The Essence of जुगार

One of the first words I learned in Hindi was जुगार (jew-gaar). At the time, I was cruising around in an auto-rickshaw in Delhi with my new friend, Tariq, beside me. I can't recall how it came up, be he kept saying "जुगार". As I'm not one to disappoint in the hilarity department, even (see: especially) if I have no clue what's going on, I continued to repeat it and he continued to laugh.

Signaling to Gupta, our driver, I bellowed: "Hey Gupta... जुगार."

And we all laughed, though only some of us understood why.

Now, three weeks later, जुगार has resurfaced. This time, everyone gets it.

Take a quick glance over to the right of this text and behold a brand new Rio Karma MP3 player. That is precisely what mine looked like approximately eighteen months ago when it first arrived on my doorstep. Trusty as it proved for the first sixteen of those months, about two months back it began to develop a foul temper. The power button gradually lost its effectiveness, encouraging me to push harder and harder on it each time I needed to turn the player on or off. As much as I coddled it and made disparaging remarks about iPods, its condition continued to deteriorate. A week ago, it failed to power on altogether.

During the week that followed, I continually vowed to fix it, though those thoughts were often tempered by the realization that maybe it was done for.

Eventually, lacking any palpable idea of what I would do should I actually get it open, I went in search of a mini-Phillips head screwdriver. My initial quest, into the IT department here at work, produced only a single slotted tip screwdriver which was undoubtedly too big. One of the computer technicians was insistent that we could make it work with the slotted option. I let him have at it until I noticed the screw getting stripped. Somewhat dejected, I resigned to look again another day.

A second tech then nodded toward a drawer and said: "जुगार".

A third opened it and produced a rather flimsy-looking exacto knife.

A fourth gestured for me to surrender the Rio.

A fifth removed the three tiny screws with the exacto.

The fifth, Tiwari, then separated the machine in two. Catching our first glimpse of the innards, the power button tumbled out on to the table. We -- Tiwari with me watching over his shoulder -- attempted various methods to slide, urge, and simply force the button back in place with no success; the machine would not turn on. He finally asked that I entrust the player to him over night and I gladly acquiesced.

The following day he returned to the office with a soldering kit and wires of distinct colors and sizes. I hovered over him during various stretches of the morning, hoping to witness the reawakening, to see the LCD display flicker anew. Several times while working, he held up the exacto and exclaimed: "This... is जुगार," and whoever was present laughed. Oh yeah, totally... Wait. What?

The beginning of the afternoon was highlighted by a few unsubstantiated "Eureka" moments, with assorted techs awakening me from data work to see the progress. At almost 5pm, about a half hour before closing time, I was summoned by Tiwari himself. He could not suppress his grin.

Before I had even finished opening the door to his office, he burst out: "Now this is जुगार!" and presented me with my Rio.

It looked quite a bit like my old Rio, except for a double-tipped wire that protruded from where the power button once lay; it was affixed to the outside of the machine with scotch tape.


It reminded me of a conversation I had with someone almost two years ago in Havana. When I mentioned how shocked I was that cars there were still running, he replied: "Sometimes we need a brake pad, so we bend some scrap metal and use that. It's not an ideal solution, but it's what we have."

Though probably not as inescapable a situation as what a Cuban car mechanic faces where parts are simply unavailable, there's a certain amount of improvisation here in India that we just don't regularly see in the U.S.

It is precisely that tendency to get more use out of things that is so impressive; it is that ability to improvise that is जुगार.

So what do I do now?" I asked.

Tiwari took the player from me and touched the tips of the wires together. The display lit right up.

I thanked him profusely and he responded with a head wobble. A few minutes later, I headed for the door.

"You know that wire?" he asked.

Before I could hazard a guess, he continued: "It's a phone cord."