“Don’t do this, Sridhar,” Vikash had warned me several times “It’s okay to come up with new ideas but this one is too dangerous!”
“Let me at least try,” I had told him. “Let me see if it’s even possible.”
In 1968, when I was hired by the Bidyalanka Puja Committee for the purpose of providing street lighting, I had volunteered to additionally decorate the banks of our old pond too for three primary reasons. Number one, I had grown up next to it. Number two, it had been the source of some of our most sumptuous meals in childhood. And number three, it had been the setting for several of my childish shenanigans.
However, when the lights glowed around the pond after sundown, the space enclosed by the banks of the pond looked extremely empty. But of course, I couldn’t have done anything about it because the enclosed space contained nothing but neck-deep water. That’s when I first contemplated the possibility of making lights glow under water and laughed at myself for being so impractical.
But then the idea stuck with me for a while and what had seemed impossible in the evening had started to seem like an idea worth giving a shot by the night. I wasn’t even sure if the idea was feasible since it was unprecedented.
Besides, making the 25-watt lamps glow under water was itself a very risky business. And if I had to make those lights glow under water, I would obviously have to step inside the water to fix them, test them and do whatever else was needed in that situation, and that would expose me to the perils of a major electric shock in case the fixtures exploded for some reason. However, I was curious, and I always wanted to try something new, to do something unique, even if it was risky.
I made up my mind to test my idea regardless of the risks involved. So, one fine day, my friend Parashuram and I lowered a small panel decorated with 25-watt lamps in the Bidyalanka pond to see if our plan was even feasible and also to get an idea of the probable risks. Standing knee deep in the water, I debated how we could approach the task without hurting ourselves. The lamps glowed bright and colourful. We had absolutely no idea what to expect. “Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Parashuram with a nervous laugh.
“Hmm,” I nodded gravely without looking at him. “But…what if we die?”
“You can stand on the bank if you like,” I told him. “I will test it and let you know. If things go wrong, at least one of us can get help.” It seemed that was exactly what he wanted to hear from me. So, Parashuram waddled across the pond, climbed out of it, stood on the steps on the bank and offered me moral support while I bravely stood in the water, holding a stick in my hand. I knew we had no alternative. Every new invention begins with someone who is willing to shoulder the risks. I had to do it sooner or later, and the sooner I was done with it, the better.
“Listen, Parashuram,” I told him. “If I get a shock, don’t rush into the water to get me out. First turn off the lights, unplug the main wire, wait for a few minutes, and only then help me out.” He nodded. “Please don’t ignore my warning,” I told him again. “Even if I die here in the water, you have to do what I said. Step by step. Don’t rush in impulsively.”
“You won’t die, stop saying such things,” he told me, even though it was he who had first broached the possibility of death. “And yes, I will follow your advice to the word.”
“And if I come out alive,” I smiled. “We will go to Bimal Mishtanna Bhandar, okay?”
“Yes, sir!” he cried.
“You treat me to samosas and I will treat you to jalebis.”
“And we will smoke afterwards. Deal?”
“Deal!” There was so much to live for. I was eager to stay alive. And I knew I’d be much happier if our experiment proved successful. The jalebis and samosas would be so much tastier and smoking afterwards wouldn’t make me feel guilty. In fact, I would feel like I had earned the right to smoke.
So, I closed my eyes, muttered a quick prayer and used my stick to smash a glowing lamp. Then I waited for the impact. There was none that I could feel. My muscles, which had been tense and stiff all along, slowly relaxed. Parashuram and I looked at each other, and my gentle nod was met with a happy little jig that he performed on the steps of the ghat, bursting with excitement.
“WE DID IT! WE DID IT! YES!” That afternoon we discovered that the idea of underwater lights was not only feasible but also pretty risk-free because only a tiny patch of water around the broken lamp would be electrified, not the whole pond. Our fears had basically been built on a bedrock of myths!
Overjoyed, we filled our stomachs and our hearts that afternoon and then I set about working on my new project. The puja committee members had requested me to arrange the lamps under water in such a way that they formed the letters of the word “Bidyalanka” written in Bengali. That was fine with me. In fact, that seemed like an easy, hassle-free project. So, I readily agreed to their proposal.
