Editor's note: In this weekly feature China Daily gives voice to Asia and its people. The stories presented come mainly from the Asia News Network(ANN), of which China Daily is among its 20 leading titles.

His body glistening with sweat, a gaunt man in a loincloth pulls a rickshaw through the serpentine lanes of north Kolkata. Amid the summer heat, the towering brick-red dwellings with baroque cornices overlook his toil.

Plying people or packages, this man is a symbol of an enduring legacy in India's "city of joy", a platitudinous nickname it earned from French author Dominique Lapierre's novel.

Despite Kolkata's strides toward modernity, the sight of hand-pulled rickshaws continues to define its streetscape.