Now that its demise has been announced, so has the waterworks and the sudden lamentation for ‘purano shei deener kotha’ when trams in Kolkata would ply like the way EVs in the world someday will.
We’ll skip the history, except for the bit that electric trams were introduced in Kolkata in 1902, the second city in India after Madras that got them in 1895. Kolkata, as is wont with the city, is also the last to have them running.
Barely. And badly. That’s till now – when only one ‘heritage’ line will run, probably for the odd-NRI remembering when tram tickets were ‘oh-so-cheap and life wasn’t spoilt by the internet’ etc etc.
Also like a lot of things in Kolkata, trams were just allowed to run and run and run – without modernisation or maintenance, the two ‘M’s bearing no relation to what they do in other parts of the country or world – until they, well, ran out.
Unlike modern cities where modern trams run, Kolkata’s trams lived off only one intangible, obstructing thing: nostalgia. So, while trams are having a comeback elsewhere, in the relatively young city of Kolkata that loves being old, they’re being given the boot in the form of a farewell. Let the soulful boo-hoo begin.
