The Crow in my watertank.(written in 1999, now creating a soft copy)
A classic one liner at a restaurant is “waiter, there is a fly in my soup”. Atleast in a restaurant only the soup bowl has to be changed with profuse apologies of the management. But in my case, what do you do, when you find a dead crow in your water tank, it’s a totally different scenario. The tank on the roof, made of cement on a platform, reaching the cemented covers a bit of a bother, then the roof accessible by a ladder, me always been around the outer limits of weight, well the scenario would be unfolding itself !.
God knows when the damn crow went for a sip of water, perched on the edge of the tank and decided drowning was a better option. It chose to drown by wriggling through the narrowest of gaps left by me, so as to check the water levels in the dry summer months. Well, as the story goes, one Friday everybody stated that the water was stinking, I chose to ignore it. After all it was for me and our jeeves, Ram Lal, having to sort it out. I had no intention to go roof climbing in 45 degrees centigrade. Well, as the chorus of the family grew towards evening, Ram Lal was despatched to the roof to check the situation. I was in the managerial mode, instruct, check, modify instructions etc. He came down smiling and informed solemnly that the water tank was certainly stinking, there was something dark floating in it and he certainly needed assistance to resolve the matter.
Mystified, I grabbed a torch, went to the first floor and then took the ladder to the roof. One shine of the torch through the narrow gap in the covers, we knew it was a dead crow floating around. Now Dad has always believed in doing things best and sturdy, the cement covers are really heavy. With great difficulty we moved them aside and retrieved the crow, with Kapila junior shouting “crow mar gaya, crow mar gaya”. Now came the cleaning part, we decided to postpone it to the morning. The family was told to wait till the morning and to stay away from the roof top water taps.
Six o clock, Saturday morning, found me and Ram Lal on the roof. With professional and casual ease I turned the pipe to drain out the water from the tank in the downwards direction and promptly broke it. However one good result was that the water drained out really fast. Then I told Ram Lal to get into the tank, its cavernous, he jumped in and managed to dislodge the floater valve and bend the pipe connecting it. So now we two clowns had two problems, we could not fill the tank as I had broken the drain pipe and Ram Lal had damaged the floater valve. Well, we cleaned the tank alright and hunted for the rare species, a honest, competent plumber.
The plumber came, promptly claimed Rs 300/- for his services, said he was helping in an emergency. I called it blackmail, attempted to negotiate. Negotiations failing, he was assured full payment but ultimately had to plug the drain pipe, the plumber quoted various technical reasons, to me it was technical gibberish for passing off his incompetence. In any case after giving him a cold drink and his fees, we sent him off.
We heaved a sigh of relief just when the better half came over and said, flushes not working. A brief check confirmed it was correct, our enthusiastic cleaning of the tank had sent all the dirt into the pipes and clogged the pipes. Back to the plumber, he smiled, I knew he would say Rs 200/-, which he did. Well, atleast he did repair or fix what was left and went away. It had all been very tiring and I decided it was time for a beer, rightfully earned.
Ram Lal came over and stood next to me, he reminded me we still had to place the heavy cemented covers on the tank. We went up again, picked up the heavy half of the cement cover, placed it on the tank and managed to successfully dunk it into the tank. It took us more than 45 minutes, to drain out the tank again, then fish it out and place it back along with the other half. I ensured its so close that not even a love bird can make its way in.
Now the crow was packed in covers and kept next to rubbish bin to be thrown away. I found it still in its sealed packing even after the municipal cleaning crew had attended to picking the garbage. The culprit, our cleaning maid, her explanation, you packed it so well, I thought you wanted to preserve it for some superstitious reason ! Now I laugh, at that point it was becoming really annoying.
Well I and the dependable jeeves drove over and dumped the crow in the earmarked area. Now crows may come and go, but I ensure religiously the water tank remains sealed tight as tight could be!!.
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A classic one liner at a restaurant is “waiter, there is a fly in my soup”. Atleast in a restaurant only the soup bowl has to be changed with profuse apologies of the management. But in my case, what do you do, when you find a dead crow in your water tank, it’s a totally different scenario. The tank on the roof, made of cement on a platform, reaching the cemented covers a bit of a bother, then the roof accessible by a ladder, me always been around the outer limits of weight, well the scenario would be unfolding itself !.
