Durgapur Blues-Tales of Chakri's Scooter and Hammer mill

“Vasu, give me your scooter keys….” I turned in response to Chakri’s voice in our Bokaro Hostel breakfast ‘Adda’. I was in B shift (2PM to 10PM). Chakri told me that he had a flat tire and wanted to borrow my scooter as he was in general shift (7:30PM to 4:00 PM). I understood the urgency and immediately handed over my scooter keys. I can change the spare tire within 5 minutes, so it was not a problem.
Chakri’s scooter (WB40A7026) was bought a week before I bought mine (WB40A 7081). His vehicle maintenance was excellent during those days. He made sure that all the accessories were in place before actually driving the vehicle and used to ensure its regular/scheduled maintenance. To tell the truth, Chakri had decided on the scooter in lieu of a motorbike because he needed the reassurance of the spare tire, which was not possible with a bike.
We started playing our daily game of cricket (George, Sarma, Subbu, KS, Nag, Myself). At around 10:30 AM, we were done with the game and I was ready to change the tire. It was very difficult to remove the tire as all the bolts were tightly fixed. I requested Subbu to help me. He also tried a lot but finally he gave up. Sarma was our subsequent choice for this tough task. Sarma is a well-built, healthy guy. He was one of the most charming persons in our group and he never said no to anybody.
Sarma joined us and started rotating the spanner in the right direction. With his energetic efforts, he was able to loosen all the bolts. Subbu and I were balancing the scooter to assist Sarma’s fitting job. Both of us were cursing Chakri on why he had not done tire rotation IN YEARS.
Finally Sarma finished fitting the extra tire. Subbu decided to take the scooter for a trial run. I was surprised to see that and informed Subbu that mechanics did that once they had completed the repair works. We had neither repaired anything nor was Subbu a mechanic. Even before I could finish my sentence, Subbu had started the scooter and taken it a little further. He did not even go beyond the gates and stopped, saying that there was still some problem with the vehicle. Upon closer observation, we found the problem to be that
“The front wheel had the flat tire and we had replaced the rear tire”.

All of us were in shock, then burst into laughter and started blaming one another for working on the back tire. Subbu was of the opinion that it was very easy to change the front tire and solved the problem in a jiffy. Anyway, Chakri was the subject of ridicule for some more time since it was most unusual to have a flat tire problem in the front wheel. When I recounted this tale to Sarma in 2000, during my stay in Omaha and had tracked down his contact details, we laughed hysterically one more time. It also reminded us of another hilarious incident.

Later that day, I went to work (B shift). I regaled my Bosses and colleagues there with what had happened earlier in the day and almost all of us forgot the office etiquette and burst into an uncontrolled bout of loud laughter. I was in a department called ‘heavy maintenance ‘which does a central mechanical maintenance for Durgapur Steel Plant. Our Boss Jhaji was a very charming person and he is a senior ‘promotee’ officer. He was always down to earth and never was a believer of hierarchy. After listening to our story ‘according to Heavy maintenance standards you have done the right thing”, he recalled another incident (official). Once ‘Heavy maintenance’ was called to perform a replacement work in Hammer mill .The building was huge (3-4 floors) and it housed two hammer mills, one in use and another standby. We were asked to replace the defective one. We reached the site and there was nobody at the site to show us the job on that day. All non-executives waited for some time and became impatient and started saying ‘ humko itna door laake aap officer log harass karthe hai’ .Then Jhaji(under pressure) instructed them to check the hammer on our own and start working (the hammer was extremely huge and difficult to remove from its position, then the new one has to be positioned and tightened).We checked both the hammers and neither of them were working and we assumed one to be defective(as it is close to the repairing bay) . We duly removed it and positioned the new one.

Satisfied with their effort, all the people came back from site by noon. Suddenly AGM Sundaram got a call from Hammer mill department and they wanted the work to be started, Sundaram thought we finished the work and informed them the same. He was ashamed to the core when he was told that

‘ your people have replaced the working hammer mill with the new one and they did not remove/repair the defective one”