CREDITS:

1. Santosh Vattam for correcting tonnes of grammatical mistakes.
2. Sudarshan for anchoring the concept into sketchs.
3. Friends: Punchagan, Ritesh, Nandeep, Kartik, Ashish for comments, feedback, suggestions, support, and encouragement.

Continuing from part 2…

Mahinder noticed faint smell of cooked food and spices floating around. His stomach growled. He looked sheepishly at Madhu, she was quick to notice and shifted topic:

मधु(गरररर!!!): भूख लगी हे ना? सुबह कितना कहा था, कुछ खा लो, पर नहीं, वो जा है, सब तयार था, बस दो मिनट लगते, पर नहीं।

Madhu: lets eat….

Mahinder jumped to his feet. They quickly wrapped up their lunch. As the day was progressing into the afternoon, it was getting hotter. Today it will easily cross 48 degree along with Scorching hot winds(लू). Madhinder was right when he had complained about the deserted city. People have shifted their work and public life in early mornings and late night. Afternoon is too brutal to step out¹.

After the lunch, they both cleaned up the kitchen and got ready for the bed.

Madhu woke up at around 6:30 in the evening from some noise coming from the shed. Mahinder was missing from the bed. She washed her face and slowly walked towards their shed.

Mahinder didn't sleep at all. He was too excited by the prospects of the Battery, Simba™. He tried to sleep for a while and after tossing around for an hour, excitement got better of him. He quietly slipped out of the bed, brought out their lifter from the shed, mounted the battery on it and rolled it back to the shed. There he set the battery on the turntable and made sure that it was able to carry the weight and rotate freely. He put up 6 cameras around the turntable which covered all the angles of the battery.

Mahinder started a Hi-Definition 3D-scan of the battery for his software tool MisTree ². Using it, Mahinder could disassemble the battery and understand its different components. MisTree also gave an Augmented layout over real device with instructions to take apart the device. He searched for Simba™ models and found a VR walk through. It was in Russian language. He figured he didn't need instructions as long as he is able to follow the visual cues, understand the specifics, interact with the model, finish the tasks involved to take it apart and get idea of the tool set needed.

As Mahinder finished the VR walk through, he got some quick and deep realizations about build and functioning of the battery. For a start, he will have to "mod"³ his screwdriver to make it work with Simba™. Further, because of material used, once taken apart it can't be assembled back as neatly as it is in current form. As a drop of sweat rolled down his back, Mahinder got a bit nervous thinking about how Madhu would react.

He continued. Soon he was using hot-blower to melt the plastic adhesives and exposing the guts of the battery. Now came the working of the battery. It was made of two components, one was a HUGE capacitor and second one was regular battery. Battery had ratings of 96kWh/day. Something which should be able to support average house requirements for a week. This battery unit could be charged directly by connecting it to mains supply or to solar unit. Or, if the capacitor was charged it will charge the battery as it drained.

Capacitor was really an interesting bit. Mahinder tried to jump start⁴ the capacitor unit with his own, fully charged, 32kW battery. The capacitor's charging LED blinked and went dead in just a second. Huh, strange, Mahinder thought. He rechecked his own battery and it was completely drained. He looked at status of the battery unit of Simba™, it was getting charged.

As Mahinder was experimenting with these things, Madhu walked in.

Madhu: You took it apart ehh….

मधु: खोल दिया इसको….

Mahinder: Smiling, shrugged a bit.

Madhu: If you mess it up we can be missing out on big opportunity.

मधु: यार, इसमें कुछ गडबड़ हो गई ना, तो बहुत ही अच्छा मौका निकल जाएगा हाथ से।

Mahinder: Yeah, I realized that while going through the VR walk through and looking at the numbers.

महिन्दर: हां, समझा मुझे…. वो VR में दिख रहे थे numbers.

Madhu: Yes, if we manage to charge it correctly, for our house, and even more, we won't need electricity supply from grid, atleast for an year.

मधु: हां, अपन ने अगर इसको ढ़ंग से charge कर लिया तो कम से कम साल भर की बिजली कि सारी जरुरत का इंतजाम हो जाएगा।

Mahinder Nodded.

