“That’s it boys,
“Sir, I know u r a kind guy, please don’t do this, I will come personally and pay it within 2 days, please keep those fuses. U know, our owner is also working in
It seems his last sentence worked well, that guy stopped short on his way and looked back.
“Yeah! I know him. He only sent me, also asked me to remind u about the room rent u’ve to pay for past the 2 months”
Even a child, playing around 10 meters away from our room, could clearly observe the shock and hopelessness in Neelu’s face at that time.
Arvind understood the situation and came forward to try his hand.
“Mmm… That’s different story sir, we will pay him once he repairs…” tried to convince him.
That guy hadn’t even looked back at Arvind, while walking down the steps. I didn’t even dare to think of convincing him. If he hadn’t given a shit about our Setting Master Arvind’s words, how can a commoner like me can set him up? I looked into room thru our balcony window to see what our Chemical Vasu is doing. Seems he is least bothered about this conversation, to say the least.
Arvind & Neelu followed that guy all the way from our 1st floor to ground floor and till he reached the main road. A desperate attempt to convince him seems gone down. We have our 2nd semester exams in a fortnight and Neelu is having some internals in this week. With no power for the next few days, our future seemed to be so dark that even late night sky may not match.
We 3 entered the room slowly with all disappointment only to watch our Chemical Vasu sleeping happily.
“How this idiot can take a nap in this hot summer without…” Neelu stopped short watching our fan rotating in full swing.
“How r we enjoying power, man? That crazy guy had taken our fuses out…” Arvind enquired Chemical Vasu, the head of electrical department in our room.
“Who said v r depending on our lousy electric meter? For the last 3 months, v r getting power directly from ground floor room. I changed connections a long back!” Vasu clarified as we all were in a pleasant mild shock.
Chemical Vasu alias Jim Carrey (our “electric” cable guy) turned our fate that summer & his heroics went well till the monsoon. Rains poured hard, winds turned heavy… and connections became loose… one day one of our ground floor guys jumped back & fell at least 2 feet away when he tried to hook his shirt on a nail on side wall which he used to use like a hanger. Only after 5 minutes, he came to know that the nail has given him a sweet electric shock. Our Neelu could not stir the water in the rice he was cooking in a steel bowl which is on a small cylinder cum gas stove. Even the bowl was giving him mild shocks. Water gave us shock, walls gave us shock, cylinders, our rice plates, bowls, and even our door locks also tried their hand. We survived & survived & every time after survival, tried to accustom to shocks. But time & those cables could not survive. One fine day, all the connections gone wrong and everyone was in dark including ground floor guys!
And then and only then, Vasu, his holiness, shifted all our cables to a main line in the street… an improved version of power theft!!!
