My dad could fix anything

My father was a non-matriculate and was not schooled in any engineering college. However, an earthy common sense and confidence in himself more than made up for it.

My earliest memories of his dabbling in repairing were when he dismantled a diesel pump and overhauled it in a village near Hyderabad where he was in charge of a village development project under Sarvodaya movement of Vinoba Bhave during the early fifties.

His concept of an overhaul was quite simply to dismantle any contraption down to its individual components, scrub and clean with kerosene oil, rub dry with a clean cloth and apply fresh grease and reassemble.

He would drive my mother to exasperation by announcing his decision to overhaul the bicycle just the day before. A huge cast-iron kadai to hold a couple of litres of kerosene, some old rags, old newspapers had to be arranged by my mother. He would hang the bicycle through a rope from the ceiling fan hook. He would then strip the Bicycle to its components, scrub with an old toothbrush and kerosene. There would be no compromises or shortcuts ever. Time was not a consideration. All this while, my mother would incessantly curse and complain of the reeking smell of kerosene.

His overhauling of our HES alarm clock would follow the same routine. He would dismantle the clock down to balance wheels, coil springs, small gears and would sit for hours staring at them to figure out how to reassemble them. The lubricant was obviously the ubiquitous coconut oil. He would somehow reassemble the clock and wind it up. Wonder of wonders the clock would start ticking despite my dad having saved some parts. He would then check that alarm functions as to should and conclude that the components which were left were not really needed and it was a strategy of unscrupulous Clock Manufacturers to fleece the customers by adding superfluous components and inflating prices.

Needless to say that the Clock would cease to function after a few more overhauls and some more parts having been saved. He would sheepishly declare that it was now time for a new Clock to be bought.

Later in my life, he would buy me mechano sets every time he returned from Bombay to develop my sense of mechanical comprehension which came in very handy during my engineering career.

The advent of Digital watches, Calculators and Semiconductors devices finally stumped him.