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Punctured Tyre & A Punctured Ego

Sunday mornings are typically a gift I give to myself for a long week of hard work. I spend the first half of every Sunday doing what I like best - attend a weekly RSS shakha called as a 'Milan',  breakfast at a local Udipi joint and a good book to begin the week with.

As I was away for the last weekend to Bombay, I decided to break my routine when I was asked by my wife to drop our daughter to her chess class. 

Sunday morning traffic is a breeze and after dropping my daughter, I went for a walk in the neighbourhood of her class. 

After a good 4km walk , I returned back to find the front tyre of my car flat. Having an engineering degree and never shy of getting my hands dirty, I was confident that this was something I could fix with no help required.

I pulled out the spare tyre and the associated tools and began work. 

Step 1 was to jack up the car. After a few turns, the car was all jacked up and I somehow felt proud of myself..

Step 2 .. the wheel nuts .... tried the first one, the nut refused to budge. Put all my weight behind it and still no result. I then put all my 'determination' to use and still no result. Passers by all gave a sympathetic look but no tips came buy

Finally after 20 minutes of determined efforts, I accepted failure and looked around for help. Despite being an engineer, I could not even fix a tyre.

I looked around in the neighbourhood and finally found a run down auto garage. I asked the mechanic in the garage for help and he pointed me to a young skinny kid who would help me. 

The skinny kid walked over to the car. At first look he told me that the jack was used up side down. He got the nuts off in a minute and in the next 5 the tyre was replaced. As he would up, he told me that there were instructions on the jack which I could follow. 

Here was kid that with no education who ended up teaching me a lesson - Literacy, College degrees and formal education is not the same as capabilities and skills.

A week ago India wondered if Smriti Irani could be India's HRD minister when she never went to college. Post my punctured tyre and a punctured ego, I say - its a moot point. 




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