महिन्दर, सहमती में सर हिला रहा था।

Madhu: That too with all our modified energy hogging instruments, kitchen, cooling, washing, cleaning, all requirements of our shed, which we use to charge our and customers battery. We can keep our shed open even in this burning afternoon.

मधु: अपने सारे भुक्कड़ equipment के लिये भी। रसोई, AC, घोना, सफाई, गरेज, सब के लिये। अपन तो दिन की गरमी में भी अपनी दुकान पे काम कर पाएंगे….

Mahinder was getting excited hearing at the prospects.

महिन्दर मन ही मन बहुत उतावला हो रहा था ये सब सुन के।

Madhu: That too from lightning, for free. Imagine.

मधु: सोच यार, बिजली से वो भी…. बिना किसी खरचे के।

Madhu: But we will have to do it right.

मधु: पर सही से करना होगा, वरना, फिर वही ……

Mahinder: Yes. True that. We will have to see how to get this capacitor charged up and understand how to hook it up. I was looking into that only.

महिन्दर: हां यार, सही कहा, इस capacitor का functionality थोडा ताबे(control) में आ जाए तो सब set हे। मैं वही देख रहा था।

Madhu agreed. They decided that Madhu will look up into connectors and setup needed for the Capacitor and Mahinder will continue trying out things with it, trail and error. But more carefully.

Madhu started her own computer, took out her headphones, started some good tunes which can help her focus and started poring through journals, manuals and spec sheets to dig out details. Mahinder went to look for some high capacity adaptor. He was thinking of connecting the capacitor with Mains supply and see what happens.

In couple of hours, Mahinder was ready with his setup for next round of experiments. He had put together enough precautions that things don't blow up. Madhu also made good progress and was able to zero down into exact requirements for hooking up capacitor. They both did one more sync for update each other with their progress.

Madhu: So, it seems we will need some really high end metals.

मधु: यार इसमे तो बहुत high end metals लागेंगे…

Mahinder: Like?

महिन्दर: जेसे?

Madhu: Gold and Silver for start. :facepalm:

मधु(सर पकडते हुए): जेसे, सोना, चांदी….

Mahinder: Listening to them got started with song, ना मांगु सोना चांदी…⁵

Madhu was not impressed. Not a bit.

मधु थोडा सा खिजिया गई।

Madhu abhorred jewellery. Specially for all the hype around them. She made a point by abandoning them at all points. It was also an active fault-line⁶ between MML(Madhu's Mother in Law) and her.

मधु को इन से सख्त नफरत थी, सोना, चांदी, गहने, सब…. वो और उसकी सासु मां के बीच ये एक ज्वलनशील मुद्दा था। उसकी सासु को इन चीजों से कुछ ज्यादा ही लगाव था।

Madhu: Well, we will use pure, high capacity copper cable but for connecting that cable to our capacity we will need Gold ⁷. Something like those grounding pole which runs wire made from this material through its length and is connected to capacitor at one end of it.

Mahinder: We will have to arrange for copper wire, but getting gold is altogether different logistic problem.

Madhu: I agree.

They both were thinking and Mahinder shifted to explaining his setup to madhu. He showed the adaptor, cables and their load capacity and connected them to capacitor.

Madhu: Umm, I don't think these cables will be able to carry the load.

Mahinder: Lets try.

Madhu didn't agree, she grunted a bit but didn't say anything.

Mahinder felt encouraged.

As soon as he switched on, there was a big fluctuation. All remaining devices switched off, lights were flickering, there was a burning smell coming from the adaptor and soon there were spark and socket where adaptor was connected blew up. As circuit disconnected, remaining devices resumed working normally.

Bahuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu. Both Mahinder and Madhu heard the loud blaming voice of MML. Madhu grunted and Mahinder smiled sheepishly.

Suddenly Madhu grinned and she had a spark in her eyes. Mahinder was confused.

Madhu(Muhuhuhahaha): I know where we can get our heavy metals.

Mahinder(Confused): कहां से?

Madhu: From your Mother(तुम्हारी मम्मी से।).

Mahinder: Errmm…. now it was his turn to get worried.

part-4

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