Party on a tram?!” was the first response from Sangeet Kothari when I messaged her with this preposterous suggestion. A colleague in the office responded, “Is that even possible?” My wife felt that perhaps I had lost a few marbles.
Here are my reasons for hosting an unusual tram party:
One, the very idea that it seemed preposterous appeared to be a good reason to cock a snook at the world.
Two, the Kolkata trams were being threatened with removal from their tracks and roads on the grounds that their time was up.
Three, a mourning Kolkata—regretting the loss of a young doctor—now needed a temporary reprieve.
Four, we needed to celebrate the last few days of an institution that had been a part of the city for more than 150 years.
The party was relatively simple to arrange; the process I describe may please be shamelessly copied with the objective of making our urban existence slightly more happening than the prospect of being air-conditioned in front of a Netflix menu hour after hour.
A WhatsApp message to the joint managing director of the Calcutta Tramways Company requested permission to hold a party inside a tram. This was probably the first such request he had ever received. Before it could be shot down by some committee on the grounds that “There is no precedent for this, so as per Law 35 subsection 3B, this cannot be allowed,” he replied promptly, needing a formal letter.
The formal reply to the formal letter was, “We would be happy to provide you consent for a rental fee of Rs 5,300.”
The amount was remitted within minutes, and a screenshot of the remittance was attached to yet another formal letter providing proof of our solvency and seriousness.
That was it. The next time we heard from the Calcutta Tram Company was when it provided us with the contact number of the person who would give us access to the tram—so that we might ‘inspect’ it and clear it for party use (this is sounding so political).
Then the core team was created. This was relatively easy: the friend who had coordinated with the CTC for permission became de facto the principal host; the lady who would ‘decorate the tram like a dulhan’ became the other co-host; the music group that promised, “We will get everyone to their feet,” became our fourth organising committee member. This division of labour launched the tram party.
The event was promoted as the “Last Great Tram Party.” Someone interjected, “How can we call it ‘last’? What if the government sustains this transport mode? Won’t that make us look foolish?” The team took refuge in wordsmithing: the operative word would be “great.” We wouldn’t be saying that this was the last tram party ever; we would only be saying that this would be the last great tram party, the word ‘great’ being conveniently open to interpretation.
The promotion of the Last Great Tram Party was posted as a “My Story” on WhatsApp and Facebook—neither too in-your-face nor too easy to miss. There was an influx of queries. Whoever saw it wanted to bring her mother-in-law as well; some said, “Can we bring snacks?” Another said, “If there’s no goromchaa, the gathering won’t be lively!”
And that’s how the idea mushroomed.
As it turned out, 90 time travellers showed up. They crooned Kishore Kumar songs. They danced to Malaika. They sashayed from the tram entrance rod. They popped their heads out of the windows to take pictures. They mimicked, “Aaste ladies, kol-eybachcha!” They stood beside the tram conductor and finger-punched selfies. They asked for tickets as collectibles. They kept telling no one in particular, “This is the route I used to take when I would go to school.” They sat near window seats and gazed out at the world passing by. They slow-tracked their existence and quite enjoyed it. They took pictures of empty tram depots. They whimsically got off the first compartment and ambled into the second even as the tram moved. They preferred to hang out near the conductor’s entrance perch “because this is how I would travel by tram when I was a kid.” They posted on Facebook within the first ten minutes of being on the tram.
The highlights? The fact that when the tram turned from Wellesley (I can’t bring myself to say ‘Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road’) into Dharamtala (I can’t bring myself to say ‘Lenin Sarani’), the overhead tram aerial connecting the tram to the overhead electricity line was temporarily disengaged (and half the tram emptied to take that picture, chuckling that “Duniya badli nahi”). The ting-ting-ting of the conductor’s bell. The conductor’s bell being activated by a rope. The conductor’s foot-activated button accelerator. The jerky left-hand movements of the tram driver rev tram velocity.
The tram turned into Esplanade depot (looked devastated when seen from the inside), gave travellers time to disembark and slip into their air-conditioned Hondas, while surprisingly a number of them stayed on to say, ‘We want to go back in the tram to Gariahat.’
It had been more than 40 years since I had last sat in a tram. The time has come—in whatever time is left—to transform the two compartments into a concert area, attract prominent musicians, invite the public, charge no fee, and pretend that it was yesterday once more.