And the lady who stays diagonally opposite to our house is the one complaining about all the water going waste. She along with our next-door neighbour are the ones who use the tap for their potable water needs - rest of us in the neighborhood have piped water. Ofcourse, passersby also stop occasionally to quench their thirst. And sometimes the temple elephant too, as I mentioned in a previous post.
The next-door neighbour has also joined the conversation and complains about how he reported this to the municipality, but no action has been taken. Nothing new in this anyway. They then decide to fix it themselves. While one of them goes to buy a new plastic tap, the other one goes for a plumber.
I have now washed the car and am drying it with a dry cloth when Neighbour-1 returns with a new tap that he bought from the nearby hardware store. The other neighbour could not get the plumber - he is busy and said he will drop in around evening and that it will cost Rs.100 to fix the tap.
I tell them that I can fix it for free. I get the required tools, some cotton-waste and a bottle of shellac from our tool-shed and get to work. The tough part is removing the broken end of the old tap. Unscrewing it does not work, so I prise it out with a screw-driver and hammer. I then line the threaded end of the tap with strands of cotton-waste, apply shellac over it for a tight seal and screw in the tap. Presto, the leak is gone and we have a working tap. My 15-minutes (and 100 bucks) worth of effort seen below.
The neighbours have saved 50 bucks each in labour, while I got the pleasure of fixing a broken thing, plus the satisfaction of saving scarce water. Now, if only I knew how to lay roads, I would be glad to relay the pothole-filled road in front of our home that got damaged in the recent rains.
