The magic of jugaad

April.10 : We are in the process of making some structural changes to our house and the entire construction looks like a state of extreme chaos to me. Four dangerously crooked logs of wood support the roof of our living room. I am told this is to balance the load as they lay the roof of the first floor that has been propped up with even more crooked logs. I ask the head mason why they don’t use metal supports with jacks and he said ours is a small job and in any case, this is only for jugaad, a temporary requirement.

“Jugaad” (pronounced ju-gaardh) is a colloquial Hindi word that can mean many things: a temporary solution, a short cut, an improvisation, a quick fix or making do with something. It all depends on the nature of the problem. I like people who can do jugaad: they have common sense and can think outside the box. The solution could be short or long term, but it’s always innovative and often ingenious.
Jugaad is also appropriate and alternate technology rolled into one. I enjoy DIY and have a set of assorted handy tools. Among them is a spirit level, a simple instrument to indicate if a surface is level. If you have an iPhone, you can download the application, which I have. When I overheard two masons arguing about the alignment of bricks on a wall, I offered them the spirit level. Just to make me happy they placed it on the bricks, looked at each other and told me in Hindi, “Don’t worry. We have our own jugaad”. They use a simple thread, and amazingly using it they had a correct level.
I also have a small, hand-held gadget that throws out a laser beam. It’s called “Strait-Line laser level” and I use it to check the angle and alignment of photographs and paintings on the wall. When I saw the mason use a thread and a simple measuring tape to check the height of  the steps and the angle of the new staircase, I was horrified. It appeared steep and uneven; to my “technical” mind, there was no way they could have got it absolutely right with such primitive tools. So I took out the laser level.
They had never seen such a gadget and gathered around me as I fiddled with it, switched it on, and aimed the laser beam. You should have seen their expression when the laser point hit the point marked by their thread. “Tension ki to koyi baat hi nahin hai. Hamare pas sab cheez ki jugaad hai” (Don’t get tense; we have jugaad for everything), the head mason told me.
The six men and two women working on the site belong to an extended family. They cannot read or write but have picked up a few English words. They know a “beam”, a “column” and a “lintel”. They also know the word “tension” and use it all the time. 
Jugaad is a byproduct of shortage economy, which forced us to learn how to live frugally: why buy new when you can fix it. When we couldn’t find a spare part for a kitchen mixer-grinder we tried to get the coil in the motor re-wound. In the days of video cassettes, I have seen a neighbourhood mechanic use what looked like a hair-dryer to remove the layers of dust from the VCR. He had removed the heating element from the hair-dryer and was using it as a simple blower. 
In the rural areas of northern India you see a hybrid transport vehicle made from a diesel pump and other cannibalised parts. It’s an ingenious piece of assembly. They call it “Jugaad”. I have heard of the other popular example of jugaad, a washing machines being used to churn lassi (butter milk) in Punjab, but I have never seen one in use. 
We have an electrician for whom jugaad is a philosophy, a way of life. There is nothing that he has not been able to fix. He once used a simple wall clip to mend the hinge of a toilet seat which, in my opinion, is his piece de resistance. He installed it and left with a cheerful warning that “a heavy person” should avoid using that bathroom.
I still hesitate when I pass through the wooden logs to go up the staircase. When I ask the head mason if it’s safe, he says, “Befikar (Don’t worry), sahib”. That is the other beauty of jugaad. It may look primitive, but it’s based on scientific principles.
 
Shekhar Bhatia can be contacted at shekhar.bhatia@gmail.com [2]
 
Shekhar Bhatia