During a respite from the non-stop rain, I have wandered out. Camera in hand, I explore the narrow streets behind the Court-kachari. Following a winding alley, I approach a street-side kitchen market. As I walk past a tiny corner shop, I see a man inside working with single minded concentration on a small mechanical part.
A minute later, something tugs at me about this man. He and his shop stood out among all the other grocery and variety stores that lined the alley. What was he doing? I make a U-turn back to his shop.
I watch for a minute as he meticulously winds a thin copper thread into the arm of a circular contraption. Finally he looks up and smiles: a kind face, glasses, very Bengali. I ask if I can take a picture, and, finding him friendly, sit down for a chat.
"I am rebuilding a motor for a table fan," he says. "The motor core's wiring was burned."
Now I understand. Motors convert electrical energy into mechanical energy by sending a current through a coil which is made of a thin, wound up copper wire.
But it looks like he has to make an awfully large number of windings. "How many turns of the coil do you need?" I ask.
"This core, which had been burnt, needs 450 turns for each arm." I count twelve arms. That is 5400 windings of the copper wire, each winding spun by hand.
How many can he do every day? "On a good day I can fix four, maybe five cores," he says.
I ask him about other, more challenging work. Difficult tasks involve motors that run at a high speed, he says. For example, a kitchen blender or a drill can be finicky and requires more expensive, fatter copper wires.
His name is Jagannath Mondol. I ask him if he had learned this work as a hobby. But the truth is more down to earth. He started working as an apprentice after finishing class eight.
"I needed to bring in income to the household as our family was not well-off," he says. After several years working for others, he opened his own store about fifteen years ago.
Still, tinkering with electrical devices is not for everyone, and I cannot shake off the notion of a hobby. "Do you make anything for yourself? As a hobby?" I ask. "I do it simply to make my living, not a hobby" he says smiling.
As I take my leave, I look for the store's name but can find none. "That's right, my store has no name. But everyone in the neighbourhood knows me. They just ask for Jagannath when something breaks," he says.
Jagannath has a son and a daughter, both attending school. "Will they work here?" I ask. "No, no, this kind of work is fading away today, I hope they do something else," he says before returning to winding his coil.
Source : The Daily Star
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