Fixing the bike
A few few days ago a fresh guilt took hold of me….. Of not getting my motorbike serviced. I had missed the second service by months. My heart was bleeding. On 07-07-07, “no more” I said. I took my bike to service. I took an entire day off and decided to spend the whole day at the garage. “I’ll learn something” I told myself. Must be a guilty biker’s consciousness on the prowl.
I reached the garage at 11 in the morning. The mechanic said that he will start only by 2:30 or so. I went back home and came back at 2:30.
I look at the mechanic and say “Aap se seekhne ke liye aaya mein” (I have come here to learn from you) “Zaroor sahaab” He says. (Of course) I tell him that I keep traveling a to distant places frequently. I need to learn about the bike in case something happens on the way. He just nods.
The mechanic is an under middle aged man called Sahrief. He is short and has light facial hair that he doesn’t shave. He also wears a plastic rimmed pair of glasses that he uses to look carefully at the smaller and finer components. He is confident and answers to the point. He respects his customers. His customers respect him. He owns the shop and asks his 18 year old son for help. He soon plans to send his son for a professional degree. His shop consists of one room with all kinds of spare parts lying around. There is only enough room for one to move around to fetch the spares. There is no arrangement to sit anywhere. Chairs are only laid outside the shop. The outside of his shop is a yard shaded by trees. The shop is just a score feet away from the noisy Tar Bund Traffic Square. But under the tree, in front of the shop, there is a sleepy afternoon feeling of quite towns.
I am sitting there waiting for the service to begin. Sharief is doing all kinds of things. He has opened my fork and sent it for getting straightened up. He is brought a new shade for my headlight and is preparing to mount it on the headlights. He is greasing my shock absorbers. But the real service….. the absolute real thing where the bike is opened, the engine oil changed, the gearbox oil levels checked and refilled, the transmission re-lubricated, the chains tightened and all that jazz that makes the real service…….. that doesn’t start. Meanwhile I am fiddling my my friends camera, trying to take a few snaps of the whole garage. I am trying to keep my self occupied. A lot of people come and go to the shop. Somebody asks for waste oil that he sells for a hundred bucks a can. Some are his friends who have come to say hello.
At around 4 in the afternoon, a middle aged man with sparse white hair, rides into the garage on this black bullet. He is smartly dressed. Too smart for a visit to the garage. He wears a tummy that he covers with his belt. And like most men who were 21 in the seventies, he wears his trousers well above the navel. He picks up a chair without saying anything, sits on it, removes a cigarette pack from the pockets, lights it and starts smoking. He hasn’t said anything so far. Sharief looks at him but doesn’t say anything. He is niether approving or disapproving of him. I dislike him instantly.
“Ahh! It’s cold here” he says. Sharief looks at him and smiles inside. “Won’t find the Saudi climate here” he says, teasingly. They were old friends I guessed. Mush have been friends for decades. Without saying anything the new man, sports out his mobile, opens an old fashioned address book from his pocket and dials a number. “Nazim speaking” he says loudly and enquirers about somebody. It is a wrong number. He gives up. Sharief is almost laughing now. He looks at his son to share his amusement. He smiles back.
“Today is a very lucky day” Nazim says all of a sudden. “The date is 7-7-7. I heard it all over the news. They say, whatever you buy today will bring you luck. So I went immediately and bought a couple of shirts. They were expensive. But I did not care. Today is a lucky day after all.” Sharief doesn’t say anything. “My wife plans to buy some furniture today. She doesn’t want to wait for the less expensive ones to arrive. Today is too lucky. Will go out in the evening with her to buy them.” “Are they made up of teak?” Sharief asks, smiling. Nazim says something about what they are made up of and goes into another round of explaining how expensive they are.
Suddenly Sahrief looks at my bike odometer and says, “Arrey, the bike reading is 2777.0 kms. 777 again. What a coincidence!” He looks at Nazim and smiles. “Fantastic!” shouts Nazim, lighting another cigarette. “Must be a really lucky bike.” Suddenly his attention shifts to me. “Don’t ever sell this bike to anybody” he says addressing me. “It is really lucky. 2777 kms on 07-07-07. Really…….. very lucky” I smile back, not knowing what to do. I am a little shy to say anything. I don’t want to participate. Not today.