God knows when the damn crow went for a sip of water, perched on the edge of the tank and decided drowning was a better option. It chose to drown by wriggling through the narrowest of gaps left by me, so as to check the water levels in the dry summer months. Well, as the story goes, one Friday everybody stated that the water was stinking, I chose to ignore it. After all it was for me and our jeeves, Ram Lal, having to sort it out. I had no intention to go roof climbing in 45 degrees centigrade. Well, as the chorus of the family grew towards evening, Ram Lal was despatched to the roof to check the situation. I was in the managerial mode, instruct, check, modify instructions etc. He came down smiling and informed solemnly that the water tank was certainly stinking, there was something dark floating in it and he certainly needed assistance to resolve the matter.
Mystified, I grabbed a torch, went to the first floor and then took the ladder to the roof. One shine of the torch through the narrow gap in the covers, we knew it was a dead crow floating around. Now Dad has always believed in doing things best and sturdy, the cement covers are really heavy. With great difficulty we moved them aside and retrieved the crow, with Kapila junior shouting “crow mar gaya, crow mar gaya”. Now came the cleaning part, we decided to postpone it to the morning. The family was told to wait till the morning and to stay away from the roof top water taps.
Six o clock, Saturday morning, found me and Ram Lal on the roof. With professional and casual ease I turned the pipe to drain out the water from the tank in the downwards direction and promptly broke it. However one good result was that the water drained out really fast. Then I told Ram Lal to get into the tank, its cavernous, he jumped in and managed to dislodge the floater valve and bend the pipe connecting it. So now we two clowns had two problems, we could not fill the tank as I had broken the drain pipe and Ram Lal had damaged the floater valve. Well, we cleaned the tank alright and hunted for the rare species, a honest, competent plumber.
The plumber came, promptly claimed Rs 300/- for his services, said he was helping in an emergency. I called it blackmail, attempted to negotiate. Negotiations failing, he was assured full payment but ultimately had to plug the drain pipe, the plumber quoted various technical reasons, to me it was technical gibberish for passing off his incompetence. In any case after giving him a cold drink and his fees, we sent him off.
We heaved a sigh of relief just when the better half came over and said, flushes not working. A brief check confirmed it was correct, our enthusiastic cleaning of the tank had sent all the dirt into the pipes and clogged the pipes. Back to the plumber, he smiled, I knew he would say Rs 200/-, which he did. Well, atleast he did repair or fix what was left and went away. It had all been very tiring and I decided it was time for a beer, rightfully earned.
Ram Lal came over and stood next to me, he reminded me we still had to place the heavy cemented covers on the tank. We went up again, picked up the heavy half of the cement cover, placed it on the tank and managed to successfully dunk it into the tank. It took us more than 45 minutes, to drain out the tank again, then fish it out and place it back along with the other half. I ensured its so close that not even a love bird can make its way in.
Now the crow was packed in covers and kept next to rubbish bin to be thrown away. I found it still in its sealed packing even after the municipal cleaning crew had attended to picking the garbage. The culprit, our cleaning maid, her explanation, you packed it so well, I thought you wanted to preserve it for some superstitious reason ! Now I laugh, at that point it was becoming really annoying.
Well I and the dependable jeeves drove over and dumped the crow in the earmarked area. Now crows may come and go, but I ensure religiously the water tank remains sealed tight as tight could be!!.
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Dear Dinesh
ReplyDeleteGood experience. We become wiser after such happenings. How you remember the 1999 incident after a long gap? Any recent experience. Keep posting.Thanks.
Prabhakar Behera
Lucknow
Bala Subramanian commented on your status.
Bala wrote: "Good story, nicely narrated....No problem is simple till we solve it...."
Reminds us of "The Thirsty Crow", but this poor fella somehow,it seems,didn't find the escape route after quenching(may be),it's thirst.But good anyways,to have figured it out timely n got rid
of the obnoxious,so to say,scenario.
Nicely recollected n written piece that.....
Happy writing !
Ka war
Hi Dinesh. How many kilograms weight you reduced? mera half kg increase ho gaya has has ke.
I was visualising dinesh in bermudas climbing on the water tank.
K.R.Rao