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Flashback to 1985. I had “Priya” scooter in those days.
A little of “Priya” history! You can skip this if you aren't interested history! In 70's my dad booked the scooter at the dealer in Vijayawada, though we were in Guntur there was no dealership there, by paying the advance booking amount in US $ which he arranged with great difficulty! The advantage of booking with foreign currency is we get the delivery of the scooter within 4 years else its a waiting of 7 or more years:(
One fine morning in 1985 I tried to start the scooter to go to office but it just refused to start. I tried for at least 5 minutes and started to sweat profusely. Anyone who's used to kick start stubborn bikes know how difficult, tiring and irritating it is. Its easier to kick start a venture than a stubborn bike!
Then I realized that the matter is beyond my capabilities and has to be referred to expert; I had no choice but to push it all the way to the mechanic located 2 K.M.s away. The mechanic checked up the carburetor, spark plug and both were fine. He couldn't understand why its not starting. He made 2/3 pradakshinas of the scooter while scratching his head. Finally he even checked up the petrol tank to see whether the petrol was exhausted! Petrol was there in the tank but the mechanic got exhausted :(
Finally thanks to the head scratching he got a brilliant idea and Voila he jumped 2 feet into the air!! Remember Archimedes?! This is what happens to people when they make a earth shattering discovery!
Then he did a very small thing!
You should've seen his face and my face too at that moment!
What was the thing he did and how does our faces looked like? Answers after few paras!
Would like to draw your attention to the very 1st sentence of yesterday's post “Embarrassing repetition of history!!” The key operative word here is “repetition”! So here's how it repeated. Read on
One night last week at 10-15 PM the power went off, as usual, to say. (Though KCR's govt vehemently denies any power cuts there are definitely daily “power off” periods which vary from 5 minutes to 1 hour!) And to our surprise the inverter didn't work and we had a horrible 20 minutes in the hot summer. We were at a loss as to the reasons for the inverter not working and after discussing with my wife I came to the conclusion that perhaps during the day there was more power cut than the inverter could handle and hence it didn't have enough time to get recharged.
But after 2 days the inverter didn't work again. And then I decided that there could be a problem with it and called up the customer care of the company. To my pleasant surprise 2 service engineers came within 2 hours. They inspected it and short of dismantling it did everything and were at a loss themselves as to the reasons for its failure! Then one of them scratched his head for an inspiration. And voila he got it.
His face changed instantly to one of glee and he almost jumped in the air in the usual Archimedes tradition!! His “discovery” startled his associate too.
Then that guy slowly turned to me and said “Sir ................”. And you should've seen my face! It had the same expression like in 1985!! And that's how the embarrassing history repeated.
Finally here are the answers and in both cases the answer is the same and I paid the price for others deeds!
The mechanic opened the dicky of the scooter and found the engine switch 'Off” as he expected! And he said “What Sir? You've switched off the engine switch, pushed the scooter for a long distance and made me work half an hour and all for nothing” :(
Needless to say you should've or on second thoughts you shouldn't have seen my face!
What happened was my dad used the scooter the previous evening and like all elderly people switched off the engine switch faithfully. I, as a angry young man never bothered about it! So I couldn't eve think of that possibility even remotely and paid the price!
And the UPS service engineer also made a similar discovery after struggling for some time! He “discovered” that the UPS switch was turned off!! And he said “What Sir? You've switched off the UPS and gave a complaint?!” Again you should've seen or rather on second thoughts you shouldn't have seen my face!
I was like dumbstruck. I didn't even know that the UPS had a on/off switch! We never touched it after its installation and it was untouched by human hands, so to say! So how did this happen? I and my wife did some thinking and it suddenly stuck us that 4 days before a relative of ours visited us with her family. Her 2 young boys started roaming around our house as there are no kids, small or grown up, in our home, to play with. The younger one who is very active and restless type must've fiddled with the switch and turned it off!!
So what's the moral of both these instances. There are more than one in fact!
1. History repeats, faster than we imagine :(
2. Sometimes we have to cut a sorry figure in front of others for no fault of ours :(
3. Sometimes we are forced to pay the price for others acts :(
4. Many a time there will always be simple solutions to complex problems :)
