The trucks that ply the highways of Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are ostentatious in their appearance. The exterior is a dazzling array of colors, decorated with drawings of birds, flowers, landscapes, saints, and actors as a palette. The interior is filled with plastic flowers, mirrors, ribbons, velvet, and a string of bells hung around the truck. Every time the truck moves, the bells jingle like the ghungroo of a Pakistani bride. “Jingle Trucks” is the name given to these trucks by the US military stationed in Afghanistan.
Not only trucks, buses, watercraft, transport vehicles, rickshaws, trolleys are also decorated with colorful colors. It is like a kind of folk art, a kind of free-moving national gallery.
The tradition of decorating trucks began around 1920 with the introduction of the Bedfords long-distance truck. A British-style truck with a rounded cab and seven-foot-high sides, it became the country’s most reliable truck for more than half a century. The original truck was painted and marked with the company logo so that even illiterate people could recognize its owner. Gradually, the logos became more colorful and eye-catching, and in the 1950s, stylized murals and paintings began to replace them. And in the 1960s, as the country’s economy boomed, the decorations became increasingly elaborate to reflect the growing wealth of truckers and the rise of a new urban class.
Each truck is a small fortune. It is not uncommon for a person to spend a year’s salary just to decorate their truck. According to one article, just a simple painting and labor costs at least $2,000, equivalent to two years of the average truck driver’s salary. Some spend as much as $10,000 on exterior decoration. And surprisingly, many people completely redecorate their truck every three or four years.
“Truck drivers don’t even spend that much money on their own homes,” said Durriya Kazi, head of the vision research department at the University of Karachi. “I remember one driver telling me that he puts his life on the truck, it’s his livelihood. If he doesn’t treat it well, he feels ungrateful.”
A well decorated vehicle also gives the customer the feeling that it is well taken care of and therefore, it is also reliable for transporting goods.
Car painting has also become a big business. In Karachi alone, more than 50,000 people are involved in this lucrative industry. Family workshops include apprentices, craftsmen, and small shops selling all sorts of strange decorations and interesting accessories.
Over the years, the business has changed. Now, instead of hand-painting each truck, people use wallpaper. “The truck decoration industry is not stagnant, it is dead,” laments RM Naeem, an assistant professor at the National College of Arts Lahore. “Because artists see their work as a way to make money. They no longer have the time to be creative and innovative.”
Ngoc Anh (According to AmusingPlanet)
