Opinion The Third edit: Kolkata’s Yellow Ambassador’s last ride

Most people, naysayers included, would agree that if there is one thing that Kolkata thrives on it is its umbilical link to nostalgia. Ramshackle lanes with cheek-by-jowl houses speak of former glory in the city’s older, northern part. In the south, tram tracks remind one of a 151-year-old relic that has only recently lumbered into extinction from the city’s traffic loop. Now, another distinctive totem of the city’s chaotic streets is set to fade into the sunset of nostalgia: The yellow Ambassador cabs. The cessation of production as well as the 2009 order of the Supreme Court’s green bench disallowing vehicles older than 15 years from plying has meant that by March 2025, over 7,000 Ambassador cabs — 80 per cent of the city’s fleet — will go off road. By 2027, almost all of these cabs are expected to be phased out.

The production of the Ambassador began in Hindmotor in the city’s outskirts in 1958. By 1962, its durability had become a legend, leading to its incorporation in the city’s public transport system, leaving behind competitors such as the Fiat Padmini. The death knell was sounded earlier though by the arrival of app-based cabs and then the pandemic. But before that, for most residents, the yellow taxi, distinct in its ample girth and bright yellow paint, had been more than just a mode of transport. In a city where time stretches and folds to its own unique rhythm, the Ambassador meant the joy of a family evening out or the irritation of rush-hour commute where the litany of complaints about the traffic or the condition of roads bound the driver and commuter in kinship.

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It is, of course, true that not everything old needs a new lease of life. In terms of safety and environmental hazard, the trundling Ambassadors have been out of joint for a while. Why not then use a spot of ingenuity for the best of both worlds? Use the colour yellow for a sleeker, safer fleet of cabs?