AUTO MOTIF

But the vehicle, which looks like an insect finding its way on a tarmac, has no airs of being photogenic. It delights in its plebeian looks, with the driver perched on his single seat on the wheel in front, a sheet of rexine pulled taut on a wire frame, its brilliance confined to the tones of black-yellow or green-yellow (depending on which Indian city you are in). But the vehicle has been rediscovered by people.

Meena Kadri, a senior designer and brand strategist based in New Zealand, spent two years in Ahmedabad, clicking pictures of autorickshaws. Her photographs of autorickshaws, their signage and even the artwork on their mud flaps were displayed at the exhibition “Like That Only” in Scotland and New Zealand last year. At the Glasgow show, Kadri had a visitor — New York-based graphic design heavyweight Stefan Sagmeister, who has Guggenheim Museum, Lou Reed and Rolling Stones among his clients. Sagmeister was intrigued and pleasantly surprised. “He said qualities like delight were eroded in the West and it was great to see it being celebrated, but I am more interested in the way the autorickshaw embodies jugaad than its kitsch value,” says Kadri. “It symbolises a way of thinking that underpins innovation and flair rising from necessity rather than from abundance,” she says.

Autorickshaw got its first fashionable introduction to the West thanks to kitsch lovers like designer Manish Arora. His Autorickshaw rug, designed for The Conran Shop in 2007, flew off the shelves for 495 pounds. “The autorickshaw is a perfect symbol of India,” says Arora whose rugs are sold out. “Its psychedelic colours and motifs of oversized flowers and shooting stars worked for me. I keep using the autorickshaw in a lot of my work.”

The graffiti are what inspire 29-year-old Mayur Polepalli, who has been taking photographs of autorickshaws in Bangalore and uploading them on the site arart.blogspot.com. “I’ve always been fascinated by things written or drawn on autorickshaws. What’s on the rickshaw is what’s on the driver’s mind —from the name of his girlfriend or wife to his favourite God or movie star,” says Polepalli.

Even high-end art took a ride in an auto, when Jitish Kallat made a life-size autorickshaw from simulated bones last year. Kallat, whose Autosaurus Tripous was snapped up by a British collector for 125,000 dollars, says, “The rickshaw works as an iconic playful object. I often think of the autorickshaw as a metaphor for our own crazy, urban life.”

Obviously, a lot of people think so — though some like it on dusty roads rather than in drawing rooms. Thirty-one-year-old Aravind Bremanandam, who shuttles between Budapest and Chennai, runs what can be called the Formula 1 of tut-tut, the Indian Autorickshaw Challenge. The first Indian Autorickshaw Challenge took off from Chennai to Kanyakumari in 2006 but since then the race has been extended to Mumbai. “We have had people from over 20 countries, including the UK, US, France, Germany, Norway, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Russia, South Korea, Australia, Morocco, Switzerland and Japan,” says Bremanandam, the proud owner of 35 rickshaws that are often driven in the race.

The challenge has around 20 teams, most of them on their first visit to India and eager for a whacky ride on three wheels. After taking part in a short training session, anyone with an international driving licence can take part in Bremanandam’s race — and most often the teams don’t want to let go of the rickshaws and ship them home. “They are not professional racers but ordinary people who want to see the country.”

US-based Kon, who took part in the 2007 race, tries a Kerouac on his blog as he reminisces India: “The roads are dominated by a single rule: Momentum. The bus is king: It observes no rules and drives wherever the hell it wants, angrily honking at you and flashing its lights if you dare to take up a small part of your own lane when it commandeers from the opposite direction. Next we have the Ambassador … sweeping past on diplomatic immunity. The Ambassadors are always in white, and their peer, the Jeep, in silver. It’s like a video game from the 80s where all the aliens were the same shape and color, though here they vary greatly by the number of people, or animals, in/on the vehicle. Motorcycles and autorickshaws buzz past on all sides and at all times. We fight it out with them as equals and I’m happy to say, we do most of the passing.”

So the next time, once you are done with haggling and gently roll about in an autorickshaw, with wind and dust blowing in your face, and a Kajra re blaring above the traffic sounds, salute the tut-tut, that frugal piece of engineering that has become the commoners’ conveyance, that disproportionate vehicle on four wheels minus one that is both kitsch and quintessential jugaad.