The Bicycle Mechanic

Babua was a poor bicycle mechanic. His immovable property consisted of a small bicycle repair garage and an adjacent small plot of land in which his earthen walled, thatch roofed hut stood.

In his hut there was a window and a door made of flattened bamboo sheets. The door had no provision of locking because it was meaningless to put a lock in a bamboo made door. Latching facility was of course there. Cats, dogs and other animals were to be restricted from entering the house because Babua's kid was quite young and therefore vulnerable.

Babua's bicycle garage was on the way to a defunct highway that had almost no vehicular traffic. The once busy highway which was a link road between two district towns of a state in eastern India was now barren devoid of any meaningful traffic because of the partition of India into two separate independent states which had happened sixty years ago. Of course there was a war forty years ago but it had occurred long before he was born and it had no effect on him.

The international border was only two kilometer away from his garage. There were some clandestine affairs that went on during the night hours across the border. Smuggled fish, gold, milk powder, cosmetics would come from one side while biscuit, tobacco, luxury items would go to the other side. Babua was not concerned with these unlawful activities across border.

Poor farmers in the nearby villages, who were having bicycles, were his customers. He never had never seen an imported bicycle that came across the border in his entire mechanic career. His customers were never bothered what happened across the border and he was also not interested.

As regards to his family life, he had a wife and a kid. Babua was thirty, his wife twenty six and their son was of four years. Babua wanted to have another baby but his wife Sakina would not hear of it. Income from the bicycle repair garage was not enough to meet the needs of even this small family. There was no point in inviting another hungry mouth in this world. They had an enough of big family they could afford; she had given her verdict, which Babua knew was the final word in his family.

In the morning at around eight he would open the bamboo made shutter of the garage for the customers. The two parts of the shutter opened sideways. The first thing that Babua would do was to pour some water in a flat enameled dish which had a high neck. Most of the people in this rural area used bicycles and a bicycle was always prone to puncture. The dish with water served as his testing jig for checking air bubbles that would come out when the punctured portion of the pressurized tube was immersed in the dish.

Majority of his customers would need to mend a punctured tube but there were other customers too. Those who wanted a part replacement of their two wheeler, would put up their requisition in advance and in the evening Babua would go to the nearest town on his own old bicycle, an old Humber of UK, which he maintained in running condition. The unique twin tubular fork of the front wheel was an eye catcher and Babua was proud of his bicycle even though it was quite old and would not fetch much in a resale. He would never think of parting with it.

His bread and butter came from repairing punctures. For mending a puncture, he used a rubber adhesive solution tube and a small rectangular piece of rubber cut from old tubes with an old pair of scissors. First he would remove the tube from the tyre by using two blunt chisels and then he would pressurize the opened tube with the hand pump. Systematically he would rotate the tube to immerse each part of the tube in the water of dish and the bubbles of air would indicate the punctured location.

He would now carefully roughen the surface of the punctured spot with a hacksaw, do the same to the rectangular spare rubber piece, put adhesive solution on both the surfaces and once these were dried, he would paste them together and the job was done. He would then put the tube back inside the tyre and fix the tyre in the rim then pressurize the tube with his hand pump. Now the bicycle was again ready for a ride.

Sometimes he would get a bottom bracket or a rear axle replacement job. That would give him some extra money and he would use that extra money for buying fish so that his wife Sakina would later at night exhibit a little more eagerness in the bed. Babua prayed that he could make Sakina happy enough so that she would someday eventually agree for a sibling for their four year old son, Rahman. And it would better be a daughter. He longed to have a daughter.

Babua loved his job and his customers too liked him for his honest job. It happened many a time that people had knocked on his door at odd hours of the night for mending a puncture. He never said no. He knew if a person who had come for mending a punctured tube at the dead of the night, he must have had enough reasons to do so, least of them being interrupting the mechanic's sleep. His wife would grumble in her sleep, but Babua would not stop on that account.

It was a night in the month of July. Monsoon had already set in and it was raining that night. Babua was fast asleep with his wife in their hut. He had a sumptuous meal of coarse rice with soup of potato and dry fish that evening. Rahman, his son was asleep in a small cot beside the bed near his mother.

Babua was having a dream of dancing with Sakina over the cloud on a full moon night when suddenly he got awakened as if he had heard an interrupting voice in his sleep. He waited silently for any repetition of the sound, if no more sound came, he would again go into sleep slowly. Now he heard distinctly a male voice calling him, "Mechanic, please get up, I need your help."

Babua was instantaneously wide awake and alert. There was someone at the door and needed attention. He was sure, this could not be a ploy of a burglar, because everyone knew he did not have anything worthwhile that would invite any burglar to rob him. And Babua was quite fearless too. He held his two-cell torch in one hand while he picked up his hammer from the underside of the door, just in case. When he opened the door he found a literally drenched man in his early thirties standing holding a bicycle.

Babua dropped the hammer silently behind the door and asked, "I am the mechanic; tell me what do you want?"

The man replied, "You don't know me, I live in a little far away village and because this is not my usual route to the town, you have not seen me. Today I was visiting an ailing relative near the border village and while going back home the rain started and the tyre also got punctured. Someone told me that you happen to attend the punctures even in the night hours too. So I came to you. Could you please help me?"

