Apacha and Amachi first noticed him- he used to live across the street from them in Picnic Garden- because he used to take his motorbike to pieces when he came home every day. And then reassemble it the following morning, before riding it to work. So that noone would steal it, he told people, but maybe he just liked doing it. People stole lots of his ideas, though, and went and started companies with his machines, once they understood them, but there are some things you can't help. The part they couldn't help noticing every morning, it was so much fun, was him running down the street at top speed with his bike, kicking it to start, and then jumping onto it before it left without him.
He lived in a one-room flat where you had to go to buy WHYMUTO balm or oil (balm stayed longer, oil was easier to apply). In fact they called him Whymuto Mathaichen for it, and bought his balm in bulk because he might go broke and out of stock at any time. It was good for about a hundred different kinds of problems: aches, burns, scars, injuries, anything you can think of. It said so on the bottle, and lived up to it, which was a point of honour with him. WHYMUTO stood for Why Hungry Young Men Unable To Oversee (their present difficulties, and look to God). The only time he crashed his bike and nearly cut his leg in two, they dressed the wound nicely at the hospital, but he ran open, ripped it open, stuffed it with balm and then put on a bandage and went to sleep.
About a year after that, Jadavpur University received a machine from abroad, but it came in pieces, and noone there could figure it out. At the time, he was building a needle-making machine which he sold to someone because he needed the money to create the special kind of plastic figures he made, which danced when you touched them with wet hands. He went and offered his services, God was helping him, he refused assistants. Fixed the thing, and for reward, asked for a piece of land where he could grow tapioca.