I was commissioned in the Indian Air Force when I was barely 22 years old. While the other fighter jocks were happy counting the number of sorties they had done for the day, I would spend time with the airmen while they worked on the engines of the aircraft. For me, that was the next best thing after flying—how does the machine work? Whenever there was an aircraft crash, I would take official permission to check and salvage the components, which I knew could be recycled or reused.

I flew for 27 years before I retired in 1993, at the age of 50, and returned to settle in Hyderabad. During that time, I forayed from fighter flying to chopper flying, simply out of curiosity—I wanted to learn how a rotary wing aircraft worked and what the difference was between fighters and choppers.

It was this curiosity about ‘how things work’ that led me to experiment with converting regular petrol-car engines into engines that could run on gas—your regular LPG cylinder. My first experiment was on my own car, a Premier Padmini. I was extremely cautious and took the help and guidance of Ahmedabad-based company Auto Gas Consultants, which was manufacturing kits for the conversion.

Switching to LPG was cheaper and cleaner, and a few friends offered me their cars for conversion. By the time I retired, I had already converted around 50 cars for friends, mostly within the IAF fraternity, without charging them any money. My reward came when they appreciated my work.

After retirement, I realised I would need to earn some money as I had a family to raise. Moreover, our son and daughter were still studying. I knew I would have to get some kind of certification and training before I could charge people for what I knew how to do so well. So I went completely professional—I attended a refresher course and set up a workshop and started taking on paying customers. I extended the roof of my home in Begumpet, Hyderabad, and that became my workshop.

Over the next 12 years, I worked on at least 800 cars. In 2006, we had to move out and I had to shut down my workshop. It was just as well, as newer models were coming with factory-fitted gas kits and the Government was clamping down on private entrepreneurs like me, who were doing the conversions.

After we moved, I tried to dispose of my workshop equipment but I found no takers. So I used it to fix wire mesh doors and lights in the house, rework the electrical lines for the inverter, make an emergency light for the kitchen from lithium batteries, and the like. I also repair electrical gadgets for friends. My latest project is learning how to weld. In my tiny workshop, I am trying to replicate a Bell’s sander in wood. It is a metal sanding machine used to remove burrs, etc, on wood and metal.

I realise that if we look around, we can find endless things to do, repair and alter to suit our own requirements. All we need is the confidence to do it ourselves. Without an education in engineering, I feel I have done well—I have filled my days with something worthwhile to do. If it is not something at home, it is something for neighbours and friends.

My wife Leena was quite shaken when I cut my finger on the circular wood cutter, which has a zigzag blade. After taking care of the wound, she kept mumbling, “How do you manage to do these things?” I was hoping that by now she would have got used to my doing “these things”, but then her anxiety is understandable. Yet, she never stops me from doing them either!

—Wg Cdr (retd) D N G ‘Pinky’ Rao, Secunderabad

Photo: Shyamola Khanna
Featured in Harmony — Celebrate Age Magazine
September 2017