 "Horn Please: Trucking in India")
My co-author, Pawan Jain, chairman and managing director of supply and logistics company Safexpress, recalls how once when he was visiting a customer, a visibly tired truck driver knocked and came in. "Sir, I have been waiting for two days… even I am a human being!" he exclaimed. The customer nonchalantly looked up and responded with, "Oh really? But you said you were a truck driver!"
That was how the project began - to change the way we view our truck drivers. As I spent more time understanding the truckers' status in society, it became pretty clear that truck drivers and the trucks themselves were commonly associated with a host of negatives: accidents, drunken driving, pollution, traffic jams, even AIDS. People seldom give any thought to the role the truck plays in India in literally moving the economy from Srinagar to Kanyakumari across a complex road system.
Truck drivers in Bollywood are often the good guys - Salman Khan in Maine Pyaar Kiya, Aamir Khan in Mela, Shah Rukh Khan in Chalte Chalte. And many a peppy number has been shot on the back of a truck, with Shammi Kapoor leading the way in Kashmir Ki Kali. We, of course, did not have the Khans and the Kapoors to drive our project. So we got together four internationally acclaimed photographers who found the Indian trucks fascinating, with their colours and designs, and their odd place in society. They returned with over 7,500 visuals, capturing every colour, nuance, brushstroke and speck of dirt on the bodies of the Indian trucks. They also captured the creases lining the face of truck drivers, their food, their exhausted limbs, vacant eyes, delightful banter, camaraderie and goofiness, and most importantly their simplicity.
And how could a book on Indian trucks be complete without a collection of the social-yet-quirky one liners which one routinely encounters on the back of these trucks? These messages behind the trucks are often social satires on topics ranging from family planning and safe driving to being good human beings. Language was often a barrier for our photographers. Sephi Bergerson and Zackary Canepri for the life of them couldn't understand what these messages meant! The clear winner was definitely Boori nazar waale teri bacche jeeye, bade hokar tera khoon peeye. (To the one with the evil eye: may your children live long, and when they grow up, may they suck your blood.)
The project spanned four years because there was so much on the trucking canvas. 'Horn Please', a sight we have seen countless times on the roads, reverberates with the Indian in us, and this book is a homage to the Indian truck driver - that unknown face who traverses the complex geographies of India, day in and day out, bringing food, necessities, luxury goods and everything you consume, right to your doorstep, yet remains anonymous.
Indian trucks are iconic, they are timeless. Indian truckers are wanderers, living exciting lives that change in the blink of an eye. The Indian trucking industry is a minefield of adventure and it is glorious.
The author is founder and CEO, Safeducate
