KARACHI: The beasts of burden these days are dealing with a different kind of load. You can’t miss them roaming leisurely with their owner on shady streets with a cart load of cantaloupes, honeydew melons, grapes, bananas, mangoes or fresh vegetables.

“This is Mangu,” Dhanna Seth, a fruit seller near the PNS Shifa Hospital behind Cantonment Railway Station, introduces his four-legged friend.

The friend has a nasty cut on his head. Its owner, Dhanna, too, has a bandaged foot. “What happened?”

“Well, we were both injured when my buddy here spotted a female donkey, took a fancy for and forgot his work while chasing it. He was a bit out of control and we entered a busy road with me not really prepared for this. Then in the busy traffic my foot got crushed under the cart and Mangu banged his head in a wall. Thankfully, we escaped with our lives,” Dhanna laughs narrating the incident while giving a loving slap to Mangu between his ears.

The trend of fruit and vegetable vendors pushing a cart is changing. Now they have donkeys pulling four-wheel carts. “In Sindh this idea developed in Tando Adam where this fellow named Shankar, lovingly known as Shankar Mama, thought that both the donkey and the human needed a break,” says Kaka, another such donkey cart fruit vendor near Punjab Chowrangi.

“You see, donkey carts usually have two wheels and are a bit high as well. That puts much burden on the poor animal but a four-wheel cart is far easier to pull by the donkey as it doesn’t put any load on the creature. Shankar Mama built one such cart with steering controls, too. It was an instant hit. After building a few more for friends in Tando Adam he introduced the mechanism in Karachi as well. Now Shankar Mama’s four-wheel donkey carts sell behind the Jamia Baghdadi mosque in New Karachi No 2,” adds Kaka.

“The donkeys also enjoy pulling such carts as the aroma from fresh fruit like cantaloupes or mangoes keeps them in good spirits and due to the steering mechanism we are also not burdened that much as we no longer have to lift the cart up every now and then to change its direction. As the fruit sells, there is space for us to sit on the front of the cart and steer ahead.”

Published in Dawn, July 22th, 2015

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