From Victorian carriages to vintage cars, and rail coaches, Anoothi Vishal finds out what will be on show at a proposed museum of transport in India.
A s a professional from the hospitality industry on a holiday in Rajasthan, when Tarun Thakral saw his first vintage car, a 1932 Chevy, he fell instantly in love. (A couple of years later, this kind of “instant connection” was to be made again; this time on a holiday in the US, when Thakral would get married, Vegas-style, completely unplanned. But that is not part of this story.) The car was lying “unused in someone’s garage”, and Thakral bought it for all of Rs 10,000.
He wasn’t sure whether he would ever be able to get it to work, but in two years, it was rolling along. Eventually, it found itself parked in the basement of the Le Meridien hotel, New Delhi, where Thakral, by then a serious collector but one still without a garage, used a little bit of his authority to house his cars.
Obviously, this was a temporary arrangement and when I met him, a little over five years ago, he had proudly showed off his vintage garage at his farmhouse in Gurgaon, where his home had comprised of beautifully-done up lodgings in a vintage railway carriage from Bikaner. Both the carriage and the garage, alas, exist no more; the land having been reclaimed by the government. But in 2009, both will find their rightful places in the first-of-its-kind museum that Thakral is building.
If LA has its Petersen Automotive Museum and London its Transport Museum, the NCR will have its own soon — a first in India. Thakral, who has already bought land for the purpose (off Gurgaon), and got permission for it, plans to use this to showcase the history of transportation in India. Apart from the 30 vintage cars that he posseses, and the railway carriage, the collection will also comprise sundry other old things — a Mughal palanquin, for instance.
Then, there is a colourfully decorated bullock cart from Gujarat, dating back to 1890, a Victorian horse carriages from Calcutta from the early 1900s, palanquins belonging to landed families and minor royals from Rajasthan, elephant carriages and hand rickshaws and a host of other material by way of postcards issued by the British government in India, and lithographs of travel in India by foreigners besides books on automobiles.
There is even an old two-seater plane, licensed VT-CNM, in Thakral’s name, that he says he got for a steal through a tender issued by a UP government department for its sale. And it is in working condition. Then, there is the car driven by Shah Rukh Khan in the film Dil to Pagal Hai that Yash Chopra, producer, gifted him “because he knew I like cars”. Thakral is proud of that one too. There are dinky cars no longer made in India with “China having taken over that market”, and many such collectibles that Thakral owns.
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As we sit looking at the lithos and pictures (published in periodicals such as The Illustrated London, 1863), I toss around names such as the “reckla” and the “ecca” and the “dhumney” (all carriages) in my mind and learn of the evolution of the design of spokes. Thakral has formed a heritage trust to look after the collection and work on the museum. His next acquisition, he says, is going to be an old tram from Calcutta (“and I’ll have pictures of the Delhi Metro”) to show history in progress.
While his collections will be part of a fixed gallery, he is in touch with the 200-250-strong community of serious vintage car collectors in the country for what will be “moving galleries”. And there will be display areas, restaurants, souvenir shops not to mention conference facilities to make the museum a destination in itself. We promise to come back for the actual dekko.