On Repair Day, we pledge to build and nurture a vibrant repair, maker, and waste ecosystem — strengthening collaborations, networks, and hand skills...

 

Repair Café Chennai Team joined hands to repair items saved from waste ♻️(Chennai, India | 25th Oct 2025) Photo by Naresh&Team 

Amid the often slow and laid-back rhythm of Repair Café Collective India, Repair Day arrives with a wave of energy and excitement. We only wish we could celebrate it more often throughout the year! Thanks to Fixfest 2025, we were charged with loads of ideas and connections. Leading upto Repair day 2025, we were more collaborative in spirit than anytime before. 

On 10th October, we kicked off with showcasing our short film on tailors in an important urban lens film festival focusing on livelihoods in urban areas.

Photo by Team

Repair Cafe Bangalore collaborates with Repair Maadi and Project Defy

On 12th October, we collaborated with Project Defy and Repair Maadi by the NGO Saahas based in Bengaluru, to set up a DIY electrical repair workstation at Samagata Space, Church Street, Bengaluru. The repair workshop was held from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and saw participants ranging from an 8th-grade student to middle-aged adults, creating a diverse age mix. Though it was concerning to see only three female participants throughout the session, the workshop saw a variety of devices brought in for repair, including mosquito bats, powered extension boxes, a Canon camera, trimmers, table fans, irons, kettles, torches, and light lamps. Some of these items had even been collected during waste drives. Our team helped these things find a second chance through repair, instead of ending up as e-waste. Around seven students from Samvada College participated, along with a few homeschooling children. Among the adult participants, three men were particularly engaged in repairing the mosquito bat — one of them was completely new to such work but joined out of curiosity. One kettle was diagnosed with a defective heating element. Coincidentally, another kettle from a waste drive was already on the table. With a bit of ingenuity, a transplanted heating element helped the kettle to be brought back to life! LED lights, spike busters were fixed. Diagnosis was completed for a Bajaj fan, which had a battery issue and an iron-box which had water leakage.

By the end of the session, 12 small electrical items were successfully repaired and checked. Three items couldn’t be fixed due to the unavailability of spare parts, and four items were diagnosed but left unfinished because of time constraints — to be continued in the next session! As our team leader summed it up, there were two kinds of people who joined the sessions: “The first, were those curious to understand how things work — their joy came from getting hands-on and learning by doing. The second, were those who brought their own broken items, eager to fix them but needing a bit of guidance along the way.” The collaboration between Repair Café Bengaluru, Repair Maadi, and Project DEFY was a vibrant celebration of community learning, sustainability, and the simple joy of bringing broken things back to life. 

The mentor team engages visitors — demonstrating, discussing, and exchanging ideas on how small fixes make a big difference. (Bangalore, India | 12th Oct 2025)Photo by @rasaam_06

The essence of our workshops lies in discovering the joy of doing things by oneself. (Bangalore, India | 12th Oct 2025)
Photo by @rasaam_06

 

Photo by @rasaam_06

A Gentle Turn to Books and Binding

On 16th October, our journey of repair took a calmer, more meditative turn. We collaborated with the Manipal Academy of Higher Education to host a repair-sharing and bookbinding workshop with students. Over the session, we bound three books, repaired an old one, and even experimented with case binding. At first glance, book-binding may look simple — a few sheets, some thread, a few types of knots and glue — but it’s a delicate craft that blends art with patience, for the purpose of restoration. It connects us to a time when books were made to last, and caring for them was an act of deep respect for both knowledge and the maker’s hand. Helping students thread the needle, press the covers, and bring old pages back to life felt deeply symbolic — a reminder that repair is not just a physical act, but cultural and creative.

With patience and care, a student ties the pages together — giving them a new life.(Bangalore, India | 16th Oct 2025)Photo by https://www.instagram.com/ashok.urs/

A good example of case binding — pages tied together with care and precision. 📚(Bangalore, India | 16th Oct 2025)Photo by https://www.instagram.com/ashok.urs/

The Ustad(Master) demonstrates bookbinding techniques to students, showcasing the craft’s beauty and precision.(Bangalore, India | 16th Oct 2025) Photo by Maitri Team

Learning Simple Fixes with Erepairs.in – Pune

On 18th October, the spirit of repair reached Pune, where Erepairs.in the city’s first AI-powered sustainable repair service hosted a hands-on session on simple and safe gadget repairs. Participants learned easy fixes like cleaning charging ports and basic maintenance for mobiles and laptops. Though participation was limited, it was a promising beginning — a small yet commendable step by repair professionals.

