THE PIPER OF AHMEDABAD

It’s been about six months since I’ve lived alone in my rental place at Ahmedabad. I love the house, simply because it’s a real proper house. It has a table, beds, side shelves in the kitchen, curtains. It even has mirrors!

But living alone has big disadvantages. I came home the other day to discover that the washer on kitchen tap had gone phut. I mentally cursed my maid, for with all her rough ways, it had to be her fault, really. I knew I had no option but to deal with it- who else would? Having never ever tackled a leaky tap, I had absolutely no idea what to do with it. A resourceful friend advised tying a cloth around the tap, which I did. I managed to get the leak down to a drip- one drop every four seconds. Sticking a bucket under it, I went off to work, and scouted around for a plumber on the way.

As it happens, it is extremely difficult to find a plumber. Three days to no success. When I got home late one evening, my old neighbour came asking whether I’d left any tap open- he was checking because somebody in my line of flats had. Very decidedly, I told him No. One drop in four seconds did NOT count as an open tap.

The minute I shut the door, I rushed guiltily to the kitchen to tie the cloth tighter. It turned out that it didn’t like being tied just so, and decided to slip off. After 15 minutes of tying, untying and retying, I had red hands and sore shoulders. I decided to call up my father and apply all the possible Mechanics to figure out which knot would exert the most pressure on the top of the tap. He advised tying the cloth tightly around the tap twice and then wedging something between the tap and the cloth to make it even tighter. Three tries later when it didn’t work, I started screeching and yelling about differences between Theory and Practice.

After a heavily buttered Maggi to ward off Gloom, I tried yet again. I hunted for a cloth that was easy to tie. I thought I needed to fold the cloth neatly, so that the force was evenly distributed and no part of the cloth was loose. I tied a tight knot right on top of the tap. One drop every two seconds. I picked up a pen and wedged it between the cloth and the tap. Didn’t make much of a difference. I stuffed in a spoon. Then in went a fork. It was reducing. After a while, the frequency of drip reduced dramatically.

Then I brought out a clock. Timing, you see, is very, very important. My eyes kept darting from the clock to the tap and back. To my great pleasure, I’d reduced it to One drop in Thirteen seconds! My hands burned, my shoulders were aching and I was close to collapse, but as of 11 pm, I was happy.

With my hand on the light switch, I turned to smile fondly at my handiwork. It was pretty- even with the hideous, white and green polka dotted cloth wrapped round and with two pens, two forks, three spoons and a spatula sticking out.