“I will do it,” I told them and watched their faces light up with joy. For this project, I didn’t use the soft slices of flexible bamboo. Instead, I used thick pliable wire to create the letters of the word and then framed the word with thick bamboo strips. After a couple of weeks, the word was made, the letters looked excellent and the lamps glowed bright as ever.
But two days before the Jagadhatri Puja, on Chaturthi, when we had just lowered the frame into the pond to test the lights, a group of electrical engineers from the Bhar Company, the only electric supply company in Chandannagar, appeared out of what seemed like thin air and ordered that I should stop the work immediately since it was dangerous and could pose a fatal threat to the visitors.
“But these aren’t dangerous,” I insisted. “I’ve tested them.”
“You never know what might happen, young man,” cautioned one of the engineers. “Who will take the responsibility if someone is injured?”
“There will be no injury,” I kept saying. “Even if a lamp explodes in the water, it’s quite safe.”
“No chap, we cannot allow this,” another engineer said, adamant. “Let me at least show you,” I requested. “I’ve worked extremely hard for this. Let me show you what I’m talking about. Then you can decide.” After a few long minutes of tireless persuasion, they decided they would give me a chance. I immediately signalled Parashuram to switch on the lights and then took a stick that was lying nearby, went waist-deep into the pond confidently and burst one lamp in front of them. And then I burst another.
“Are you alright?” Parashuram asked. “Absolutely,” I shrugged. The engineers looked surprised. I could have burst the lamps of an entire letter and recreated it again if that was what took to convince them that it was safe. Anyway, I was lucky. They were convinced after I had burst three lamps and said that they would let me go ahead with the plan.
The solicitous engineers, however, had a fence constructed around the pond for the safety and security of the visitors, which I had no reason to disapprove of. The underwater lights were a phenomenal success that year and in the following year, the founders of Boroline Company offered me a handsome amount of money to advertise the name of their company with underwater lights in the same way as I had done for Bidyalanka the previous year. And that was the year I could have died because of my overconfidence.
The lights were lowered into the Bidyalanka pond once again in the autumn of 1969, the white and green 25-watt lamps forming the letters of the word “Boroline”. It was only Panchami but Bidyalanka was congested. People had arrived in multitudes and thronged the banks of the pond while I stood there in the water signalling Parashuram, as the lights glowed at my feet underwater.
Fully aware of the hundreds of eyes watching me from behind the fence, I expressed my disapproval at the lights and decided to do something about them just for the heck of it!
“They’re too dim,” I yelled at Parashuram even though he was standing almost right next to me and then I shook my head vigorously without any reason.
“What are you saying?” he looked confused. “They look so much better than last year!”
“Nah,” I replied with my hands on my hips, striking the pose of a know-it-all for my audience to see.
“Something is wrong. The wires need to be tightened.” There was nothing wrong with the lights. The wires were perfect. But I wanted the people to see me at work in the pond, vulnerable to their imaginary perils while the lights still glowed underwater. To them it was something lethal and dangerous and I wanted to bust their myths. Some of them stood there trembling with anxiety, the palms of their hands pressed against each other, terrified, praying for my safety. I loved the attention. It made me feel like a local celebrity!
I loosened a couple of wires on purpose and meddled with them, connecting them, disconnecting them and then connecting them again while the corresponding lights flickered in the water, and the people around me gasped in surprise and fear. “Look, that’s Sridhar Das!” I heard someone say. “Quite a daredevil, that young lad!” “Where is he? Where is he?” said some others, probably the ones standing behind, who could not see the pond. “Oh, there he is! He’s so young!” said someone else.
“Nevertheless, so brave!” replied another. And the lamps weren’t the only things which glowed that evening. Then there came a moment when the crowd on the bank got a little too enthusiastic. Suddenly, there was a loud explosive noise as the fence failed to hold back the riled-up crowd and soon gave way. The mortified screams of the people who stood nearest to the pond caught me off-guard and the loose wire caught my finger, burning my skin.
The electricity made my entire hand tingle. When I tried to free it with a jerk, it fell on my back and burnt a patch of skin there too. Next it fell in the water right where I had been standing. I don’t remember what followed because I blacked out instantly. So much for overconfidence!
Excerpted with permission from The Wizard of Festival Lighting: The Incredible Story of Sridhar Das, Samragngi Roy, Speaking Tiger Books.
