand houses that preside over them, each property appearing like a page in a large picture-book.

Villa Venezia and Morven, Highlands and Alfred House, or what is left of that famous sprawling Victorian mansion. Vast gardens with sloping lawns and pergolas, large gardens wrapped in pink and white bougainvillea, modest gardens with badminton nets and sundials, and petite gardens with pots of zinnias and marigolds.The sun is shining, the world glides past, all is green and gold, and the rickshaw-puller’s shoes go slap-slap-slap.

Most days are golden, but sometimes the sky goes grey and a few cold drops of rain speckle your outstretched legs. Pichcha-Muththu stops on the side of the road, opens a little wood door in the box under your seat and pulls out a roll of oilcloth. He hangs it like a black curtain in front of you, blocking your view, blacking out the world. All you see is a thin band of sky at the top and strips of sliding road surface through a gap in the curtain. It is dark and enclosed now inside, like a small room at night with the light turned off.

And then the rain begins. It hits the rickshaw hood and the oilskin curtain like handfuls of sand and pebbles. In the old days it rained hard and for hours. You forgot time, sitting in that cosy darkness, the monsoon spray coming through the top of the curtain and sprinkling your face. As you roll along, you wonder about poor Pichcha-Muththu out there, running through all that rain. You rock and bounce and fall asleep.

When you wake up the rain has gone. The rickshaw stops and tilts forward. The oilcloth curtain is unhooked to reveal a world washed and sparkling. Leaves and roof tiles shine like coins and the pavements are steaming. Pichcha-Muththu is drenched and chuckling, his thin shirt sticking to his black skin, transparent with perspiration and rain. Pichcha-Muththu was there in all weathers. He would be at our doorstep every morning, chewing betel and waiting to take us to school, Sunday School or church, or to visit far-flung uncles and aunts.

He was always laughing, a perpetual twinkle in his bright brown eye. Those chuckles would end in a rattle as he cleared his throat and spat out thickly. Mother suspected he was tubercular. Pichcha-Muththu wore a knee-length pair of white shorts, a white shirt and a pair of white tennis shoes with the front half of the uppers sliced off to reveal his cracked toenails. He would wrap a long roll of white cotton cloth around his head to catch the sweat.

Pichcha-Muththu spoke no English and little Sinhalese. The only word of Tamil between us was “Suruka”, which we yelled out when we wanted him to run faster, which was all the time. His response was a shake of the head and yet another chuckle. A sweeter soul would have been hard to find.

His great comic act for us children, when no adults were around, was to raise one arm high, cup his armpit with the palm of his other hand and bring the raised arm down sharply to make a rude noise of escaping air that had us rolling with laughter. Pichcha-Muththu’s base was Thunmul Handiya or Three-Corner Junction, where Reid Avenue, Buller’s Road and Havelock Road converged. He and a couple of fellow rickshaw-pullers were parked in front of a tea-shop at the apex of the Reid Avenue-Buller’s Road triangle. The pavement around their rickshaws was a mosaic of red spots where they spat their betel chewings all day long.

One morning we were fussing on the verandah with our drawing books when Pichcha-Muththu wheeled into the driveway. On an impulse, Father, who had a way with pen or pencil, picked up a Venus HB and did an impromptu portrait. The black-and-white composition nicely mirrored the black and white elements of the Pichcha-Muththu image – ebony-dark rickshaw puller in white kit, white turban and white shoes standing beside his crow-black rickshaw.

That rickshaw came to represent many things for us – carriage, chariot, stagecoach. One day, when Pichcha-Muththu was taking a betel-chewing break, Older Brother suggested I hop into the rickshaw. He picked up the shafts and set off at a trot, out of the back gate and up the lane that ran alongside the house. We went at a clip and you yelled with pleasure, the rickshaw rattling along, fence and trees gliding by.

As we described a sweeping arc, from back gate to front gate, we were picking up speed. The rickshaw seemed to tilt. Older Brother was losing control. You gripped the seat and wondered where this would end. It ended as it had to – in disaster. You saw it coming. The rickshaw flew past the front gate, Older Brother threw up his hands and let go of the shafts and the world tipped over and crashed to the ground. There was a shuddering thud, a scraping of gravel, a haze of dust. You were out of the rickshaw like a stone shot from a catapult.

You were unscratched but in a state of shock, while Pichcha-Muththu and Older Brother stood on either side of the fallen rickshaw, guffawing. Every rickshaw ride was an adventure of one kind or another. And then you grew up, completed your education and started working. You had completely forgotten about Pichcha-Muththu until 1985, more than two decades later, when you read a newspaper article titled “A Day in the Life of a Rickshaw-Puller”. There was a photograph of an old rickshaw-puller with his vehicle, and the caption said: Pichcha-Muththu taking a rest between rides.

I scrutinized the picture: it was an old, very creased face, fringed with white beard and moustache. Could it be the same Pichcha-Muththu we had known as children? But this was 20 years later; he couldn’t still be alive, surely. I looked again at that ageless face and felt a surge of emotion. I was determined to track him down. The story gave no clues as to the whereabouts of the rickshaw-puller, except to say that his haunts were the Fort and the Pettah.

By a stroke of luck, I happened to know the author of the article, Chris Dharmakirthi, a spirited young cub reporter who was turning out lively newspaper pieces overflowing with human interest and local colour. Chris told me where I was likely to meet him. So the next day I headed to the Fort, the newspaper article in my pocket. Sure enough, parked near the old Grand Oriental Hotel, was a rickshaw framed in an arch of the Miller’s Building arcade.

I went up to the rickshaw-puller and said: Pichcha-Muththu? He looked surprised, puzzled. I stared and wondered if this was the Pichcha-Muththu we had known as children. The face could have been the same. I took out the newspaper and showed him the article and his picture. He nodded, looking mildly amused.

I spoke in Sinhalese. I mentioned names and places. His eyes showed no shine of recognition. I dropped more names. Still no response. It was clear this was not the Pichcha-Muththu of old. It could not have been. The man we knew was already dying of TB thirty years ago.

I said sorry, put some money in his hand and left. And that was that. The era of the rickshaw was drawing to a close. Some months later even that lone rickshaw in the Miller’s arcade was gone. Your last ride with Pichcha-Muththu would have been in the early Sixties. He would have dropped us off after school as usual, waved bye, trotted to the top of 37th Lane, turned right and with a tinkle of his rickshaw bell was gone forever.