October 12, 1998
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BOOKS Three Wheels of Life The rickshaw is an apt metaphor for the simplicity that is dying out in Asian cities. By Joel Rai CHASING RICKSHAWS
Most rickshaw-pullers would not be thinking of going to medical school, but Simon had a point there: the West is fascinated by this quaint mode of Third-World transport. Today, it is their custom that helps the tricycle fight for survival in crowded Asian streets. Tony Wheeler and Richard I'Anson went Chasing Rickshaws all over Asia, from Agra to Manila to Hong Kong (where there are just eight left). Their book is a requiem for a dying tradition. The text is dry and spare but the pictures are eloquent. The dank dormitories of pullers in Calcutta, the worn logbooks of the maleks (rickshaw owners) in Dhaka and the wrinkled determination of 81-year-old puller Yao Yu Hai in Beijing are metaphors for an era coming to an end. The ingenious contraption that yokes a cycle with a carriage had its place and time in history but is no competition for modern hurry, swank automobiles or traffic rules. India and Bangladesh are among the few countries where the rickshaw is not a tourist curiosity but a way of life. Tough, unrewarding, demeaning -- not as rosy as Simon thinks it is.
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Where can I buy a
rickshaw?" That was Simon asking me the question. He never revealed his surname
during the noisy train journey but did say he was from Scotland and was backpacking his
way across the subcontinent. "If I pulled a rickshaw in Edinburgh for three months,
I'd earn enough to stay in India for three years to study ayurveda," he confided. 
