Thursday, July 19, 2012

Mechanic

I was using, my brother's bike.(I am using it even now). One day petrol started leaking from it.
I had to switch on  the petrol tap for a five hundred meter ride and switch off it when it overflows. Even then I was using it. It was afternoon then. It stopped after one and a half kilometers from my home. No idea of mine could start my bike.I started pushing it to the nearby garage.
I saw no other bike or any vehicle in that garage other than mine. The mechanic came out from the garage. He was around 50 years of age. He started looking into the problem. He told me there is some problem with the carburetor. There was leakage in the float valve.

 Reading Sherlock Holmes stories always has its effect. After reading detective stories more, I started to observe others in detail for their occupation and their character.  I found my Mechanic to have some sort of serious illness, for his legs were swollen.
 He fixed the leak in float. He removed the carburetor and started working on it. Its was around three o clock in the afternoon. A group of  five people came there to discuss something which I could not understand. They went inside along with my Mechanic ( my work half done) . I saw them take a bottle and have drinks in plastic-use and throw glasses. I understood his illness then. He was a drunkard.

His movements became sluggish. He misplaced a tiny part of carburetor. It took one hour to find it from the scrap. But he managed to repair it with great difficulty.

I felt really sad when he asked me the charges for repairing my bike. It was very less compared to the quantum of work he did. He was more interested in going back to the shelter again to have his next drink.

I now understand that throughout my native place, such groups are increasing at an alarming rate ,making exceptional talents like our Mechanic drown in the ocean of alcohol. The money meant for making their children happy, making their lives better is either drenched in alcohol or spent in a hospital.

Alcohol is spoiling the lives of many. It is an evil so slow that  we will never know when it overpowers us. Alcoholics are having a disease like a typhoid or diabetes. It is not their egoism which shouts against those who questions them,  it is because of their slavery to the substance.
Lets hate Alcohol. Let it not be a status symbol. Let it be like the old days where people using alcohol were looked down upon.