A rooftop garden on Kolkata cab

Dhananjoy Chakraborty’s taxi is yellow and runs on fossil fuel. Yet, people call it the “green taxi”. And wherever he goes, an army of admirers stand around his taxi to take a photograph and even selfies. What draws people to the otherwise typical vehicle, thousands of which ply on the streets of Kolkata is the taxi’s roof; it has a patch of green foliage, like a mini, moving garden.

In the mid-half of last century, two path-breaking Bengali filmmakers, Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, had both made films on the relationship between a man and his vehicle. In Ghatak’s “Ajantrik”, made in 1958, protagonist Bimal shares a near-human relationship only with his jalopy, a 1920 Chevrolet, which he drives around as a taxi in a provincial town.  

Ray’s 1962 film “Abhijaan” tells the story of hot-tempered Narsingh, who has a passion for his 1930 Chrysler, which he plies as a vehicle carrying passengers in rural Bengal. While it is often believed that Ray’s film was inspired by Ghatak’s, Narsingh’s character later became the prototype for the cynical cab driver Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver”.

Chakraborty, too, shares a rapport with his vehicle but he is far from being cynical. In fact, the patch of green on his taxi bears a message of going green. In his mid-40s and better known as Bapi to those who know him, Chakraborty set up a Facebook page for his cab, where he shares photos and anecdotes.

It all started on a sad note when a Kolkata cabbie, Shatrughan Poddar, died due to heat wave in 2014. The 52-year-old man was found unconscious inside his car near a major crossing in south Kolkata and was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival. This incident made Chakraborty think and he found a unique way to beat the heat. “I wanted to give a message that anyone can plant trees anywhere; we don’t need a park or a sprawling garden. If there’s a will, there will always be a way,” he said.

With this thought in mind, Chakraborty planted orchids in earthen pots and placed them on the space between the back-seat and the rear windshield. Over time he decided to go a step further and had a metal frame installed to the roof of his taxi, where he planted grass. His ingenuity paid off within days and even though the vehicle was not air-conditioned, passengers started enjoying the idea and spoke of how the grass cooled the interiors of the cab.

Chakraborty, who calls his cab “sabuj rath”, the green chariot, explained that he had a frame with metal containers attached on the cab’s roof, laid their bottom with soil, white sand and stone chips, helping real grass to grow there.

“The frame, along with the grass and soil, weigh around 65 kg and cost me nearly Rs 22,000. The additional weight does have an effect on my fuel consumption but I don’t mind,” he said. What started with a money plant creeper in a decorated glass bottle three years back has now taken the shape of Bapi’s green taxi.

Chakraborty said that the idea for the rooftop garden actually came from a friend, who found something similar on the Internet. The idea set his mind on fire and he found further inspiration as many passengers appreciated the money plant creeper in the bottle. After two years, when the mercury sometimes touches 40 degrees Celsius in summer, Chakraborty provides the necessary “green relief” not just to his passengers but also to those whooshing past him on the road.

“I decided to plant saplings and grass on the roof of my taxi to reduce the scorching summer heat and it worked well for both me and my passengers. Passengers tell me that they don’t feel hot inside my taxi, even on summer afternoons,” he said. And even at a time when the Bengal Taxi Association, the strongest taxi drivers’ union in Kolkata, refused to ply cabs in the city between 11 am and 4 pm following Poddar’s death, Chakraborty could be seen zipping around the city.

What started as a technique to keep his taxi cooler during humid Kolkata summers, has now turned into his trademark and also Chakraborty’s way of spreading the message for environment. For him, the vehicle became a way not just to earn a livelihood but also a medium of expression. He covered the front and rear decks with plants and put an entire grass bed on the car’s roof, with the inner roof covered in artificial grass, set against green seat covers. “I want to tell people that if I can grow plants in my car then they can nurture a few plants at home,” he said.

The environment enthusiast, who has been distributing leaflets to curious passengers with messages and sketches made by him about his initiative, has now taken to spreading the “go green” message among schoolchildren, who find his taxi roof garden not only intriguing but also delightful. Chakraborty pointed out that as he drives around Kolkata all day, he felt this to be the best way for him to spread the message. And, in the process, he has found quite a following among other taxi drivers. Although not many have thought of growing grass on the roof of their cabs, they took Chakraborty’s message of planting trees seriously and many have started nurturing small plants at home.

Chakraborty, however, does not own the cab he drives and has turned into a mobile ode to environmental conservation. Even though he sold his taxi eight years back when he needed money for a surgery, following an accident, Amrish Singh, owner of the vehicle he drives, along with five other taxis, has stood by him.

According to Singh, not only is Chakraborty one of the safest drivers around, since his message is for a good cause, he did not mind the changes to his vehicle and decided to extend his full support. Singh pointed out that initially, not did just fellow drivers ridicule him, even some passengers thought Chakraborty was out of his mind. But, at least for now, green seems to be winning.