One of the fringe benefits of being a regular race-goer is that one runs into more than one’s fair share of colourful personalities. Some years ago, I met up with Gwyn Jones, alas no more, best described as “an unconventional Welsh explorer and risk taker with a chequered past”.
Gwyn was an incredible raconteur, full of the most outrageous anecdotes featuring himself and his hapless associates involved in some malfeasance or the other. Short of gunrunning, he appeared to have done everything and I’m not so sure about that one, given his familiarity with AK-47, Fida and other movies of that genre.
One particular gem that lingers in my memory is Gwyn’s account of a weedy youth who bought a large hunting jacket from his stall at a village fair.
When I said large, I meant humongous — the jacket in question could well have fitted Mike Tyson with space left over for his Rottweiler. Consequently, it didn’t, shall we say, drape elegantly on the emaciated one.
In Gwyn’s inimitable phrase, "He could have gone camping in that thing. He had to take four steps before that fookin’ jacket would move an inch. His mum kept calling him a bloody fool and tried to pull him away from my stall, but he just had to have it. And I’m giving him the sell, see, we Welsh have the art.
Fits you like a glove, guv’nor, I sez. And I’m running along behind him keeping it tight, ooh. I tell you, I saw that bloke and I said to me’self, somewhere in England, a village is missing its idiot.’
When he isn’t cajoling unwary punters into purchasing ‘two in one’ garments, Gwyn frequents blues bars, where, by his own admission, he ‘puts away a fair bit of bourbon.’
Blues, as any fule kno, has a dark history in slavery and oppression; the word suggests a melancholy mood, as in, leave him alone, he’s got a bad case of the blues. But despite this wellspring of sadness, most composers use upbeat rhythms in order to drive the blues away. At the risk of offending purists, blues in its highest avatar is as evolved as Mozart, tracing its origin to the Mississippi Delta and re-defined by migrant musicians moving to big cities in search of work.
Gwyn was an entrepreneur cast in a totally different mould from a Tralanick or a Zuckerberg, being driven entirely by passion, or, in his case, a combination of passions. His light-bulb moment came when he saw his first tiffin carrier at Richards Square and his next inspiration was the humble cycle-rickshaw.
Eureka, he exclaimed and then proceeded to corner the market in tiifin-carriers and rickshaws with a view to ultimately setting up a food delivery business in Oxford to service the student market. Chicken tikka masala, naans, poppadoms, biryani, bisibele bath, you name it and Gwyn’s delivery team would deliver it to your doorstep in the most eco- friendly vehicle: the cycle-rickshaw.
For party orders, the desi-khana, environmental concerns and creativity would seamlessly blend together with his Swiggy equivalent doubling up as an impromptu blues band that would set up your buffet, perform Muddy Waters tunes and give your guests a ride down memory lane. The icing on the gulab jamun, in a manner of speaking, would be that the liberals could enjoy the luxury without having to endure the guilt.
Tourists were mortified when an undernourished driver pedalled them around Delhi or Kolkata while coughing up his lungs; in 2007 the Delhi High Court clamped down on this mode of transport on the grounds that it led to congestion.
However, rickshaws got some respite in 2012 when the Supreme Court upheld their right to ply in the city without facing harassment.
The judgment has been welcomed by many who felt that it addressed two necessary issues - providing clean public transport and protecting human rights of the migrant population. Gwyn’s business model deftly combined political correctness with expediency. Instead of an emaciated, tubercular coolie ferrying an overfed tourist, his plan entailed a strapping Oxford Rowing blue transporting happy passengers over hill and dale as they quaffed a lager and watched the world go by. It’s a pity he didn’t get to see his idea take root and flourish. RIP Gwyn, Uber Eats, tchah, pshaw and pfft. As Charles Hughes wisely observed, “When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.” They don’t make them like Gwyn anymore.
