Prabal Mukherjee, 55, is one of about 30 licensed horse-drawn carriage owners plying their trade in and around the sprawling Brigade Parade ground, designed much like a slope in front of London’s Buckingham Palace. Every evening for the last three decades, till the lockdown began, one of Mr. Mukherjee’s flashy phaetons, drawn by two horses — introduced about two centuries ago, replacing palanquins — would circle the ring around the ground offering joy rides to tourists, with Eden Gardens and Fort William to the west and Park Street to the east. Mr. Mukherjee owns five carriages and 12 horses. Now, one of his horses — Lal-Sada, the Red-White — has died.
“He was old and I could not feed him properly. The [horse] owners have not had any business for the last three months,” said Mr. Mukherjee from atop one of his carriages, where he was dozing in peak business hours, out of work.
‘Killing the trade’
It is just not owners, but hundreds of coachmen, assistants, grass collectors, feeders, carriage mechanics, coach carpenters, and blacksmiths who make and repair horseshoes, and their families, are dependent on over 200 horses, mostly procured from animal fairs in Bihar. They are all a part of Kolkata’s “horse community” and they have been out of work for over three months. The pandemic is killing the trade, Mr. Mukherjee said.
“In my estimate, seven horses have died, including mine,” he said. Others estimated four deaths in horses. The reasons given varied.
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Unable to feed the horses with their staple diet of husk and a combination of grass and bran, the animals are now allowed to graze in and around the ground, split by the arterial Red Road. The horses are usually tied to a stake by the road. “Football players untie them to clear their arena. Horses also manage to remove the peg and free themselves, step into the busy road and get hit by vehicles,” Mr. Mukherjee explained. A couple of horses died of purple lesions on feet or around the spine.
Md Feroze, who owns four phaetons and 18 horses, said he had to treat “many children” [horses] whose owners had left for their homes in other States.
The unkempt pastureland, about a furlong away from Red Road, at the approach of the second bridge on river Hooghly connecting Kolkata to Howrah, has equally unclean stables to house the horses. Out of cash, the owners let the animals out in the morning to fend for themselves, Mr. Feroze said.
“We do not have money and this is one business where we never received any support from the government. There is no registered union to demand a subsidy. We can only wait for the lockdown to end and the tourists to return before we lose too many horses and ourselves, the horse community,” said Mr. Feroze, who joined the business “for fun”. “I wish I had not,” he added.
Saving the horses
Occasionally, animal lovers turn up to arrange money or husks of corn for the horses grazing dangerously in and around Park Street or Red Road. One such family are the Sinha Roys of south Kolkata, enthusiastic animal lovers who have adopted 14 animals, mostly in Indian zoos and a few other countries. They have approached Kolkata’s Alipore Zoo to donate money to feed the horses.
“The horses were severely hungry. The large gunny bags tied to their mouth with fodder are emptied in minutes, indicating how hungry they were,” said Sandip Sinha Roy. His daughter, Aakshita Sinha Roy, a Class X, took the initiative to feed the horses for few days. “But the situation is grim,” Mr. Sinha Roy said.
Animal shelter-cum-hospital and research institute (ASHARI), an organisation run by MP Maneka Gandhi; Ward 63 Councillor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation Susmita Bhattacharya; and personnel of the Kolkata Mounted Police, are among the others who have come forward to save the horses and the community that relies on them.
But the onus remains mainly on Kolkata’s “horse-community”. “The horses have to survive so that we can do some business in the peak tourist season in winter and in the future. To save them, we are eating once a day, so that they remain happy and somewhat healthy,” said Alauddin, a young coachman, who is now collecting grass to feed the horses.
