Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology

12th December 1687

Guruvardhan Lekha came back from the college and immediately jumped into his bed, sinking into its soft embrace right away. "Aunty Mala, could you please ask the servants to spin the fan a little?" Soon, the fan in the ceiling began to spin and sent a cool breeze straight towards him, causing him to smile with contentment. All the fatigue he had accumulated in his body from the heavy work in college and the half-day journey slowly shaved away like impurities being purified in the body.

Unfortunately, just when he was about to slip into the sweet dreams, a pigtailed gremlin jumped on his back.

"Brother!"

"Uff!"

The impact knocked the air out of his lungs, and he immediately woke up with a cough. He looked at his sister with anger, but, looking at her horrified expression, words of anger could not come out of his mouth. He patted her head as if to show that he was all right, which made her calm down.

"What happened, Sandhya?" he asked with a defeated expression.

She thought about it and shook her head, her pigtails wagging left and right. "Nothing, do you want to go to play?"

Guruvardhan was left speechless and exasperated. In the end, he let out a deep and turbulent breath, buried all the pleasant words that were about to come out of his mouth deep in his heart, and gently pinched the chubby cheeks of his sister. "Nuh, brother is tired, you go out and play."

Sandhya was disappointed, but her mood changed quickly, so she waved her hand and ran out of the room.

Guruvardhan, as if a robot whose plug was suddenly pulled, immediately collapsed onto the bed. Finally, it was time for him to rest. The journey of half a day really took its toll on him.

Unfortunately, maybe Maa Durga didn't want him to rest so soon. His mother, dressed like the warrior goddess herself in a bright red saree and a large crimson sindhur, came to his room and nudged him awake.

"What happened, Maa?"

He could not help it; he was frustrated, so he yelled out loud. But the next moment, he felt a huge sense of regret. He looked at his mother from the corner of his eye with a little fear, but what's the point of regretting now? Words are like the arrow that has been shot; its direction would not change simply because you realise you shot the wrong target.

A piercing pain sent shivers throughout his back, electrifying his spine, causing him to convulse all over the bed like a person who had fits.

"I'm sorry, Ma, please let me go."

'Humph!"

"That's more like it."

Guruvardhan vaguely heard his mom's words, but he was too busy rubbing his back to realise what she said.

But thankfully, she spoke again.

"Your father seems to have ordered something large, the people from the carriage company are unloading it. Come and see."

This time, it looked like she spoke more than last time. He was immediately confused whether what she said before and now was the same thing, but soon he put that thought aside and realised the crux of her words.

"Father ordered something?"

He got up and stroked his chin. He was not supposed to come home this early; he still had one more month till his exams ended, but for some reason, his father wrote him a letter and asked him to go home for a few days. He thought that there was some pooja in his home and did not think much of it.

But as soon as he got home, he was left confused, because the house was not busy at all. Usually, when there was some function, relatives from different villages would come to his home, start decorating the house, his cousins would start playing Kabbadi, Kho Kho, and all the grandparents would sit under the banyan tree and start talking about the affairs of the whole state as if they were ministers of the parliament. However, since he was too tired, he asked no questions and slumped onto the bed.

'Could this be the reason why Father called me?' He felt like he had realised the truth.

"Where is father, Ma?"

"He must be in the company, but he did say that he would be coming back early, so I think he is on his way."

Guruvardhan got out of bed and quickly came to the balcony to see what was happening in front of the house. To his surprise, people were actually unloading a whole container, a whole freaking shipping container, onto the porch of his house. His mother was not kidding when she said his father had ordered something large.

His curiosity was piqued, so he got down from the balcony and came near the container that had been finally placed on the ground.

The workers quickly started unbolting the container and began to unpack it.

Slowly, the top wall of the container disappeared, and next were the four walls of the sides. Guruvardhan finally saw what was inside. It was a large, box-shaped dumpling made of a jute bag. He scratched his head; he couldn't make out what he was seeing.

But his eyes widened when one of the workers went under the jute bag, did something, and actually pushed the dumpling forward, and the dumpling actually moved.

The same worker went into the jute bag and did something again, then came back. He did not know what had happened. 'Was it a brake?' This thought immediately came to his mind because he vaguely understood what was under the jute bag, and that made him extremely excited. He had never in a million years expected that his father would buy something like this.

The metal plate of the container at the bottom, now that there was nothing upon it, was quickly loaded into the carriage, and a few men came carrying a large wooden crate and placed it right in front of him.

" The accessories, documentation, and everything else are within this crate. Please check it out, sir."

" The delivery has been made. Is there Mr Kulashekaran Lekha here?"

Guruvardhan was woken out of his stupor and was about to shake his head, saying that his father was not home yet, but he didn't know when, when a middle-aged man stood next to him. "Yeah, I'm here."