Creative minds at work! Poster by the eRepairs team for the Repair Day celebrations.(Pune, India | 18th Oct 2025) Photo by Team

Repair Café Chennai Initiative x Wasted 360 Solutions – 25th October 2025

On October 25th, 2025, the Repair Café Chennai Initiative (RCCI) collaborated with Wasted 360 Solutions. Unlike RCCI’s regular public events, this session was a special collaboration between two sustainability-driven organizations. As part of this partnership, the RCCI team—along with its mentors — worked on nearly 30 discarded electrical items recovered from various waste collection drives. Impressively, around 25 of these items were successfully repaired and revived, including mosquito bats, car coolers, music systems, and even a mini fridge. The event turned out to be a heart-warming and fulfilling experience for everyone involved, reaffirming the value of repair and reuse in building a more sustainable future.

The most common visitors to our repair tables? Mosquito bats!(Chennai, India | 25th Oct 2025) Photo by Naresh &Team

 

A gift of a repaired item — meaningful, mindful, and made to last.(Chennai, India | 25th Oct 2025)Photo by Naresh &Team

                                                     

A different kind of Repair Café — no walk-ins this time, yet so many items waiting to be fixed!(Chennai, India | 25th Oct 2025)Photo by Naresh&Team

This year, our efforts were focused on building stronger collaborations and working closely with more community members. As part of this spirit on 18th October 2025, Makerverse which is a makerspace based in Hyderabad organized a lamp-making workshop for children, encouraging creativity, learning, and hands-on making.

An Inspired ‘Virtual Exchange’

Metabolism of Material flows on 18th October 2025

On 18th October, we took our repair spirit online, with a virtual presentation on the metabolism of material flows, I was inspired by one of Mark Young’s lectures from The Maintainers Network that I had mentioned earlier. Happy to have him speak to our audiences in India and abroad. Mark Young, is a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Oslo. He approaches the history of development of the i-phone from the lens of understanding metabolism of material flows. He argues that one of the ways to understand technology is to “take apart” objects. He points at the idea of disassembility as compared to that of assembly. He says disassembility unlike assembly is a political thing, as it varies from one circumstance to the other. It depends on design of product as much as on the skill or access to knowledge of the individual attempting to disassemble. For example, the initial models of i-phones were easy to disassemble till a point when they introduced a special screw that is impossible to open without a special screwdriver head, thereby restricting disassembility. He locates the idea of metabolism in the context of disassembility. The idea of metabolism is widespread in the literature for technology and according to Mark, here the most direct reference to metabolism is that of a top-down, centralized, eco-modernist approach, that is used to understand and describe recycling of materials. Here he proposes another type of metabolism. So arises a bottom-up, de-centralized, informal, dispersed idea of metabolism. Where the object is seen as a site through which materials flow. A kind of metabolism not driven by corporations but by an economic necessity. He explains the case using the idea of ‘ship of Theseus’. The idea of ‘ship of Theseus’ shows that an object can be more than the sum of its parts. Thereby the i-phone by the myriad flows of materials through itself embodies this metabolism. This idea of metabolism helps us to understand a wide range of cases around the world from widely contrasting contexts.

A glimpse of the slide from the presentation.(Virtual | 18th Oct 2025) Photo by Team

A glimpse of the slide from the presentation.(Virtual | 18th Oct 2025) Photo by Team

Consumer Wiki on 24th October 2025

On 24th October, Keith Yardley presented the consumer Wiki. We were fascinated by Keith’s presentation at Fixfest 2025 and invited him for a virtual presentation to our audience. Keith Yardley is the manager of the Consumer Wiki. The Consumer Wiki was started by Louis Rossman, a repairer of Apple Mac-books working from a park bench in New York. The wiki was set up to document the knowledge and experience of working with consumers and helping them fix their computers. The idea was to put this knowledge at a place, where it is easily accessible not only to fellow repairers but also policy makers, governments as well as private enterprises. The idea was to record all cases related to consumer rights around the world. This he thought, would enable governments to improve their legal and policy environments, thereby creating facilitating conditions for consumers. There are number of organisations and individuals in their own countries who are fighting lonely battles to bring change in the area of consumer rights, this wiki would bring them together as well as provide the data and documentation to help them do their work more effectively. The wiki aspires to work with: what they call traditional issues and modern issues. Traditional issues are defined as those cases in which the laws already exist, either in the same country or in other countries but problems are around enforcement. Modern issues are defined as things which are not covered under current legal frameworks, legal apparatus in countries are inadequate to deal with such things. The wiki today hosts 941 articles written by hundreds of contributors.

A glimpse of the slide from the presentation.(Virtual | 24th Oct 2025) Photo by Team

We’re glad to share that our efforts also received media coverage, helping spread the message of repair to a wider audience.

Photo by Naresh and Team

- This article has been jointly contributed by Chandana, Nikhil, Naresh, Himadri, and Purna