Category: Revisiting The history

The story line never got written properly ,

The stage was never set for any great show,

The narrative still got drenched in the dark shades of the feudal past,

Never ever a poem , or any prose was written on it.

Still the characters here are all bare-bones ,

No costume , no camouflage , no conundrum.

The show is just so surreal .

The man in the cab just got down being scorched skin deep in so many hours under blazing sun.

The man in the cage just looks so dazed got soaked with darkness after so many hours in distant tunnel.

And here me overground or underground keep burning with so many desires .

Desire to lighten your town,

Desire to warm your room,

Desire to run your firm.

And so I keep burning so deeper.

They tried to convert me to ash .

They tried to make me criminal.

They tried to trade me with polluted mind.

They polluted me more than I pollute their air.

Still here I am to  keep burning myself just for you,

Still here  I am  to make you smile with thousand lumens,

And I will be here with you for so many years , in your journey,

When you write your story ,

When you write your civilization,

I keep burning to lighten your every word , letter and exclamation .

I keep burning to fight with every shade of darkness on your desk.

I am the coal , the burning desire  who never resigns from your story .

 

“Here I guard my own graveyard.
Here I smell photosynthesis through those pores of carbon sediments for so many years, millions and millions…
My those painstaking years of burying are perked up in silence of big trunks.
Like the phoenix I resurrect again and again to fuel your bright smile.
Here I lie down as the fossil of myself under the shades of my own green past.
So many stories I completed reading to my grave guards , serene , sylvan and so attentive.
Welcome to the curious case of mine, who died yesterday to enliven the world of tomorrow.
Welcome to the history of coal locked behind so much sensation”

(A Mining Engineer’s Diary revisited: written in 2010 while working as Sr Faculty in IICM)

I still can remind the date 18^thAugust,1987. Its was a sultry morning , the sky just  got too ill-temperate and conservative to usher fully , a humid , irritation  doubled by torrid environment of the rugged terrain of Raniganj –Asansol belt . I along with another guy from ISM, Dhanbad Anil Kumar took shelter in a 8ftX8ft room ‘s confinement of a small hotel of Barakar  for the next days programme to attend the ECL, HRD office. The food , the light and the untidiness just enough to shock anybody once  he will enter the room. It was my second visit to Asansol belt till my college life is over. In-fact the first visit was to Ramnagar colliery, when I had done one project on underground coal mine and that too under one of very overgenerous college senior and his too affectionate wife. The result was more about getting pampered by the family and less exposure to anything , the place or the people and so also very little aquiantance to the mine also. So this was the second visit  and the visit which went long way to shape the life I spent next twenty years before shifting to Ranchi with other assignment as I am doing recently.

The next day we got up early and got prepared earlier in more urge to leave the dingy hotel and less to join the organization called ECL. We reached the HRD office by 10 am and there we met MR Chakraborty , the lean and quite smiling officer who asked us to meet  Mr Falguni Tiwary , the then EE in charge. Mr. Tiwary is no more there , but I hope a part of my life in ECL had been tagged in his  file personally and professionally till his last days there in ECL. This gentleman a typical personnel officer  with very confused approach typical  to any problem of personnel they deal with(sometimes you just get misguided whether they are supporting and opposing  you ,a generic stance patented with them) scribbled  a two syllable words on my appointment letter clumsily , Khas Kajora,( the name which appeared to be much clumsier  that time) and nothing else.  Even I had not been told by anyone where the place is and how to proceed , in which direction. The only thing helped this twenty plus aged young guy who just passed out from the college is the imprint in the front cortex  he picked up the previous day  while coming by bus towards Asansol , where he saw one tilted small signboard amongst sand dunes near GT somewhere written with a blurring and broken sentence “ Kajora jaibar path….” in Bengali font which meant the way to Kajora. So with that little memory I along with another guy from BIT Sindri , Jitendra Mishra boarded a bus back from Asansol towards Durgapur and just got down the one place after  narrowing down one place by the erstwhile conductor , a place called Kajora More. It was a the late afternoon , the dusk descends very fast on a smoggy surrounding  of the GT road .The drizzle got started  again and infront of us a muddy road looked filled with so many deceptive potholes towards an uncertain destination , Khas Kajora Colleiry. The uncertainty was not so physically but more so psychologically just being  dropped by the organization we joined  the same day , without single briefing  , or  at least two lines instruction what to do and where to go and where to report. The two guys  still braving all these odds of  non-communication  boarded one Ricksaw  , proceeded towards the colliery and reached the place after dragging of the Ricksaw puller on a sticky muddy road to discover  there first place of posting in a typical plot of the great novel  Germinal  smeared by smoke and moist by  just concluded drizzle. Its an evening , we will never forget , in the office they told us to get shifted to one place called Anjeerbaganwhere there was one vacant quarter . And while we just treaded towards more  smog smoldering from intermittent domestic burning of earth-oven  dotted all over the place , we reached our first floor quarter to get our anchor set for our first assignment of job.

