The Diesel Story


June 28,2001 
This is an incident that occurred today. We almost got ourselves stranded in the middle of nowhere. It so happened that Shivanand (my driver ) and I were travelling to Manjeswaram a place to the north of Kerela with some of the SEB personnel. Even after having moved about 150 kms none of us realise that the tank is giving way until we had a jerk. Oh! No! It was too late.......
The nearest diesel station is around 10 km says a localite. Now what?? Its 10 pm. NO auto as well for us to move up & down to get diesel. After trying hard we managed to convince one truck driver to sell us 3 ltrs of diesel from his tank. “Only 3 lts!” he exclaims. The problem seemed to have solved that we realise no one has a tubing for sucking out fuel. Back to square one…


Well this is the time something struck me and we escaped carrying the Sumo. There is something I hated and always had to carry with me. The Jumbo communication cable. For the technically unsound just imagine a cable that you may use for connecting some house wiring. And for the technically sound it is a 8-core, Un-Armoured, Sheathed, 1.5 sq.mm one, which is never used for communication purpose but we have to do so due to customer requirements. I hate using that cable for it makes my panels look dirty and is difficult to handle. But this very same thing got me out of a fix. The outer sheath (cover) of this cable is tubular & the cores (inner wires) are covered with plastic sheet. That makes it easy for the outer sheath to slide out comfortably. Having known that I got a couple of meters of it cut the outer sheath at one point round enough and pulled it to make available a tube for filling fuel.

And so they went happily forever……


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