Six Decades of Innovation: Dinajpur Technician Keeps Obsolete Technology Alive
Photo Collected
In a cramped, dust-laden workspace tucked beneath a staircase in Dinajpur’s Ganesh-tala neighborhood, 79-year-old Gomir Hossain continues a solitary, six-decade-long career that traces the evolution of modern electronics. Surrounded by a labyrinth of dismantled television sets, motherboards, and vintage circuitry, Hossain remains one of the few craftsmen left in the city capable of reviving technologies that the digital age has long since rendered obsolete.
Born in pre-partition India and moving to Dinajpur in 1964, Hossain apprenticed under his uncle at a local Philips showroom. Over the last 62 years, he has mastered the mechanics of everything from gramophones and transistor radios to VCRs and modern magic cookers. According to a report by Prothom Alo, his shop serves as a bridge to a bygone era, where the repair of a television was once a community event, often marked by grateful clients bringing gifts of food to the technician.
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The nature of the craft has shifted dramatically as the “throwaway culture” of modern consumerism takes hold. Where he once earned substantial daily wages and trained over fifty apprentices, Hossain now reports daily earnings of between 400 and 500 taka. As repair services have declined in necessity—with many preferring to replace faulty items rather than fix them—the veteran technician has become a fixture for a dwindling circle of elderly locals who stop by his shop for conversation and companionship.
Despite the physical toll of his decades at the workbench, evidenced by his weathered hands, Hossain remains deeply attached to his vocation. He credits his long career to patience and the fundamental trust required between a mechanic and his customer. Although he acknowledges that the younger generation has little interest in the grueling, low-margin nature of manual electronic repair, he remains committed to his workbench, which he has used for the past 40 years.
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As noted by longtime associates like Lucky Hossain, a former local radio shop owner, the landscape of the city’s repair industry has thinned significantly. In the early 2000s, dozens of skilled mechanics operated in the city; today, only a handful remain. For Gomir Hossain, the work is no longer just a livelihood—it is an inherited passion. He intends to continue his practice as long as his health allows, finding purpose in the delicate, rhythmic calibration of circuits that defined the better part of a century.
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