Jumbo and the (Chinese) lock

April 2nd 2019

The jumbos who visit Random Rubble are good natured chaps - Mottai Waal in particular - with a keen sense of humour  and smell (not in that order though), so they are welcome to my pumpkins anytime.

In the last couple of weeks, Jumbo has been a regular at Random Rubble, leaving behind his usual gift of a prodigious amount of dung.  He seems to pick the visiting hours when I am not there (12 am to 4 am).  The other thing he picked last week was the padlock on the front gate (a Chinese one, I must add). 

 

From our reconstruction of the event, Mottai Waal, the Jumbo – along with a younger male – seems to have strolled up to the gate and examined the padlock closely.  Then, that astonishingly supple  trunk twisted the padlock with the most delicate of movements (analogous to the rather intricate way in which the Swiggy delivery man at the traffic signal yesterday was picking his nose inside his helmet).  What makes this utterly fascinating is the knowledge that the trunk alone has 40,000 muscles – we have only 600+ in our body and none in our nose (but the Swiggy fellow contorted each of his 43 facial muscles for optimum productivity, reaching into the depths of the Black Hole).  

But back to the story – serious reporting follows.

  

Mottai Waal goes after my gate locks, I have closely observed, only if they are Chinese, and, with that delicate flip of his trunk, renders each one into an  object d'art and a needless addition to my growing collection of paperweights. That gentle twist from Jumbo and the padlock snapped open, with the shank (which is the inverted-U of the lock) now resembling Jumbo’s extended trunk.  He seems to have considered flinging the thing away and decided that it was not worth his effort.  He and I, of course, share this view in general of Chinese goods.  Had he flung it away, the resultant missile would have been duly reported as a successful test in a special address to the Nation.

The gate had a Godrej lock earlier.  Jumbo had treated this with much more respect, choosing instead to lift the entire gate off its hinges to make way for him (the repair cost me 5000 rupees in the juiciest notes, but the lock – Rs 360, including taxes – was intact).  When the gate was re-fitted, this resilient lock made way for a Chinese one, which, of course, is now past its prime and is an exhibit in the living room. Not having understood this apparently salutary lesson, my farmer, Seenappa, replaced the Chinese padlock yesterday with another Chinese one, so I do expect yet another addition to my art collection very soon.   I then go back wearily to that Marwari hardware guy who's grinning from ear -to-ear (with pan masala in between) because he's heard the story from someone (no, not Mottai Waal - he's the silent type). 

Between us, it's this atmanirbhar thing that gets to me.  Since Jumbo and the Supreme Indefatigable Leader seem to share the Made-in-India ideology, I wonder if the latter could offer to be the Chowkidar at Random Rubble.  It would save me an awful lot of money and perhaps there would be gainful employment on the other side too.

This was a lock until last night. 

On another note (or key, pun, pun), can someone tweak that atmanirbhar thing to exclude locks please?