The Electrician Complex

Have you ever had all the gadgets around you break down one after another?  It happens to me and often.  I seem to have that effect on all things electronic & electric.  The fragility of life is best depicted in the light bulbs, the washing machines, the jet sprays and the digi comp.  I still have to figure out what the latter exactly is, but signals fail to reach my digi comp with the first onset of monsoons and then with every heavy shower, with unfailing regularity.

I don’t however have the slightest sympathy for these as I see a conspiracy behind it.  They catch me when I least expect it and go on the blink. I can picture the light bulb winking at the fan, saying ,”Well, watch me conk off,” and the fan rotating his blades menacingly saying “Wasn’t it your turn last week? When will I stop to watch the cobwebs flutter by on the ceiling? I never get any rest.” The light bulb won the day and the electrician was called .Like families have `family doctors’ I have a family electrician and a family plumber.  All their numbers are on speed dial because every break down is an emergency and always happens at the most inopportune time.  The electrician came by and after he took one look said,” Choke badalna padega’.  I pretended to comprehend.  He did what he had to and the light bulb came protesting back to work.   

I have the deepest respect for these men who wield the tools of their trade with such dexterity.   The washing machine then decided to turn all my black clothes into white in a particularly racist move.  All the black come up with splatters of white powder on them.  The washing machine was playing up.  The service facility was promptly brought in.  After filling the tub of the machine and emptying it and twiddling some wires, he decided to question the culprit.  After some incisive probing, he learnt that I was putting the washing powder in a completely different aperture   than the prescribed one.  He lectured me as he began emptying the tub for the last time and I began emptying my purse.  I hung my head in mortification as I hung the now pristine black. 

Confession  time.  I still have to change a bulb or a battery on my own.  Time and tide await no man, you have heard people say.  But time waits for me rubbing its hands in glee.  The second hand and the minute hand, that is.  When I come home, it is two o clock.  Surely not, I say to myself, thanking my mobile for behaving itself and confirming that it was actually six.  I stared hard at the face of the clock, but he was not letting up.  People don’t do house visits to repair clocks, I know.  So I bring it down and carry it to the shop.  Only the battery has to be changed.  Only?  What did he mean, only?  I took the clock again to another shop, purchased the batteries and then revealed the clock from the bag.  `Only’ the battery had to be changed, he `only’ had to put it in for me.   I looked around the shop nonchalantly not giving away that I had no clue about the clock ‘s insides.

The mobile was being chided by everyone else around him  to  behave and stop working for once.  He did it in the stealth of the night, coward that he was.  It was in the most insidious manner too.  I could not hear what people said to me on the mobile phone but they could hear me. I found myself talking in the air and telling people that I couldn’t hear them but asking them to listen to me anyway.  Half of them suspected me of having turned deaf overnight and the other half probably said things to me that they have always wanted to say. One day, in frustration, I spanked the mobile hard and I could immediately hear again.  From then on, in public, I surreptitiously turned the phone and delivered a few well aimed slaps, smiling innocuously all the time.  The mobile would not take this lying down, a typical product of the modern times. So it was now the mobile’s turn to be taken to the specialist.  The mobile was even more devious than the rest of them.  He worked perfectly fine in front of his master.  The man behind the counter smiled in an avuncular manner. A mere chit of a boy he was,  but he was the elder here.  Whoever said that the child is the father of the man, must have had this very situation in mind.  Never mind  what Wordsworth meant.  He saw rainbows and all I had was this pompous jackass in front of me.  He told me cryptically that only if the patient is sick, can the doctor give him any medicine.  He made me feel like a hypochondriac, in this case, the hypochondriac’s owner.  My phone continues to cause trouble sometimes.

Confession time again.  I have changed tactics. I have started giving stern talks to all things with wires coming out of them.  In my confusion, I sometimes include teens with wires coming out their ears too.    Gadgets continue to breakdown when they want to and teens break into smiles.