Looking beyond traditional Hamam, Innovator Akeel works on ‘Hydraulic Hamam’

To kill the winter chills, Hamamis highly preferred in homes. It is a room in which a floor is made of rock slabs laid over a hollowed-out floor and to generate heat, firewood is burnt in the Hamam through a small passage beneath.
Introduced by the Mughals in Kashmir, Hamams were early installed in mosques before it made its way into the households.
For some time, various innovations have been introduced to make the Hamams more efficient with the use of different slabs. Their utility has also been expanded by heating up multiple rooms and to boil water.
The increase in demand has led to its modification. Akeel Ahsan Wani, a civil engineering pass out has come up with an idea of Hydraulic Hamam System.
Akeel said, “My idea of Hamam has high utility as compared to the traditional one. Best part is we can use this Hamam in summers too. We can switch this from hot to cold and can install it anywhere, be it ground floor or top floor.”
He has been discussing his idea with the experts and is hopeful that his idea will be successful. “Of course, there will be a number of problems in the implementation of the idea but I strongly believe that when there are problems, there are solutions too,” he said.
26 years old, Akeel has done a number of innovations in the past. Concerned over frequent road accidents in Kashmir, he has also created a “Road Safety Device”.
One of the accidents which caused injuries of people in his village prompted him to innovate this device. “After there was an accident, I went to the site which was a blind curve and kept on thinking how the accident could have been avoided. I started working on a model and came up with a remote sensing device which will signal the drivers in advance if there is another vehicle approaching,” he added.
The digital device can be fitted on the roads at the blind turns. It consists of two erected polls, aluminum plates and digital lights connected through underground wires.
“The moment more than 10-kg weight comes on the road, the lights will signal on the other side and vice versa. This will alert the drivers. The model can be useful if implemented,” said Akeel who keeps on working on innovative ideas to address the traffic problems of Kashmir.
He said that on meeting with some government officials, his device was appreciated.
He believes that in a mountainous area like Kashmir, the technique can be helpful. “Kashmir is full of risky roads and blind curves because the areas are hilly. Nothing has been done seriously till now to address the problem of growing road accidents,” he said.
Another device that he is working on is a digital speed controller to avoid the menace of rash driving and high speed. “The device that I am working on will automatically keep the speed of vehicles between 40-60 km/hr, no matter how much they accelerate,” he said.
Apart from innovations, Akeel is an international award-winning artist, who discovered his artistic and innovative knack from childhood and kept on polishing his skills. He said that he keeps on exploring his talents and has recently got into music.
“I believe one should go and explore things rather than being satisfied with what we get. One can do a number of tasks if time is managed properly,” he added.
He further said that innovators are needed in the society and they should be provided with appropriate platforms.
“There are many innovators who drop their innovative ideas because they simply can’t find the essentials in the market or didn’t have money to conceive the idea. It gets hard when you have an idea but no resources to execute it,” he said.
In future, he wants to go for a degree in fine arts to feed his artistic temperament and when it comes to innovations, he strongly believes that an innovator should have an eye to look for the problem and mind to come up with a solution.