Family circumstances may have forced young Mustkeen to discontinue his education, but they could not quell his passion for science, especially flying machines.
He even began creating models of helicopters and planes using empty pesticide bottles made of aluminium. By connecting them to an electric device, he would try to make them fly. “Sometimes I was successful, sometimes I was not,” he says.
Not content with mere tinkering, the young boy started making a real helicopter. He read everything he could lay his hands on in the field of aeronautics. In 2006, he managed to assemble a two-seater helicopter, although it did not fly beyond a few feet. It earned him both media attention and police ire. The authorities even detained him for a few hours, as what he had done was illegal.
He was his own best critic and was aware of the many deficiencies in his helicopter design and the material used. Nevertheless, he christened his flying machine AIR Rataul.
Today, the rusting helicopter is on display on the terrace of Rataul’s St Mary’s Inter College. Though Mustkeen abandoned his dream of making AIR Rataul fly, the entire episode and his innovative spirit paid off. He was offered a job in 2012 by the R&D department of Eternal Rock, a welfare society in Delhi engaged in manufacturing cost-effective rickshaws that can double as shelters for the physically challenged.
Mustkeen now starts his day working in the fields close to his village. He then collects vegetables from villagers to sell at the mandi on a commission basis, and later drives more than 60 km on his bike to his workplace in Tahirpur, Delhi, to pursue his passion for research, development and manufacturing.
Moved by the plight of the brick kiln workers he encountered on his way to work every day, he wanted to use his engineering skills to improve their lives. “I used to see them toiling in the kilns and wanted to reduce their drudgery.”
In a few years, he was ready with his prototype — a brick-making machine that, he claims, can produce 10,000 bricks an hour. He sent the design to the State’s Science and Technology Department in Lucknow last year and is awaiting a response.
“Inventions and innovations can make life much easier for people who toil day and night,” feels Mustkeen, who sees this as his life’s goal.
(The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi. This article first appeared in The Hindu BusinessLine 's India Interior page.)