Let’s just drag the cursor to the 2010 . A batch of 130 were supposed to join CIL, the communication was mailed to all the concerned office and the officials, the doctors for medical check up, the personnel from CIL to emerge in the defined place to check and clear all proceedings and IICM, a lush green campus, with serenity and divine surrounding  like any ashram, had been assigned to train those guys for next two weeks, showcasing the whole organization in length and breadth. The design of thinking is to get them acquainted with broader and bigger picture of coal industry as a whole and CIL in particular. At first it’s the breadth, then gradually the depth, just drilling more to let them be introduced to their domain of working. So the guys in their mid twenty rushed towards the campus, a heaven still been maintained in Ranchi’s disappearing canvas of soothing greenery, pleasing climate and innocent inhabitants. The paper got scanned, paraphernalia attested in the cozy rooms of IICM corridor vibed  with silent conditioner and tranquilizing music. The sumptuous food just added to the flavor of their dream they now started fanning for the next surprise while they got posted in different subsidiaries. Its care and concern shown by the usually very soft faculties in campus appeared to be sometime deceptive while imagining for the field people who always appear to emerge from the old Texas movie, rough, rugged managers rippled in the face with thousand of crisis trodden   experiences. The medical test passed very nicely, the eye sights got checked, the pulse rate been measured, the guys just  get in the organization called CIL. The true lies never got exaggerated , the first two weeks in the industry just made them enough aware of the facts and figures of coal companies , so briefing some knowledge about the functionalities thus gets enriched while get physically and psychologically prepared to take on the challenges ahead while getting posted in different places. Swinging like the pendulum between uncertainty and some broadly defined knowledge they just start putting brave face to cover up any shakiness inside and depart to swoop down over different field and areas of their posting. And here comes the second surprise which gets fast converted to shocks depending on the three things. How far you acclimatize in a fully adverse environment, especially against lot of odds where, monster machines, seasoned managers both keeps on challenging their grit, gumption, their so called sophistication.  The second one is to understand how to engaging themselves , without any so called demand pull , or structured job planning , specially more for statutory , filling a huge vacuum created of non recruitment fro so long time rather than any  specialized task they expected to crack with their technical savviness , just keep on devouring their energy  , channeling it in wrong way. And thirdly how far they just get focused on the second career , and using the exiting  chaos as a cool platform to prepare and shift to the next organization of their liking. So the recruits having any of three quality just pick up the survival kit in the industry.

Now narrating the both sagas of  that time and this time , only part common  in the whole scenario is the ambience , the culture of coalfields. Surprisingly  this part got hardly changed , whatever  the cause may be, the production target got multiplied , the machines upgraded , the compensation got skyrocketing  , technology crept in gradually to outdate the conventional working process but the surrounding kept same , so the culture is so hard coded , it always appears  anything got hardly changed within this two decades. And the result , same recluse , same  isolation , killing silence of remotest place from the so called metro or township, the confounding  environment with semi skilled or unskilled people without even workable sophistication and the narrowed ring of a handful f seasoned coal executives. The day in , day out in colliery just would have been  kept back in the same status  as we started our career two decades ago sans the availability of the technology , the communication and of course  new life style gadgets and gizmos.

