Law of Averages...

The world needs more Tahiruls…. Who is Tahirul??? Lets see…

 The law of average must strike you at some point of time… and indeed it struck… not once but multiple times….

The context… my workplace is exactly 40 KM from home. 20 KM of NICE road… literally… it’s a nice road and it is NICE road… but the rest 20 is where the problem lies… recent rains have made what was road with few potholes to potholes with bit of road. And most of this stretch is unlit, dusty or drowned(depending on if the man of the match for the day was sun god or rain god), rowdy(blaring trucks and busses), deserted in parts and chaotic in others…

Have been traveling on this road for the last 6 months with no incidents related to the vehicle, (apart from few close shaves with the rowdy's). But then the law of average struck… middle of the road the clutch cable broke… smooth as a butter… no jerks, no theatrics… just plain cut… and the vehicle continues to move…

Put the vehicle to neutral and moved to the side. Was trying to figure out what just happened… accepting the reality…hoping it was a dream, looking around to see if I was lucky and just across the road if there would be a bike repair shop, monkeying around with the cable, with no clue what to do, pulling and pushing it when suddenly… the second time it struck… the vehicle started moving to front automatically! Before I realized what was happening… people across the road were shouting and when I looked back a truck was taking reverse and had no clue about my existence and kept pushing me and realizing something was wrong stopped abruptly. 

A man came down from the lorry with part trepidation and part aggression  (no he  was not Tahirul).. saw my condition and we just chatted normally like we knew each other, he sympathized a bit and  I was too focused (read confused) to be angry. He tried some gimmicks with the clutch cable but nothing to get the bike moving. He suggested there is a puncture repair shop ahead that might have a mechanic who could help.

Decided to just go ahead with the broken clutch till I see a workshop… as he suggested, there was a puncture repair shop ahead, and stopped there was a man who was closing the shop!(yes! You guessed it wrong again! He was not Tahirul…) asked him if he can fix clutch cable, he said no…. so had to move ahead again(note, once the bike enters neutral… getting it back to move again on gear is not an easy task… makes gadagada sound, vehicle goes into spasms, is bad for the engine and require multiple takes to get going…

Moved ahead again… shop number 2… a proper Bike repair shop!(I am so cool!)… this shop is open… but empty… as I get my bike to neutral and shop in front of it, one of the garage boys clearly done for the day comes to me asking watsup… (this time! Wrong again… not Tahirul…)I say clutch cable is broken… he say I don’t have clutch cable… I say where do you get… he say go ahead for another 4 KM you will get… I say traffic ahead cant risk riding… he say you have no choice… I say I will buy and come the cable can you fix it… he say don’t risk, he might not have the cable so you have to go and come… better take bike and get lost… basically he was done for the day and did not want to help… I stood my ground, telling him any cable would do not necessarily for Enfield(just in case you were wondering all this time what bike I was on ;-) ) he say will check.. open the safe… comes back.. no cable… just as I was struggling… comes his friend and co-worker, happy and gay with a smile on the face asking what happened..(finally! You have made it a habit haven’t you? Its not Tahirul… )  he pushed the reluctant first guy to check for some other cable and suggesting something should be available… from the body language of the first guy it was evident he is not going to find anything… for you get only when you seek… not when you pretend to seek…

To his credit the first guy did show me how much power is required to get the clutch to be pulled and it was humanely impossible to ride and pull the clutch when it is cut, he was willing to help me going forward by pushing the bike and suggesting where I might find help… 

So bidding adieu to my new 2 friends went ahead exploring the road ahead… as promised about 2 km down the road could see a bigger workshop on the right side of the road. Slowly put the vehicle on neutral and walked across to 3 confused faces… They were already in the middle of an operation… greasy hands washing away more grease from god knows what part of which vehicle! Every thing taken apart and lying all over… (wonder how they manage to keep track of all the parts strewn across without using any software to manage the components… or probably that’s why it works so well…).(yes yes yes!!!! None of them were Tahirul….)

