WINDMILLS

By Arjun Singh Bhati (Jaisalmer, India)

One morning I was sitting in one of my classrooms. A

student came to me from the roadside. The boy was very

excited and in a great hurry to give the news to me and all

the students.

“Big fan,” he cried with surprise. The students looked

at him. He was pointing toward the road and crying, “big

fan” again and again. We all came out of the classroom and

looked toward the road, which was about half a kilometer

from the school building. To our surprise there were some

big trucks on the road, carrying some unusual things, very

big white fans; such fans we had never seen before. We

rushed to the road. The boys were very eager to touch the

big giants. We were all seeing these big machines for the

first time, and within half an hour, several villagers came

to see them. It was like a local fair. Then, after just an hour,

the trucks departed from our village.

Now all the villagers and my students had a new

subject to talk about. I heard lots of interesting stories

about these windmills. After some months some windmills

were installed on a small hill about five kilometers from

our village. I had an idea that it was for electricity. Soon

it became clear that hundreds of windmills were being

installed to generate electricity. There are no big factories

and industries in Jaisalmer. This was the first big project in

the area, and it gave a lot of employment to the local people.

It happened about seven years previously, but some of

the stories I heard from my innocent students and villagers

are still in my memory.

I explained in the class that these “fans” were here to

generate electricity through the wind. But a student in class

seven told me another story. “It is very hot here, and the

government is installing these fans for cool wind.” Another

said, “We suffer from malaria every year, and these fans

would produce a particular type of sound. And the sound

keeps the mosquitoes away from us.”

But the most surprising story was told by one of my

girl students in class six. The girl told the class that her

grandfather said, “It is not raining here because these

windmills scatter the clouds, and as a result we face

drought.”

Although it seemed quite ridiculous, I could understand

the different opinions and views of uneducated and

innocent villagers. Well, finally, I took all my students to

the project site, and an engineer explained the working

system of the windmills to us. It was a really interesting and

useful lesson for all of the students.