Thanks Mark Zukerbarg , Steve Job , or Larry page , the technology just do not let you be separated , isolated wherever you are whoever you are. These young guys may get disillusioned as the widening chasm between their  expectation(instead of getting scaled down in induction) and realty just  is too harrowing to be convincing . The competence , the skill , the quality gets eroded fast , so the knowledge level . There creeps in a tough seasoning and de-schooling  and re-schooling part of their job life. The remoteness sometimes gets too unbearable as they spent in some of the top schools  busy environment  bustling with lot of activities. Away from their so called busy campus but still are so near to their peers , their batch mates, their childhood friends, courtesy the mobile broadband service Tata Photon or Airtel, the social networking center of FB , the all engulfing cobweb of internet and the sleek jazzy  mobile stuffed with hundreds of features, the voicemail ,camera, the texting tool,  the android operative system or the i-pad, the mobile book-selves , periodical stores. In fact some of the organization where inherently the working condition and the ambience is quite unfriendly and reclusive as our coal companies must be more grateful to these new system and communication  gadgets which are the only life line to the existence of the fresher who otherwise got too shocked being located in the most isolated corner of the country straight from the campus to sustain the reclusive lifestyle for even couple of weeks. It can be expected to be an just understatement if we say these guys are just let them connected 24X7 hours in those mines ostracized from crowded planet , rather they are just extracting  more out of it. The usually low work pressure in a monopoly environment  where the major player’s performance are hardly been driven by completion in market , this new gen are just enjoying the enough  of their recess and relaxation (from any high responsibility being considered too young) and may  be lot of them got enough scope to keep preparing for their second career. Thanks to introduction of lot of broad band spectrums, liberalization of communication really helped our people who otherwise had to spend in full isolation like we spent in our time. Although the same isolation in other sense was the bliss in disguise for us personally me who loves to meet the people physically  rather than virtually and keep on expanding the circle of familiarity beyond any group or particular community , the non or nil availability of communication  at the early age of my career just helped me to find the trigger points amongst our innocent man  and monster machines  of mines   and the surrounding and kept me engaged with the cause of them for last twenty years. Yes there were no photo sharing , but regular exchanging  warmth , care and concern every time we meet those people in the mines  and beyond which in most cases either densely vegetated or else sparsely located. Still I can remind how I could develop a deep bond with the two beautiful friends one was  Begunia Forest (now a deforestatated  Bengal Emta Mine) ans another was  the Ajay River in Chrulia while moving with my racing  Honda Sleek moving around  in a zone of 30 km radius , enjoying the frequent open end theatre(or they say Jatrain Bengal) , took the member ship of the local village library  thus became a very key person in lot of activities in those remote villages where the mines were located with a handful of executives. In fact I owe to my whatever attachment to these people who helped to shape my philosophy  of life , my passion for these people  which may have been possible because of a little bit non availability of any  proper communication and complete absence of virtual life of online networking as we see today.