Another annoyed look from the mechanic indicating…. “Look bhai mein bujy hoon… will pretend I am listening to you… but I am already lagging in my work so what ever you problem is… will give you a complicated explanation and you go figure out what you want to do, don’t waste my time”… and this is exactly what he said… I told cable broken… he said don’t have it here, go ahead you might find a shop that has ask them to fix it if they can….

I said any normal bike cable would fit… not willing to relent just stood there… till he said okay get the bike here(from across the road)…. Again sent his “chota” to look for the cable… he came walking to the bike… first figuring out where the clutch cable would be.. then again the search inside the garage and the response… nahin hai…

The elder guy again repeats, go ahead you might find a shop and they might have the cable, I ask him will he fit it if I get it, again, he says better take the bike there and figure out… basically buzz off…

I still stood my ground… then he says okay call my owner and ask him if he can get the cable because he might be in the shop…clearly with no intention to fix it… 

Was wondering what to do next and moved to the bike when out of the blue comes a young energetic chap with oily hair falling on his face, with the energy of a puppy, looks around the bike and says what happened? take a moment… the legend has arrived…

I say clutch broke, can you fix it? He asks where do you stay? I say about 30KM from here….He looks at the problem and says we might not have it here, I will go see if its available in the shop ahead… and then he makes a statement that only legends can make… “Don’t you worry, even if the cable is not there, I will make sure you reach home…”

Asks for 100 bucks… gets on his scooter… that takes few attempts to start and zooms off…

All I could do was stand there with a smile on the face and reflecting back on the opinion difference I have had with my management recently… where I believe majority of the team should be focused on core work and just because a customer has come with an escalation everyone should not be just working on that ! and here I was upset that the senior mechanic was continuing to do his core work when I was there with an emergency… what goes round….

Fast forward 10 minutes… Tahirul is back, says could not find the actual cable for the bike, but he got the on used in autorickshaws and he got a small nut that can be adjusted and did his magic, he fixed it for the bike and kept his promise… I asked him his name, he asked me where I was from, I asked where he is from (from Kolkata), asked if he went home for puja he said he could not with a sadness in the eyes saying boss did not give leave and then became silent… 

Fixes the Cable and checks if its fine and then put hand in pocket and started giving the account for how much the cable cost(which I was not listening for I was in awe of this gentleman).. I asked him what the labour charges was… he said what ever you want to give, I asked give a number… he said 30/-… I dug into my pocket and fetched an amount that was more than what he had asked…his eyes lit up when he counted it and he was like “kithna sara hai yeh!!!” and then I made a statement(don’t know from which movie or book its from) "its not for what you did as a mechanic… but for your heart  that was willing to help when no one else was willing to.. dont change...".

He was back to the jumping puppy with energy he initially had...

The world will be a better place to be in with more Tahiruls around...

Yes… law of average does work… when nothing is going right… eventually it has to!

Operation Sangam

Operation Clean Sangam.

Sangam, literally translated means “join”. The Sangam I am referring to here is a place around 100 KM South of Bangalore, in the Kanakapura direction. It is called Sangam because it is the natural meeting point of two great rivers, one Kaveri and the other Arkavathy. Their union makes up a very picturesque and volatile site which is a treat to the eyes and mind of the beholder. The sheer power of the vast expanses of flowing water makes you wonder if man really as powerful as he sees himself.

The purpose of our visit was not to enjoy the beauty of this place, on the contrary we were here looking for the things that diminish its beauty and to clean them. We were here to perform a Plastic Surgery, though of a different kind, it was to remove all plastic materials like water bottles, cold drink bottles, ghutka Packets, cigarette packs, plastic cups, plastic wrappers, plastic covers…etc…It was organized by a group called Clean n Green., which adopts certain places and has taken up to clean up the places.

