Tools-A Picture Story

A broken toilet flush is the next most annoying thing after a nagging wife. And Makardhwaj’s toilet flush was dead broke.


He was using a tumbler and a mug as a substitute for meeting his flushing needs.


Being a self made man that he was, he decided to fix this anomaly all by himself. This decision locomoted him to a local hardware superstore. It had the shape and size of almost any super stores that are around these days except that this one housed all imaginable and unimaginable hardware items on display.

Sometimes supply can create its own demand –so said Says. And going by the amount of shopping people do in the superstores these days it can be said that this mantra is the cornerstone of their business. Makardhwaj was no exception to this rule and the huge congregation of materials on the racks awoke the dormant creator in him. He thought if a tool exists, there must be some use for it. He may not have the knowledge of its usability but the very existence of such a tool demanded that it have some use and Makardhwaj abhorred the idea of existence of anything in the material world without his cognition. Suddenly articles that never registered in his mind as being of any use in the past started appearing as inevitable.


Rabidly he shopcarted the following products:

A tape.

A swiss knife.


A carry bag.

A tumbler of grease.



A multi tool pack consisting of screw drivers and spanners of various shapes and sizes.

A hammer.

Makardhwaj came home contended and post lunch he decided to look at the spoils of his shopping. He laid them on a table and looked at them as a child would look at a Christmas gift after getting up in the morning.

The hammer in particular attracted his attention. It was small and handy and looked elegant yet efficient. It had a nice rubber grip with which he held it and gently began to tap the blunt end on the table and listened to the sound it produced. At the other end of the hammer there was a claw that could easily extract nails. It was strange that the very instrument that could pound a nail deep into a material could also extract it from there.

Makardhwaj thought that the same tool could be used for doing multiple things, not necessarily what the tool is commonly known to be used for . At that very moment the prospects of transforming himself into a hammerhead shark appeared to be feasible with this instrument at his disposal. Since the time Nat Geo had happened to him, he had always wanted to be one of these rare and powerful creatures of the deep sea.

Next day he had made it to the headlines of all the newspapaers.

Well...most of the times we never know what is at stake in the use of a tool unless the tool has been used.

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Photography: Ankur
Story: Amit
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