It looked like he was so mesmerised that he completely ignored his father, who stood next to him, and his sister, who was in the arms of his father.

"Please sign here, sir!"

"Thank you for using VRL Logistics. We will be looking forward to fulfilling all your transportation needs in the future."

Guruvardhan looked at his father with disbelief. "Appa, this?" He had many questions, but he was so overwhelmed that only two words came out of his mouth.

"Don't you want to open it?" his father asked with a chuckle, and his words made Guruvardhan immediately forget about all his questions and jump into the process of unwrapping the jute bag.

He started from the back and began cutting it down with the machete he found at arm's length, which was used to cut open coconuts.

He saw the shiny spokes on the tyres, polished to a mirror finish, and he became excited because he recognised the logo on the wheel, Surya Mobility, one of the largest carriage manufacturers of the empire.

As he unwrapped the jute bag, he began to see more of the car, and he was left mesmerised and giggling like a fool, completely forgetting about the fatigue of his half-day travel.

It was the Surya S12, one of the five cars that were approved by the Ministry of Transportation to be used. Looking at it, he was mesmerised. The whole car left him stunned. It stood on the ground like an elegant swan, although the parts of the steam engines sticking out destroyed the beauty that was visible from its perfectly precise and straight bodywork. It gave it a different feeling of beauty, a beauty derived from mechanical precision and industrial design.

He couldn't wait anymore and asked his father to start it up and take it for a ride.

Guruvardhan went to a first-tier university, although it was not BIT, it was still highly ranked within the state, so his friend circle was filled with either knowledgeable people from all walks of life or kids of elites just like himself. So, he knew the prerequisites of getting a car that had become all the rave among his college, which included having a driver's licence. Since the car was delivered to his house, that only meant his father somehow silently went to the Ministry of Transportation in Dhaka and got his licence.

Surprisingly enough, his father, who was usually very calm, collected, and steady, actually agreed to his proposal. He started ordering the workers to fill up the coal chamber, water chamber, and oil chamber. Maybe he was itching to try out the car as well, Guruvardhan thought.

Without waiting for his father's instruction, he immediately sat on the seat next to the driver's seat and did not budge. His sister stretched out her arms and cried out, saying that she wanted to come as well, but his mother firmly held onto her and did not let go, as she thought that the car was dangerous.

His father finally sat in the driver's seat, lit a flame in the combustion chamber, and asked him to shove three packets of coal exactly into the chamber and to pour 50 millilitres worth of heavy oil.

He quickly filled up the coal into the uniform packet that he found in the car, shoved it into the combustion chamber, and poured the oil. He could feel the heat rising in the seating compartment, which made him a little cautious, but fortunately, it did not rise after a certain extent. Instead, he was excited to see steam starting to squirt out of the exhaust chamber.

"Pheeeeeee."

His father pulled something which made a loud screeching noise, but he did not have the opportunity to ask his father what it was about, because his father did some operations again and with a jolt, the car actually started to move.

He used both his hands to turn the wheel profusely in order to steer the car out of their compound, and once they were out, the speed quickly increased.

Feeling the air hitting his face at a fast speed, Guruvardhan could not help anymore and roared in excitement. His father, who would usually want him to be composed, actually smiled beautifully like a child.

As the car galloped on the road, free from any vehicles, Guruvardhan got a taste of what it meant to travel in freedom.

Unknown to many in the empire, this one experience of Guruvardhan led him to become the first person in the empire to use a steam-powered car to circle all over the empire, making him famous all over the nation. But this is a story for the future.

As father and son galloped in the car without a care in the world, the sight of them riding a car caused a lot of exclamations wherever they went.

An old man who was working in the field widened his eyes as he saw a metal monster running past him at a speed no less than a warhorse.

A middle-aged man who was counting his money on the side of the road after completing a trade with a grain merchant stopped mid-count and stared with his mouth agape at the car.

A naughty boy on the last bench, who did not listen to the lecture and was always distracted, got up holding onto the iron bars of the window, sticking his head out as much as possible to see the metal carriage running on itself without any horses.

A police constable patrolling the street froze in surprise, his hand hovering over his whistle, unable to make a noise.

A lawyer walking quickly to the court paused mid-step, his briefcase dangling from one hand, eyes wide as he unknowingly stepped off the pavement and almost fell after stumbling.

Without realising, the father and son had travelled 10 kilometres to the city, so, worried that the fuel would not be enough if they went further, they immediately turned back and went home. But on their way back, they had smug expressions on their faces; the reactions they got from the people satisfied their vanity quite a bit.

"Father, can I take the car to college?"

"Over my dead body."

"Ugh!"