Gurugramwale: The sewing machine man

Vijay Rohilla is fatalistic. “In the coming days, all the haath karigari will disappear,” he mutters matter-of-factly. The 58-year-old gentleman is referring to artisans who work manually with hands.

This declaration somehow seems fitting for a metropolis known by its Orwellian sobriquet of Futuristic City.

Mr Rohilla himself is a “haath kaarigar”, he confesses. He is a sewing machine repairer. Manning a decades-old shack in Gurugram’s Sadar Bazar, he also buys and sells these machines. “These days hardly any households are left with them,” the gentleman laughs happily, as if he can’t believe at this turn of events.

Or perhaps he’s happy because his business still manages to enjoy a steady trickle of customers. Just now he bought a rusting machine from a customer for 500 rupees. “I will spend 100-200 rupees into it, fix the defects, make it world-class and sell it for a thousand rupees.”

Mr Rohilla learned the sewing machine mechanics from his father who died in 1997. “All of us five brothers went into this same line… but our children are not taking up our line.”

Now a passerby stops to ask if there’s any cobbler nearby. The machine repairer shots back, saying, “Arre bhayyan, we are heading towards a day when you won’t find cobblers any longer. Haath karigari is going.” He laughs, shaking his head.

Next, a woman appears with her defective sewing machine. It’s covered in a beautiful hand-knitted cloth. Just hearing the lady discuss her much-loved “silai peti” with the repairer takes you to a time when these machines were an everyday utility in many households, as necessary as the fridge. The lady, a Himalayan herb practitioner, is a regular patron and chats about her machine for a long time.

Indeed, you ought to visit Mr Rohilla if you have a damaged sewing machine. Else, he’s so charming and is such an integral link to our old times that you must hang out at least once in his shack, and listen to him bantering with his customers about the good old days of domestic tailoring. He sits daily near the post office from 10 am to 8 pm.

First Published: Jul 26, 2019 15:19 IST