A few conversations begin between Sahrief and Nazim that I don’t understand. It is mostly Nazim who does the talking. Sahrief is bending over the bike and is constantly occupied. He is answering in monosyllables. But the smile doesn’t leave his face. Nazim is explaining a lot of things to Sahiref. About his experiences with the customs when he had gone to Saudi, about how many things he bought for everybody from there. Sahrief is listening to him, still smiling. By now their friendship has caught my fancy. I wonder how Sahrief, a man of few words, is persistently listening to this boastful friendly man. And I see that they have probably been friends for a long time. But what a contrast of men! I began to think how Sahreif could have even tolerated such a noisy person? On the contrary, he was enjoying it! He would listen to a long discourse about something completely unrelated to him. Probably most of them were made up. He even enjoyed it. But he never stopped working. Then I understood.
Sahrief is a mechanic. And a good one at that. His bread and butter and respect comes from working on motorbikes. And he has to be good. To be good he has to pay attention. He has to pay attention to the bikes. He has to LISTEN to them, LISTEN to what they need. Besides he loves them. He understands them. He has spent his entire life with them. When he is working, he can’t be doing anything else. His commitment is too intense. With this man, he can he does not need to participate to have a conversation. He just needs to listen. Nazim does not ask him to express his views, he only wants hearing. Sharief only listens, Nazim only talks. And in this non uniform participation, their friendship works for both. It is because they are so different, that they got along so well.
By now Sharief is done with all the minor jobs and sends his son to take the bike for a wash. After the wash, he will begin the real work on the bike. He sits down with Nazim for the first time. Nazim is still talking about something.
Finally Sahrief says “I am planning to buy a Gold ring. Should I get it from Saudi? They sat it is cheap and there. I’ll just get a lump of gold from there and make it into a ring here.” “Don’t.” says Nazim. Shareif looks at him questioningly. “They will steal from you when you get it done here” he says. ‘They’ being the goldsmiths. “I know a goldsmith personally!” “Even your brother will steal from you” says Nazim. “I can give you my word. Your own brother will steal from you if it is Saudi gold.” “Then? What do I do?” asks Sharief confused. “Get a lump of gold and sell it here. Then by yourself a ring from the money” says Nazim.
Sharief is impressed with Nazim now. He has told him a problem about goldsmiths he never knew. And he has also produced the solution right away. He is impressed. For Sharief, Nazim is a man of the world. He has traveled to Saudi. He is a smooth talker. He narrates his stories and opinions openly to Sahrief. He is smart in the ways of the world. Nazim understands a game completely unknown to Sharief. Often he tells stories of unknown people in unknown lands which Sahrief listens with bewilderment. Open mouthed. Even in his middle age, Sahrief has not lost sense of awe.
The rules of the game that Nazim talks of are foreign to him. Sharief is a man of physics. Of Physics, he knows and understands the rules. He may not know how to express what he knows in mathematical equations, but he knows what will fix the bike and what will break it. But the world outside the bikes, the world of men, of transactions of wealth, of countries beyond, he is ignorant. Nazim brings him stories of this world.
“Oh! I remember something” says Nazim with a start. “I am having a problem with my bike. Why don’t you take a look?” He takes Sahrief to his bike and they both examine the problem. I watch them from a distance. They both bend over the bike. When they come back to the shop, Nazim is looks worried. He has just remembered a problem he had forgotten. “What to do?” He asks. “Bring the bike one day when you are free. I’ll fix that problem in an hour” says Sharief. He sounds confident. He KNOWS the problem. He knows how to fix it and how long it will take. He is back in the world he belongs to.
The “real” service began only by 5. At 5, Sharief sits down with my bike and starts working on it. For the next 2 hours he did not speak except for giving instructions to his son.