Chandy John

Brooke House to Brooke Fields Chandy John

About this time, my father bought a UK-made Austin A40 car. I was so fascinated by the variety of technologies employed in the car that, almost every after lunch on Sundays, when my father would take his usual afternoon snooze, I would shut myself in the garage and open different sections/parts of the car to see how they were made and worked. For example, I would open the carburetor, starter, generator, distributor, brakes, master cylinder, turn signal indicator, dashboard instruments, windscreen wiper motor drive, etc. just to see what was inside and to try to understand how they worked. This continued for several months without the knowledge of my father until one day my sister revealed this news to my father. Instead of shouting at me or abusing me for this mischief, my father took the whole incident in a most unexpectedly positive manner. Considering that I had done all this for so long without causing any impairment or impediment to the car, he insisted that I personally set right all future problems encountered in the car. From then on, I did mostly all car repair jobs all by myself except decarbonizing the engine and replacing the clutch discs, which I could not do without the physical help of an assistant.