Name a dependable strongman, to whom you can unload your heavy burden; a person who will guide you through a crowd of confusion; make sure you are comfortable in a niche meant for you; but is strict about his transactions – and no; we are not talking about your dad. He is the porter, the cool ‘coolie’.
The quintessential Indian holiday would start and end with this strong muscular man, attired in red; cool and composed, with boxes stacked on top of his head. He would guide us and home in on our berths. After the vacation we as kids would try to replicate his act by walking with stacks of cardboard boxes on our head, ending with invariable crash-landings.
As a kid, I never thought of him as an unskilled manual labourer, but a strong, dependable man, with whom even my perfectionist of a father would leave his luggage in complete confidence. The porter would eventually share his up-to-date knowledge about platform, coach number and location of seats; an essential link to rail travel.
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Travel, transport and technology are three areas where transformation has been tremendous, that too in a short time scale. People of our generation, those on the wrong side of fifty, sometimes feel totally lost.
As a kid, our basic surface transport mode was bicycle. We would wait for an unattended, unchained prey, left by a careless adult and hitchhike, mostly with catastrophic results. With mud stains and grease on the shirt, there was no way of disproving the guilt. A pathetic face, and mom’s appeal, saved us from dad’s mandatory justice.
Now my son’s all-terrain-bike (ATB) shares very little resemblance to the thing I once rode, bar the wheels. While my son flaunts the low all-black handlebar, the carbon fibre body and multi-gear transmission, the loss of the ‘cling-cling’ bell pains me. “It has been discarded for the sake of better aerodynamics,” my son beamed.
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At the top end of the travel pyramid was the airplane, which was considered an utmost luxury, a distant dream for most of us; while the first thing our kids today ask is, ‘which airline?’
Three generations look at the skyrocketing travel-associated technology in three ways. The kids who were born with a ‘silicon-spoon’ are very comfortable with technology. My semi-recumbent daughter casually says that she booked a red-eye flight to Chennai with extra legroom at low cost, alleviating my fear of conjunctivitis.
In contrast, our fifty-something generation belongs to a group that has been introduced to technology as adults. Most of us have embraced it well but still don’t feel comfortable, keeping a printout boarding pass in the handbag, just in case the cellphone doesn’t light up.
Today the senior citizens and elders have been forced to adapt to change in travel-technology; it is thrust upon them, whether they like it or not. You can see them lined on wheelchairs, boarding a flight with cellphones hanging on their neckline. WhatsApp is slowly parting company with the young man’s wallet in his back-pocket, to join the dentures and spectacles on granddad’s desk.
Robert Plath, a U.S. North-Western airline pilot, fiddled with some tools in his garage, attached an aluminum telescopic handle and a pair of castor-wheels at the bottom of his travel box, to create a free-wheeling luggage. Suddenly, the need for a strong, muscular shoulder in red shirt was lost. In one stroke he created a niche of a billion-dollar trolley-bag business and virtually eliminated the clan of porters.
As a kid, I remember travelling by the Coromandel Express from Kolkata to Chennai. Once we boarded the train, in my excitement I ran and occupied the coveted window seat and opened the steel shutter. The porter, who was still arranging the luggage, came to me and said, ‘Baba, make sure the shutter is locked after opening, otherwise it may fall and crush your hand as the train moves. Never forget’.
I never forgot; not his instruction, but that all-knowing moustached strong muscular man in red.
At fifty, I can walk around with a stylish trolley bag in tow, but perhaps a decade or two later I would opt for something more than just cool; may be a cool-ie!
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