Jugaad

By Ganesh Saili

‘Keep your film out of the sunlight!’ Until 2004, it was a statutory warning I gave my charges. Soon after, I too staggered around like a lost dinosaur, staring at a spaceship console – too much auto-focus, megapixels and image stabilisers for me. Our film world would soon go without a whimper, denied a headstone.

A high priest of those analogue days was a certain Mr Lord, (we never did ask him his first name) who lived near St Emilian’s Church, where you would have found him looking dapper in an old linen suit, sunning himself in a patch of sunshine.

‘Clutter is good’ he announced as I peeked at his pile of broken gadgets: black-and-white televisions, blenders, grinders, radiograms, record players and transistors. ‘It’s comforting to fix broken dreams,’ he’d said.

His workbench was a riot of Araldite, epoxy, resin, glue and QuickFix. Pliers, screwdrivers and wire-strippers were lined up on his table like a row of soldiers on parade in an abandoned cantonment.

‘Man!’ he drawled. ‘Before I moved to Landour, I used to work in the Railway’s Balasore Workshop. Getting here, I was pretty happy to be seventy years old! But the elders turned up their noses. I could not apply for the Seniors’ Club until I was eighty!’

‘My name made me the first choice as undertaker at the Cemetery. Still trying to fix the unfixable!’

Then there was Hans, the scruffy Swiss! You could call him the poor man’s William Tell if you trimmed his beard, clipped his whiskers and gave him a good scrub. Of course, I dismissed bazaar rumours that credited him as being part of a team that had sought to plant a jinxed warning device atop one of our peaks to the north.

I first spotted him astride a rickety old Triumph motorcycle, taking Laali – his pet monkey, sitting pretty on his left shoulder – for a spin

‘Be the first in whatever you do!’ he advised me. ‘Don’t be the last person to step into a swimming pool!’

I must say Hans dived deep, fulfilling his destiny by becoming world-famous in Landour for his handyman skills. There is no doubt he was the Founding Father of Jugaad – long before the term became a well-worn phrase. It was a common belief that he could fix, tweak or modify anything. But often, with interesting results.

My friend Rakesh Garg, living in Sisters Bazaar had a Royal Enfield motorcycle that developed a wracking cough.

One did what you did in those days – take it to Hans. ‘That’s easy!’ nodded Hans, eagerly stripping it apart. Out came: cams, chain, engine, fuel tank, headlights, indicators, sprockets and wheels. Trouble came knocking when he couldn’t put them all back together again.

‘We did in the end what we should have done in the beginning, that is, take it down to the workshop in Dehradun, only this time it was in seven assorted suitcases!’

With the passage of time, Khaliq’s workshop on the ramp of Mullingar became Hans’ second home, where he tinkered with everything. On one occasion, he borrowed the milkman’s ancient muzzle loader, claiming that the trusty flintlock would help chase away Landour’s pesky monkeys. They were a nuisance to Laali’s frequent joy rides.

The first thing he did was saw off the barrel, murmuring: ‘Easier to carry!’

Later, when the milkman wanted it back, Hans welded the two pieces together, well, almost, for who could argue over a slightly misaligned barrel?

‘My gun! You’ve ruined it!’ moaned the milkman.

‘It’s improved!’ Hans said, defending the indefensible: ‘See! You can now shoot around corners too!’

I had a sudden urge to laugh, and almost did, but for the fact that Linda, his long-suffering companion, turned up. What on earth had the poor girl done to deserve such a stiff sentence for a single mistake?

By the time the digital age arrived, Mr Lord had left to join his Maker. Hans had gone missing. Last we heard of him, he was helping a nunnery down in the south build an earthen dam.

But that tale awaits another day, for someone other than me to tell.

Ganesh Saili, born and home-grown in the hills, belongs to those select few whose words are illustrated by their pictures. As the author of two dozen books, some translated into 20 languages, his work has found worldwide renown.