Mrs. Maliha Khan Tirmizi
M. Omer Sheikh: 2003-02-0129 Monday 1 st May, 2000
Art of Truck and Bus Decoration in Pakistan
It is 1 p.m. in the after noon and I am out on the road in the sweltering heat of April with temperatures soaring up to 44 degree Celsius. There is a road I am driving on or rather what is left of a road after years of neglect and misuse. The road is Bund road near the river Ravi on the outskirts of Lahore City. The condition of the road has been made worse by the reconstruction of the entire road, a project initiated by the previous government. Without any air-conditioning in the car and with depressions so deep in the road that if full of water a car would drown in them, my ride is by no means what Santana would term as Smooth. Add to the fun smoke and dust all around even with the windows rolled up, and u have a perfect excuse for not doing your project! But alas, I have to look for the workshops where trucks and buses are made. I have been searching this road for an hour but all that I could find are workshops of bus builders (which is a job fairly similar to truck building) with no truck builders anywhere in sight. By now one must be wondering what I am trying to do and that too in this extreme heat!
For an introduction, I am searching for those Master Artists who build and decorate the beautiful trucks and buses of Pakistani roads. If you belong to Pakistan and have spent your life here, you must be wondering as to what is so special about it. It might not be special to you or me but when one takes an objective and unbiased view, one realizes that these monsters of our road (if you have read the papers you'll know what I mean) are magnificently done pieces of art. Even though they are such ubiquitous things on the road, yet very few people are able to appreciate the process through which they come into being. Unlike the sophisticated and minimalist yet grand trucks found in other parts if the world, these trucks are different in their own right decorated with what German anthropologist Martin Sökefeld calls Jewels.
As I soon realize only small trucks and buses are made in Lahore - no trucks. But trucks were the main objects of my study as they are far more lavishly decorated as compared to buses. I was not too worried. After all there were bus makers whom I could go to.
The Truck Makers
To one side of the road is this office named Quetta Transporters. Sitting outside it are few people, Pathans, preparing their evening meal. I stopped and decided to chat with them for a while. A truck was parked next to them, it too was simply beautiful. The men all turned out to be from Quetta and the office was their HQ where they took orders for shipment. I greeted them and they greeted me back. After describing the purpose of my visit I went on to ask them a few questions regarding their trucks and the art on them and they were more than willing to answer. Alam Khan, a driver for the past 8 years spoke to me and described what it was all about.
There are not any trucks made in Lahore. The main centers of truck making are in Dera Ismail Khan, Quetta, Peshawar, Banu and Rawalpindi, Alam Khan told me. In response to my questions he then went on to describe the entire truck building process to me.
The Body Work
The building process starts with the purchase of the truck, which consist of the engine, the drivers seat and the chassis. The rest of the work is to be done by the 'body makers' as they are locally called. The trucks available are of two types. The older Bedford model being produced in Pakistan under license and the newer local and imported ones such as the HinoPak Super series or the Volvo and Renault trucks. Light trucks made by Mazda are also available. Despite the diverse range the truck found in abundant use is the Bedford, but its use is in decline as more and more truck drivers are getting used to the comfort of the new trucks, to which Alam Khan too had grown accustomed and when I asked if he would prefer a Bedford over his HinoPak he flatly refused.
The Bedford comes with just the engine, the chassis and an unpainted cabin devoid of most of the accessories found in other trucks. The cargo bay or the 'Body' of the truck as it is locally called is then built to order for the customer according to the his wishes. It can be done in wood or metal. The bodywork is done in small workshops with the capacity of making 5-7 trucks a month. One can without any doubt call these workshops Truck Beauty Parlours. Not are only new trucks made in the workshops but old trucks are repaired over and over again till the time when just nothing can be repaired. Now the truck is used for its spare parts and sells for the mere amount of Rs. 30-40000. Winters are the preferable season for truck building as summers are just too hot.
The real fun starts when its time to decorate the entire truck after its body has been completed. Starting off with the cabin the interior has to be made. The cabin is without doors that can be crafted out of any material that the owner wishes for. Usually the doors are made of wood with intricate carvings. The wood can be from keekar, talli, akhroat or many other available woods. The work can be further enhanced with hammered trims from a shiny metal such as steel. The interior of the cabin can be painted or it can also be decorated with steel trimmings knows as patree of different sizes or with reflective stickers cut to form different patterns and motifs. The cushion walla makes the seats and does the upholstery. Next comes the body. The bodies are painted with the all the available colours. Additional woodwork can also be done on the body. The designs and motifs to be used called Naqsh in Urdu are provided by the painters or the designers and are available on paper. The owner simply selects the design he wants to use from those available. If he doesn’t find what he likes, more can be created at the spot for the discerning customer. A truck usually takes 10-15 days to complete depending on the complexity of the work being done and this also determines the cost of the work, which can be anywhere between Rs. 10-25000.
