The story titled Nawabdin Electrician, written by Daniyal Mueenuddin, is a narrative about an electrician known as Nawabdin who is recognized and renowned for his treacherous acts of assisting his neighbors and other villagers to cheat the company supplying electricity by limiting the electric meter revolutions, as well as his abilities to repair anything using mango sap and a thick piece of leather.
He is the father of twelve girls, and he realizes that despite his success, he might not be able to afford their dowries. He, therefore, comes up with a plan for acquiring a motorbike that would help him cover more area and, thus, receive more work. However, the idea fails, and he almost loses his life.
The lies by Nawab indicate that he is not immune to the gratitude power. They play a role in enhancing the theme of corruption and low development in the state. It suggests the greed among individuals as well as their desire for wealth. With his passion for wealth and intent to raise dowry, the Nawab facilitates corruption and hinders development. This is stealing, which is a vice in any society. While the issue of fiddling and tampering with meters with the aim of stealing electricity may be standard, it shows the level of poverty in the community.
The lies also enhance the theme of hard work and passion. Nawab is determined to provide for his vast family. He is therefore willing to cover more ground and serve more people with electricity, as well as repairing abilities. He is determined not to disappoint his family by failing to meet their dowry needs and to cater to his basic family needs. The zeal to cover more ground is an indicator of his willingness to work to his limits.
From another perspective, some cultural insights are evident throughout the narrative and focus on its primary themes. While the world is made up of first-world digital development and modernity, as well as the third-world role and indigence, Nawabdin is seen as a median between the two extremes. Despite working for a landowner whose only care and area of concern were the issues that revolved around him, touching on his comfort and those that are of significant interest to him, Nawabdin is conscious of the hardships and situations his fellow countrymen were facing in the impoverished country. This gave him more desire to assist them in coping with the developments that would cost them more while furthering his cause.
Nawabdin is of metaphorical significance in the story as he thrived on the signature technique of his ability to cheat the electric industry through the slowed and limited revolution of the meters. The words and diction used in the story paint Nawabdin as a local genius or savior as a result of his crude innovation and improvisation. He is employed to represent a section of the Pakistan community whose aim and objective is to clog the progress and development wheel of modernity. With the use of medicine-man-like knowledge and the prowess of mechanics, Nawabdin is a businessman who can survive in Pakistan while at the same time living a workday that, if viewed from the air, would appear aimless and pointless. The slipping of his motorcycle is an explicit representation of what would happen to people like him in the post-industrial and digitized era. This means that Nawabdin should not have lied but ought to have sought other means of taking care of his family and meeting the dowry needs for his twelve daughters. This is because, despite appearing to help people, he was after his own gains and interests while facilitating social evils and vices.
While the story explores the cutthroat and feudal community in which the wealthy landowner who had employed Nawabdin lived, it is clear that it was survival of the fittest. It depicts a complex web of patronage underlying the small society dominated by families, servants, and opportunists. Under such conditions, Nawabdin, who is an electrician, excels in his area of duty as well as at home, where he raises his twelve girls and a son through the use of his virtues of cunning and ingenuity. These qualities, which he had gained over time, enable him to survive and triumph in a society that is entrenched by a poverty-stricken community, as well as outlive the robber-bent life that would propel him to steal to meet his needs as well as those of his family.
This, therefore, means that we ought not to blame Nawabdin for his desire and act of seeking revenge against his attacker because he was in self-defense. Consequently, the attacker had ruined a means that would allow him to cover more ground and hence earn more. He had used his cunning skills to acquire it, and it pained him to lose it. Furthermore, in a society riddled by social ills, women tend to be the most vulnerable, especially with the absence of family protection as well as marriage ties. His failure and inadequacy to meet the needs of his family and pay his daughters’ dowries would put them at risk in society.
Conclusively, the story Nawabdin Electrician by Daniyal Mueenuddin is beautifully composed and offers a small peek into life in Pakistan, which could seemingly be new and strange to most Western readers. However, to some extent, it resonates with and revolves around the humanity that we all ought to appreciate.
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