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He’s probably moved on to other lives by now, but even
when I knew him in Kolkata some 30 years ago “Gautam mechanic” as he was
referred to, had a head full of hair which was already dead whiting. The
thin wiry guy didn’t talk much, yet anyone who ever had a problem with
anything remotely connected with automotive electricals went to him for an
almost guaranteed solution. His tiny sidewalk shop, called “G Electric” –
what else? – still remains an icon from my early adulthood. It had two or
three of his assistants and apprentices in it but for the main part was
composed of an eerie combination of wires, bolts, coils, cutouts, battery
parts, half repaired car components, fuses and lots of dark greasy tools. It
was exactly as if a gigantic dynamo had been detonated inside the setup and
its blasted pieces had settled for ever where they fell.
Like I said, he spoke little. You explained the
problem to him and thereafter watched as he underwent an altered state of
consciousness. His head would crook to one side, his eyes glass over and one
could almost see a whole mind cloud completely into the quandary as he stood
there silently looking at the faulty or unworking part under the raised hood
of the car. Twenty – and thirty-some things get impatient with such response
from an electrician. Today I realize that the reason his approach seemed so
different was because it was completely opposed to any of my worldviews
towards malfunctioning things. His thoughts were fixed on underlying form,
mine looking at superficial function.
After hundreds of years he would finally surface to
instruct an assistant to remove the part and to tell me to collect the
vehicle may be after a couple of hours or something. When I did, it would
invariably be functioning as smooth as a baby’s bottom but, more
significantly, Mr. Gautam would be talking a little more like a normal human
being, as if a great weight had been lifted off his head. Had I seen this
film or that? How were my kids, parents? Had I noticed how the prices of
everything these days were always and only going up and up and up? Like, how
was a man to live?
Those days, when I was younger, I would often ask
myself facetiously of course – if Gautam was God. You know, the kind of guy
who not only knows how a thing works, which is easy; but why it does, which
isn’t. These days I frequently find myself answering that he probably
wasn’t. But, to cut a long story short, he was a great model for an aspiring
one. |
