The City Through a Rickshaw Puller’s Eyes

 

Scorching sun. My head throbbed under its merciless glare, as though the very air had turned molten. A flimsy bottle of Frooti offered momentary solace, a poor defense against a sky that burned with indifference. Fifteen minutes , just fifteen , stood between the metro station and the quiet reprieve of my room, and yet the journey felt Sisyphean. Each step was an act of defiance against heat that clung like a second skin.

I scanned the street for salvation, and there they stood — e-rickshaws lined like weary beasts, their drivers languidly awaiting fortune. “ Madam , bas dus minute aur,” one muttered, eyes darting toward the empty seats he hoped to fill. Ten minutes, in this furnace, was a lifetime. I was not a miser, yet neither was I inclined to surrender sixty rupees for a distance that cost twenty. Three times, a rickshaw puller summoned me with promises, and thrice I declined, balking at his demand of forty. But the sun, relentless in its tyranny, whispered otherwise: reach your room, at any cost. The city, in that moment, was not a lover’s muse, but a trial by fire , where comfort was a privilege purchased in rupees and resolve. It whispers not in words, but in sweat trickling down your spine, in the weight of a breath drawn through fire. In that instant, the city revealed its cruel paradox: a metropolis of conveniences that still makes you pay . Sometimes in coins, sometimes in courage , for the simplest comfort of reaching home.

Finally, I surrendered and climbed into his rickshaw. It wasn’t a BMW or Cinderella’s jeweled carriage , just a modest frame of metal and muscle. Yet, in that moment, it became sanctuary. The shade of its canopy was worth more than luxury, and the rhythmic creak of its pedals felt like a hymn of survival. As Bhaiya began to pedal, his body hunched against effort, sweat clinging to his shirt like an extra layer of fabric, I wondered: what does the city look like from his seat?

From his cracked leatherette seat, Central Delhi isn’t the grandeur we glorify. It is Connaught Place with its colonial curves and glass towers glinting like pride. It is the endless honking near traffic lights, the snarl of flyovers, and the blur of cars that cost more than his life’s earnings. To him, these are not symbols of aspiration , they are obstacles to pedal through. His city is not defined by malls or monuments but by potholes, sudden brakes, and fares that spell survival.

Yet, within this grind, he carries stories. He hears laughter and laments, arguments over phone calls, whispered secrets of lovers who hide their faces behind dupattas. He ferries fragments of lives, even as his own life remains tethered to the rhythm of his wheels. For him, the city is not grandeur; it is grind. Every turn of the pedal is a calculation — how many rides before sunset, how much for fuel, what’s left after rent. Yet the city, in its strangeness, gave him a moment that stitched pride into his sweat. 

Snippets of Conversations

Right then, as the wheels dragged lazily against the asphalt, I snapped – my patience, baked crisp under the sun, finally giving in.

“Bhaiya, zara tez chaliye na! I need to reach home soon.”

He didn’t speed up. Instead, he chuckled, a low, almost amused sound.

“Arey madam, itni garmi se gussa mat kijiye. Aapko lagta hai main jaan ke dheere chalata hoon? There have been so many passengers,” he began, his voice low, almost carried away by the wind, “who never even noticed how slowly I was pedaling. They were too engrossed in their own conversations, and I… I just listened silently, sitting on this worn seat, pedaling them to wherever life was calling them.”

Then his tone shifted, soft and distant, like someone recalling a private collection of moments.

“I listen more than I speak,” he continued, “collecting stories like loose coins. A college student muttering curses at an unfinished assignment. A man rehearsing answers for a job interview, his voice tight with fear. Two lovers whispering promises under the pretense of a short ride, their fingers brushing like secrets. A mother humming lullabies to her child while the city around her screamed with horns.”

He paused, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, and then added in a voice that felt almost like a confession:

“The city talks to itself in fragments… and I am its hidden witness.

The Day His Rickshaw Became a Chariot

As the rickshaw rolled forward, Bhaiya began talking — not the small talk of weather and fares, but a story stitched with pride. “Ek shaadi mein gaya tha, madam… baraat ke liye,” he said, a smile tugging at the edges of his cracked lips.

It happened one winter. A man in a sherwani, pressed and perfect, had approached him. “Bhaiya, baraat ke liye rickshaw sajana hai.” At first, he laughed. His rickshaw? For a grand wedding? But then came the marigolds and streamers, tied lovingly to the metal frame, bells that chimed with every movement. His old, ordinary rickshaw bloomed like a royal carriage, rolling into a wedding procession that glittered with BMWs and Audis.

That day, the humble rickshaw became the groom’s pride, a spectacle for cameras, a story for albums. And Bhaiya ,  he felt a strange warmth, deeper than any sun. In that moment, his vehicle wasn’t just a contraption to haul passengers for twenty rupees. It was a lifeline that could turn majestic, an object that gave shelter from rain, shade from sun, and once ,  joy to a rich man on the most important day of his life.

Since then, he said, he sees his rickshaw differently. Not as a symbol of poverty, but as a provider. A partner in resilience. It feeds his family, yes , but it also carries comfort to strangers, helps lovers reach their secret corners, saves office-goers from storms. And once, it made a groom feel like a king. 

Madam, ek din fan kharidunga. Bijli chali bhi jaaye toh chhodo, par kamra hawa khaye.”

His dreams were not carved in marble; they were stitched in simplicity— a fan that never stops turning, a school for his son where English isn’t a locked gate, a life where his knees don’t ache with every dusk.

For him, festivals aren’t strings of lights or boxes of sweets , they are sums scribbled in the margins of his mind. Can he buy his children new clothes this time? Or will he tell them again that joy isn’t wrapped in foil or measured in sugar?

And yet, as he pedals his passengers through the throbbing veins of this city, dropping them safely at their doors, he carries home more than coins. He carries a quiet dignity. Because every safe arrival is his silent triumph . A day’s testament that his labour is not just motion for money, but an act of care. A small redemption in a city that often forgets men like him exist.

What I Learned That Day

When I finally reached home after that ride, his words and his world clung to me like the heat of that afternoon. We, in our endless chase for tinted windows and humming air-conditioners, forget that for someone, comfort is nothing more than a thin slice of shade on a creaky rickshaw and a breath of wind that doesn’t scorch.

I had stepped in with impatience; I stepped out with reverence.

As I handed him a fifty, he reached instinctively for change. I paused. I could have said, Keep it, but that felt like pity , a thing too heavy for a man who wore his pride so lightly. I admired that — the quiet dignity of his labour, his lens of the world. So instead, I let silence do the work. I didn’t ask for the ten rupees back. At least, I thought, he could quench his thirst with a Frooti worth ten.

Does he feel invisible? Perhaps. Yet in that moment, as the sun struck his rickshaw and made the metal glimmer, I saw more than a man pulling weight. I saw a custodian of stories, a silent heartbeat keeping rhythm with the city’s restless chest.

We live in a world obsessed with hierarchies, where work is ranked, not valued; where people are measured by their collars, not their calluses. We forget that the comfort of the richest rests silently on the shoulders of those who serve. If there were no chauffeurs, who would steer the sleek sedans to glittering events? If there were no sweepers, the grand boulevards would choke on their own waste, drowning in filth and silence. Society thrives because every wheel turns, every hand moves. Yet, we let casteist and classist attitudes blind us to this interdependence, as if dignity is reserved only for some.

That rickshaw ride taught me more in fifteen minutes than fifteen years of education ever could — that respect is not a favour, it is a debt we owe to those who hold the city’s spine straight while we decorate its skin.