If you gave me a bunch of wires, half a dozen tiny bulbs, a working motor from an old toy car, some hay and a handful of seeds of rice, it probably meant nothing but junk. You give the same stuff to my brother and he’ll create such wonders from them, the making of which will be a sure shot material for a viral video in world as we know today.
Allow me to take you to our
world 30 years back. I was just ten and my brother four years elder. I loved
getting drowned in the world of books and was quite happy that my parents setup
a library at home. My brother on the other hand had a table that reminded me of
an electrician’s shop. I never understood what he did with those wires,
soldering iron and millions of other electrical things he seems to have fallen
in love with.
One fine morning in a weekend
during December, I watched him as he started dismantling one of the old toy
cars we had. He took out the tiny motor and later pulled out some wires and
bulbs from his drawer. The next step was to ask mom for some seeds of rice.
Once he had these, he then headed to our backyard and got hold of a big bowl of
red soil which when mixed with water allows you to mould anything. The soil was
quite fertile as well. He even asked our neighbour and got some hay also. The
curios cat in me jumped out, but he said it is all a surprise and asked me to
wait and watch!
The next thing he did was to
find a suitable corner in front of our house and he did find a good one indeed.
He settled down with his stuff and started preparing the soil by mixing some
water into it. He then got into the act of moulding and soon enough I could see
the contours of a tiny mountain shaping up. On the slopes of the hill he seemed
to have left small rectangular patches which I couldn’t make out why. Through
the middle of the mountain he also left a provision for what seemed like a
pathway. The real reason for all these designs were to be revealed in time.
He then got a few tiny twigs,
straight ones, from a nearby tree and started planting them one after the other
from top to bottom of the hill. By the time the mould starting setting in, he
attached the tiny bulbs to the wires and then connected the string to the
twigs. I was still wondering what will the motor do. The answer remained the
same. Wait and watch!
Before long, one side of the
bottom of the hill was all prepared to look like a small pond, good enough to
hold some water. On the other side he kept some cardboard boxes and laid hay
around them. It was the turn for the motor to be picked up. His tool box came
out as well and he did some of his usual mystical work with it. Before I even
knew it he finished connecting the motor to the wires.
It was time to bring the bowl
of rice seeds to the limelight. I had seen him not let the clay dry at those
rectangular patches I mentioned earlier. He planted the rice seeds carefully in
these patches and returned to the remaining set of work.
Mom called out for lunch and
so we took a break. Over the next few days I could see him do some fine tuning
of his creation. By the time our calendar announced that Advent season will
soon come to an end by culminating with Christmas, the mountain of clay he
created was beaming with green patches of healthy paddy fields!
On the Christmas Eve, he
invited all of us for his ‘magic show’. In the valley where he had placed the
hay, he softly placed Mother Mary, St Joseph, the three kings, shepherds and
their sheep and a few other animals from our crib set. It was time for baby
Jesus to be placed in the middle. Very carefully he carried baby Jesus and
placed in the middle of the barn he created. He then reached behind the hill
and we all heard a click that sounded like a switch. That’s when the magic got revealed
to all of us!
The whole string of bulbs
came to life lighting up the hill from top to the bottom. Soon enough we could
hear the gurgling of water and to our surprise we could see water flowing from
top of the hill through the pathway he created which ended up in the pond.
Mysteriously the water never reached the limit of the walls of the pond and
didn’t overflow! The secret was that he used the motor to pump the water back
to the top of the hill thereby creating a sustainable fountain!
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