The place has lots of Hillocks which are separated by the flowing rivers, the most famous of these is the one which leads to MekeDattu around 4 KM from Sangam. People who come to visit MekeDattu have to essentially pass through Sangam. We had to take Coracles to move from the mainland to these hillock. The boatmen ferried us across with relative ease. The ride at water level, where you can literally smell the purity of water, coming from the natural source, without any artificiality of chemicals like chlorine that we are so used to, this by itself is enough to enthuse you with the energy required for the task ahead.

It was decided that we would be cleaning up only the Sangam portion of the location, since a team of noble souls had cleaned up MekeDattu a week back and we felt it would not be very productive to clean up the same location.

The “we” here refers to a bunch of 16 individuals(foto attached) who came from varied background, the only thing common between us was the determination to see the place cleaned up. Some of them had been on this expedition before but most of us were “freshers”.

Once our feet were firmly set on the ground, there was a small briefing in which we were told what to clean up, which translates to any junk(hence forth refered to as treasure) lying around. With the hands protected by plastic gloves(of course we remembered to throw it into the garbage bags in the end) , garbage bags in hand and armed with a stick with a hook in the end, we spread out in different directions and began the Operation.

It was quite an educating experience. I came to know about so many new brands of ghutka, new liquor brands(we infact found out which is the most favoured brand, not mentioning it here since it would be free publicity), new cigarette brands, I learned that AquaFina was not the only brand which supplied packaged water. I learned about new creative ways of throwing junk into the least accessible of locations, I learned that the best way to dispose off liquor bottles was to smash it against stones(I wonder how many of them would have the guts to smash a filled up bottle, or probably this feeling rises from the fact that they are themselves filled up with the content of the bottle…or could it be due to the frustration that there is no more of it left it in the bottle and the poor bottle is not able to produce more of it, think it would and interesting topic for a doctorate…).

In some places, where people had camped, it looked as if they had ghutka for they breakfast, lunch and dinner, so many packets lying around. The place was littered to the core, anywhere you turn you could find treasure, but the place was not beyond salvage.

Around 2 hours into the operation we hit a small snag, we had run out of garbage bags. Timely intervention by a couple of resourceful people in the group resulted in getting two huge sacks, we emptied the contents of the smaller bags into the big sack and started re-using them for collecting more treasure. We used this time to construct a structure using the glass bottles, which was destroyed by a naturally calamity(gust of wind).

Two more hours, eight more bags of treasure later we were completely stocked and no more collection was possible. It was time for some French wine-yard style crushing of plastic bottles and time for some photographs. The whole collection was around 70-80 Kgs(excluding the bottles), That amount of treasure in an area of around 3 square miles should give you an idea of how much of littering was done, considering the fact that the contents were light plastic materials.

We never made it to MekeDattu, but that was not a disappointment, it was more of contentment for leaving Sangam a better place. Satisfaction that another week did not pass staring into the computer screen. There was a contentment for a job well done as well as having done something and not just sit and crib about it(typical Kuch Nahin Ho Sakta Is Desh Ka).

The question is, who does this littering? Easy answer: "these illiterate guys, coming from the low background, they do it. Nothing can be done about them, they just throw stuff where ever they can".
Easy answers are necessarily not the correct answers, few of the brands of liquor bottles I mentioned, they cost a fortune, I don’t think the guys we first blame would even bother to buy a branded bottle of water costing 20 bucks. NO, this guy is not going to rent a taxi and come so far and litter this place. So the question still remains to be answered and your guess is as good as mine.

Is this the end then? The answer is a big NO!!!! for it would be an understatement to say that this was the tip of the iceberg. There is more land to be covered, more treasure to be discovered, more plastic surgery to be done. To make sure when people go back after visiting this place, they remember the beauty of this place and not the sore points.

Thanks to organization like Clean n Green, groups like save nature (http://save-nature.blogspot.com/) which have been doing this for some time, an initiative has been taken, though more work needs to be done in terms of installing proper collection and disposal system and educating everyone, including the so called educated, to keep the place clean.

NB: In case any of you would like to volunteer for the same you can refer to: http://save-nature.blogspot.com/ . Satisfaction fully guaranteed.