Indian kaarigars - Western baazigars

Remember what did you do when your ‘out of warranty’ expensive car or motorbike or even a broken chapppal malfunctioned?
Chances are that your neighbour or a very good friend would have suggested you this ‘great mechanic/cobbler’ in the neighbourhood or somewhere in the old city.

Getting there would have been a problem because there would not be any telephone number to call him at (or even if there is no one would actually know) or road signs to guide you. To top it all when you reach there, you start doubting the depth of your neighbour’s knowledge because what is being called a garage is barely that and looks more like a UN army camp in Afganistan ‘leveled’ by Taliban Militia. When you talk to aslam bhai you realize that he is barely literate but he knows car components better than any service advisor in many of the big brand service dealerships.

It is a ramshackled place with half dented and poorly painted prehistoric fourwheelers, grease all over the place, hungry street dogs looking for the next bit of bread in the garbage bin close by & of course the small tin-shed housing the great mechanic – ‘Aslam bhai’.
For the cobbler it gets even worst. He is hardly having any space to work, few in the neighbourhood know him (he is Munna mochee) (cobbler) who comes to his place on the pavement, that he calls his ‘shop’, every morning around 10 and does his thing of repairing everything from Fashion Street/Janpath merchandise to Nike & Adidas cross trainers.. he insists that he can make good shoes but no one asks him to do that for them. Every morning starts the repairing of countless sandals and refurbishing of many gentlemanly leather shoes and all this continues till the suns begins to fade away into another day. No one notices when munna packs his black torn bag and leaves for somewhere he calls home.

But this post is not about Aslam bhai or Munna mochee. This post is more about many of us Indians. It is about our self-belittling trait of missing the bigger picture, worrying more about today and yesterday and not bothering to think ahead into the future.
·It is about our coping & copying mindset that is far away from a desire to create.
·It is about us wanting to discuss, debate and then discard almost everything that comes to us instead of dwelling on it and designing the new.
·It is about critiquing things rather than creating the new.
·It is about not being collaborative & being hyper-selfish despite being a collective society
·It is about not attempting to take the lead and being content being a follower.
·It is about remaining the unheard of kaarigars (artisan) never even realizing the potential of the baazigar (wizard) within.

We can’t blame ourselves for all of this, at least not all of us. People like Aslam bhai and Munna had survival challenges to ward-off before they could even think of selling their auto techniques to qualified engineers in big automotive corporates or even market their footwear designs and skills to the best in accessory design.
But all of us are not as unfortunate or pressed as both of them. We still are much more fortunate to be having the luxury of dwelling on our growth and not lamenting the penury of survival.
Things are beginning to change, thanks mainly to a western pedagogy and booming economy that is bringing the best from the west and the rest of the world to our shores. We are interfacing with many more and very different sets of people and cultures. As we interface with them we learn the best that they have to offer and use these learnings as the Lego blocks to shape our new world.
Finally we are beginning to think outwards - Exploring, Experiencing, Exchanging and Expanding. We are beginning to think how good we have always been but never realized it for we never bothered to peep outside our pond or perhaps could never afford to think about the world outside the pond.

While the world comes visiting we have never had a better opportunity to go places!