Last Ones Standing

The number of horses at the EVR Road's horse stand is shrinking. Here is how this carriage owner struggles to keep the horses and the business from further decline

- NIDHARSHANA RAJU

A Long Poonamallee High Road in old Madras, the skyline has familiar landmarks—the red-brick bustle of Central Station, the cream-white Ripon Building, and the ornate Victoria Public Hall. The streets around these buildings in the 1900s throbbed without engines: tram bells, the creak of bullock carts, the soft whirr of bicycles, horse-drawn carriages, and the patter of hand-pulled rickshaws threading the roads.

Sepia-toned postcards of Madras often show the elegant horse-drawn carriages lining a lively Madras framed by colonial facades, capturing the graceful, animal-powered mobility that once defined the city. Contemporary accounts and scholarship even indicate a clear pecking order in price and prestige: horse carriages, typically used by the well-off—including British officials before 1947—were costlier than human-pulled rickshaws, while slow bullock carts largely served goods transport and the frugal. Sustained by the fascination of the wealthy for elegant horse-drawn travel, opposite the Ripon Building was a long horse stand or stable where carriages waited, reins slacked, ready for hire.

This institution is kept alive in memory by the three last horses that remain in the stable today. Named Danny, James, and Kabila, they are all under ten years of age. Their owner, S. Kumar (40), represents the fourth generation at the horse stand. From his early years, he has borne witness to the slow fading away of both men and horses from the stable. While Kumar's forefathers earned their living transporting people in horse carriages, the nature of the business changed completely when he entered the business.