The paintwork and the decorations have a particular fixed pattern to them and it doesn't matter what Naqsh was selected. The two sides of a truck are never identical and they have the name of the owner, his company and the artist in painted Urdu and English on both. The other things painted are usually landscapes, airplanes, tigers, lions paintings of women, celebrities (usually at the back) and the religious places. Holy Kaabah and the mosque of Madina are preferred items. Two types of paintings are done on the sides, 'simple paintings' and 'disco paintings'. The simple paintings have some space left between them whereas the disco paintings cover every inch of the truck without any empty spaces. The protruding top of the truck or bus known as the 'Taj' or the Crown is the most lavishly decorated part of the truck. The crown is usually reserved for calligraphy of verses form the Holy Book, paintings of holy places and mosques. It also serves as the trucks store house of mechanical accessories and is good for a once in a while nap too.
The backs of the trucks are usually reflective of the current themes of interest. Imran Khan adorned the backs of the trucks in the early 90's when he won the cricket world cup. When America stopped the delivery of F-16's aircraft to Pakistan, imaginative airplanes appeared on the truck backs. The fairy meadows that one usually sees are depictions of Kashmir. Or more recently when Pakistan test fired the ballistic missile Ghauri, it cropped up simultaneously on the backs of the trucks. Ustaads and their apprentices do all the painting by hand without the help of any stencils. The art is usually drawn in pencil before the actual painting is done. These images are moving testimonies of the Pakistani culture and society. They express the values, dreams and the desires of the people and can truly be classified as a folk art.
The entire job of truck building to be completed by the painters, carpenters, decorators and sprayers is managed by the body makers who control the entire project. Business was on the decline for Alam Khan due to the recessive economy and he had many complaints. One particular thing I was interested in was how the huge influx of Afghan refugees' back in the 80's had affected the entire trucking business. Alam Khan had no complaint and firmly believed that God was the sustainer and supporter of all and provides for all.
But there is more to a truck than just painting.
The Decorators
Then there are jobs for the decorators to do. They go on to attach painted chains to the lower parts of the trucks which perform the vital task of transferring the charge that is accumulated on the truck during travel, to earth. Then there is work to be done with reflective sheeting that has been cut into motifs, a job of intricate detail if not precision. Then as the interiors of the cabins were decorated with steel trims, so is the outside of the main cabin. The Bedford is very heavily decorated in this respect as compared to the newer trucks. The newer trucks come factory painted whereas the Bedford cabins have to be self painted and hence a lot of trim work in steel trimmings is done on them in all colors. The newer trucks usually get away with reflective stickers on their cabins.
During my excursion the Bund road, I didn’t come across any individual painter (most of them are employed by the bus makers) but I did come across many decorators talks with whom were every enlightening.
One of these people was Waris, a shy person in his early thirties with a small shop and an apprentice. Waris has been in the field for the last 14 years or so. He learned this job form his Ustaad (teacher) Mumtaz. He is the only person in the family doing this job and his young kids are going to school before anything else. Waris specializes in work with reflective sheeting. When asked how he came up with his designs, his modest and shy reply was 'just by myself' and 'whatever comes to mind'. Like the decorators in the other parts of the country he doesn’t have design books or copies to display his designs. Whatever is available to him, he just shows to his customers. If they do not find what they are looking for, custom designs are readily made available as it takes only 30-40 minutes for him to complete a design. His designs include every thing from birds, motifs, airplanes, and women to saints and holy prayers. He is able to complete about 4 buses per month and charges about Rs. 10-15000 for each one. He saves little as the cost of the reflective sheets imported from America, Japan and Korea is very high costing him Rs. 100 per square foot.
Business is going down as Waris sees it. The number of buses done these days has dropped to about half as compared to few years ago but he does go on to say that this gives him more time to do his projects hence improving quality. When asked as to what owners want, he replies that they just want heir trucks and buses to look beautiful. The decoration of a truck is a matter of great pride for the owner and no stone is left unturned in its decoration with money being the only constraint. A well-made and painted truck means that the owners are well of and respectable people.
Seeing me leave Waris recalls couple of foreigners from about a year ago who came to his shop along with a commissioner and questioned him about his craft.
I visited another decorator Amin on the same road. He was the only illiterate in his family and the only one doing this job he whimsically tells me. He too repeats Sarwar's concerns of dwindling business and assures me that his children won't get into this field either. Fortunately for me, Amin was the guy who took the foreigners visiting a year ago for a tour. And he extended this offer to me as well. He took me to his workshop where 6-7 boys aged between 10-20 years were working making ornaments and motifs with the reflective sheets at full speed.
Amin also works on rickshaws, smalll trucks and small vans. The factors that determine how much work he does is the amount the owners are willing to pay and sometimes the owners just leave for they can't or don’t pay him any advance for his services. Th economy is in poor condition he says and he blames the new government for it. According to him business was booming in Nawaz Sharif's time. Amin then decide to take me to a nearby bus body workshop to assist me in my work. He gave me a detailed tour of the workshop where 5 buses were in different stages of completion. The interiors, the exteriors, the paint jobs and the decorations were simply breathtaking. A painter was speedily completing a bus with different motifs, as it had to leave that night.
Truck and bus painting is truly an art requiring great skill but there are signs of recession in it. A sagging economy is bringing these practitioners of this art down as these are not very high paying occupations. There is certainly a lot that can be done by the government to preserve the heritage of this art and it should provide the people with facilities which will ensure that the art isn't abandoned in the coming years and is there for the future generations to.
References
Sökefeld, Martin . 1998. Colours on the Road: Truck Painting in Pakistan @ http://www.asienhaus.de/galerie/lkws/english/lkw.htm