Babua got out in the rain, closed the door of his hut and opened the latch of his garage. He brought out a kerosene lamp and lighted the lamp. Now he took the bicycle inside and found that the rear tyre was flat. The visitor looked at his old Humber bicycle and asked him pleadingly, "Could you please lend me your bicycle. You can repair the tyre in the morning? You can take rest and tomorrow you mend my tyre. I shall come in the morning and get my bicycle back, is it OK?"

This was a brand new Raleigh bicycle and he compared it with his old Humber. This was much costlier. Further, Babua could have done this job in the night itself, if the customer demanded. But when the customer in question wanted to get the mechanic's old bicycle on loan, there was no harm in giving it to him. But he better pay the rent for hiring it.

So he told the customer, "Since you will be using my bicycle, you would have to pay rent for this. As you will leave behind your bicycle it will cover as surety, so you may take my bicycle. But you have to pay me Rs.20/- per day for the bicycle against rent."

The customer without shedding an eyelid immediately agreed. It appeared that he was in a great hurry," OK, give me the bicycle quickly", and extended his hand for the key. Babua took the key from the nail on the wall and handed over to him. The man left immediately and Babua came back to his hut to go back to sleep wondering why the man was in such a hurry.

While he was trying to go back to sleep he heard the sound of siren mounted on a custom police jeep passing through the road. There must be some gangs operating at night for smuggling and police were after them. It was a rare incidence, but never the less it sometimes occurred.

The next morning was sunny and Babua straightaway started to attend the punctured tyre. The bicycle tyres were new and its rubber tentacles had not yet worn out. With an apprehension Babua started checking for the puncture. When he found that there was no puncture in the airless tube, it confirmed his doubt that the tyre was too new to get punctured.

Now he proceeded to check the valve tube for any tear which could have released the pressurized air of the tube. He found that the valve tube was also intact without any wear and tear and could not be the cause of flat tyre.

Now Babua was perplexed. He recalled that when he had opened the holding nut of the valve tube that was also tight. So he reasoned that someone intentionally might have had released the pressurized air from the tube. "But why", he wondered.

What could be the reason? His heart skipped when he suddenly realized that he had bartered his old bicycle with this new one and the circumstance associated with it. He was afraid that something was wrong which he could not point out for sure. He could not throw out the itch from his mind.

Then he remembered that he had to pick some spares from the market. Since he was having the new bicycle with pressurized tyres, he decided to take it for going to market. He shouted to tell Sakina that he was going to market and would be back in an hour and left for the market.

On the way to market he got curious to see a crowd gathered around the Police outpost. He got down the bicycle and enquired some unknown onlooker about the reason for the crowd. In a whispered voice he was told that there was an encounter with a smuggler yesterday night in which the smuggler somehow managed to escape even after being shot at but he had to leave behind the bicycle. Now the bicycle was being dismantled by police to check for any hidden gold or drug.

Babua's heart started to beat faster. He pushed the crowd to go to the front and see what he wanted to see and immediately retraced his path to paddle his two-wheeler to rush for his home without buying the spares. He wanted to go as far away as possible from the police outpost. He had been able to see the twin forks of the Humber bicycle among various broken and disfigured parts of his bicycle in the police out post yard!

At the dead of the night after a lot of efforts when he finally went to sleep he was rudely awaken by shouts and hits on his bamboo door. He reluctantly opened the door only to find that it was indeed the police constable from the outpost. He simply asked Babua to hand over him the bicycle that was given for repair yesterday night and ordered Babua to to accompany him to the police out post for interrogation.

For about three hours he was interrogated by the police to spell out if he had any knowledge of gold that was being smuggled by the bicycle owner. Babua stuck to the truth in spite of verbal abuse and an occasional kick or slap. With no confession forthcoming to their liking, either they got tired or probably they got convinced of the innocence of Babua and at around three O Clock they put him in the lock up to be savored by the mosquitoes.

They were unrepentant when they freed him in the morning. When he saw the broken parts of both the bicycles ripped apart in pieces, he could not hold his tears but the policemen were still mocking at him for being an accomplice. While all others continued to laugh at him, the beat constable even in fake seriousness handed over him the seat of the new bicycle, a part which somehow remained unbroken. Not to escalate any tension he obligingly took hold of the seat, smiled thanks and left for home.

Sakina was waiting for him with the boy in her lap; her eyes bore the mark of dried tears. Bruised, humiliated and battered Babua took hold of his family with his arms and told them not to worry. Everything was now settled and there was no more trouble. He casually threw the seat on the floor of the hut for the boy to play and went to the well to take a bath. The boy immediately started to sit on the bicycle seat as if he was riding a bicycle.

He came back and opened the garage. The morning sun was now shining in the front yard of the garage. The boy now started to mock check for any puncture in the seat by immersing the seat in the water dish. Sakina brought two cups of tea and sat beside Babua to ask him about his night in police station. There was no customer in the garage yet.

When the boy again lifted the seat to play some other game with the seat, a sound emanated from the metallic dish. They looked in the direction of the sound. The glue pasted on the thick black paper on the underside of the seat had given away on being immersed in water. A pair of metallic biscuits which were thus strapped on, now had fallen on the dish water. Babua was illiterate and could not read the text on the biscuits, in which it was written "Wary, 1 ounce, 999.9, Fine Gold, Dubai", in separate lines, but understood what these were.

The morning sun ray reflected on the gold biscuits. Curiously, Babua was not perturbed by the glitter. He extricated a deep sigh. We don't know if it was a sigh of relief or an expression of silent thanks that he offered to the almighty.