Car repair with scotch tape and baby diapers

Have you ever used duct tape or a zip tie to keep a nearly broken down car running? I have. And I feel like McGyver each time I do it. Now the term McGyver may sound like an alien word to many young people reading this. Which is why this needs a backstory of epic proportions.

I come from the time when dinosaurs had just died and started to stink. It's somewhere in the 90s. I come from a time when there was only one TV channel and it was called Almightily Mighty BTV. Nowadays they changed it to just BTV because of modesty.

Back then, in my pre-pimple years, there was a show called McGyver where the protagonist (also named McGyver) would whip up all kinds of strange solutions to get something working. Some of you older people reading this are smiling and nodding your head despite the creak in your ageing neck joints. McGyver was a god among men.

He wasn't muscle bound or couldn't shoot bullets out of his arm pits. Instead he occasionally wore reading glasses and carried a small pocket knife to fix everything with. He could build a homing missile out of a carrot. Sometimes he'd rig a defibrillator out of a candle stick and live electric wires. And other times he would fix cars and bikes using duct tape, zip ties and an egg. He had unorthodox yet scientific ways to rescue a hopeless situation.

The best you and I could do most of the times with duct tape or zip ties is to hold up a piece that is falling off the car. Like tail lights that have been hit too hard by a rickshaw. Or a mirror that has been snapped off by a rickshaw. Or a bumper that has been snapped off by a rickshaw. Or truck. You get the picture.

But sometimes, if I think strangely enough, there are sparks of genius to make McGyver proud. For example, once one of my ancient cars stopped because the fuel pump wasn't pumping. It decided to call an impromptu strike like our doctors. And that too in the middle of a Friday in Mirpur. The carburettor needed octane to run but no octane was coming. So I filled a half litre plastic bottle with fuel, pricked a tiny hole in the side and laid it flat against the carburettor opening. I tied it down with some rope I always have in the car. Old cars must always have rope. And the fuel trickled down and kept me going despite having the hood open and propped up by a brick. I passed my mechanic's workshop and went on to a friend's house because I HAD to show off my brilliance at jury --rigging a fuel delivery system without setting myself (or worse, the car) on fire.

I was McGyver for a day. And that felt good. Old cars have that effect. Some days, they make your future seem bleak. And other days, they can make you feel like the smartest man around. Or just make you feel like a man. Even if you're a woman. Because old cars need something to be fixed or something to be handled just right. And you are smarter by association for figuring that out. It's a puzzle that some of us love to solve. Other days we just hold the duct tape in our hands and call the mechanic.