Written  on July 14 , 2017

Some of the underground mines are getting closed. Verdict have been passed , the time of discontinuity of work have been decided , the people are being put on notice to get transferred either by opting themselves or by obliging management’s order.
In fact by the latest diktat doing the round , these mines are to be shut and sealed literally. And I observe metaphorically also. These mines which are mostly half century or more old are not simply a few coal producing pits or inclines ,rather much more than that. With closure which were almost inevitable and expected for so many days(or years!!) are leaving behind them a string of stories , legacies and the allegories typical of any mine specially the underground which have been always the crude incubator of all those management theories and tools normally people goes to management school to learn. In the most raw and rustic form, these under ground mines or collieries have always been the birthplace of all those hyped word of corporate jargons like risk management , sustainability and scrums or project management which have been entrenched in running of the mines right from its inception or its first digging of the shaft or incline. The hunting ground of all those bravados , adventurer , chivalrous miners who just got enough seasoned to be called the veteran to cruise against all odds and have been winning the coal with so much stakes they put including their lives , these mines have been always like full organizations themselves. The miners who worked there are like those smart forces battling deep inside the terror zone of middle east Asia or land of insurrection back home fighting some asynchronous war with fast network , prompt decision and loads of intelligence inputs to run them smooth and safe .
By inheritance , these all mines own completely different combinations of tools and techniques and never follow any uniformity of management or standard operational modules although legislative frameworks , centralized formats or definitive functions have always been there in plenty. And here in this divergence of ways to do the same work (winning the coal and warranting the welfare of the people) lies its legacies , distinctively individual, indigenous and highly inspiring for any case study if we love to understand how an organization runs or ruins in a functional anarchy and continuous chaos . And here we saw every mine has its own stories of struggle, survival and then succumbing to the basic business principle which calls for closing a loosing mine because it just infects others , fast becomes a money sucker black holes and gets contagious.
Bearing the burnt of phased misadventure and occasional mishandling by promoter in its pre -nationalized period , union and management in post-nationalized era every mine had so many allegories and anecdotes to say , so many narratives to utter! Always being stuck up in the cross fire of greed(producing coal at any cost ) and grind(stringent rules and regulation) these all mines simply could not remind when they crossed over the wrong side of the LOC or Loss-making Operational Cost . It is a journey started long back which even before reaching the pick just are reverting back to zero thanks the cumulating of all those misadventures and meshed up planning and propositions.
The closure now will definitely pull the curtain over all those pains and paeans these mines have gone through all over these decades and if it is to be enliven at all they will be only in the scattered stories in the dismantled shadows of head gear , the engine room , the haulage cabin or the disappeared twilight rays in the dark inclines. Or the dilapidated school bus while withering way its hustle and bustle it left past so many years before kept mere witness of another demise , the demise of its tenant , the mine which sheltered it so long. Let’s hope the big old trunks(or pipple , mahogany )in front of the Pit Tops and the deep bushes surrounding the sumps will shelter those stories for the time to come.
Those great legacies are now going to be lost , long live those legacies.
Amen

The reminiscence is still so vivid in my memory till date. Twenty years back I came to then Calcutta (now Kolkata) to meet one of my in law. He got the job a for couple of years. A private company , most probably one out sourcing firm or a notch above that. The residence they took near the airport enough dingy alley to put in you a fix about the direction you must move forward. After trying my luck in the labyrinth of the lanes and bye lanes somehow I manage to check in one dorm in the second floor of a shabby building. The young gen are rushing out of the building in morning hours to graze on the job market , the stinky smell of the cowshed in the first floor on which the dorm is been hired to more than four boarders a room sometimes get so over rented that some of the beds need to get hired for two shifts in the day matching with time zone in the call centers where most of the guys are were working or searching jobs for. An impatient youth , the restless hearts are breathing too heavily in the chocking suboptimal environment of surrounding. Its those youth we speak of always to play our demographic advantages over others, the same card our politicians flaunt all the time to our ageing neighbor or older population of waste to show how advantageous we are take on the world near future. These are the same young guys who just rush out of these pigeon holes everyday to work in the kitchenette the back office of flat , crowded worlds bustling or bursting workshop of finance , economy or trading . they are the weaver bird of the whole wired network of supply chain of the every service goods and service companies in the greater world and lastly they are the great Indian youth force languishing in substandard ant holes to launch their careers in a big way.

The next scenery I will depict a suburb in Beijing, the folks staking their family’s last belonging to educate and qualify for big ticket job just landed in capital in aspiration of new life of comfort and decency. Right after landing they get themselves confined in a six bed dorm with untidy washrooms a common passage and the toilets sharing all the inhabitants of the building and lastly running after a job which either enslave them on lot of conditionality or just not allowed to them because of the connection “…” they say in Chinese . A frustrated , young educated workforce languishing in the locality always been addressed as ant tribes just to show their desperacy and number to search out the jobs migrating from villages a blot to the much touted double digit growth of a country basking on super economy power. Another group of restless hearts.

The comparison I have drawn just to turn our head from some excel spreadsheet to some real life fact , from unrelenting raining of statistics from the planning commission and ministry , the continuous analysis of mean , median mode of our demography of workforce to the actual status they are just been forced into. The way these young , upcoming new work force are being treated or should I say the standards they maximum can afford its no where compared to a few IITian or privilege college graduates being recruited from the campus and straight rehabilitate in the cozy campus of the corporate. These grim faced , low waged engineers much more outnumber the those few as well as they are the at bottom of the pyramid of every hierarchy of corporate pillar of the globalized world. They are the founding bricks of every business and they are the main code writers all those million of programme to integrate and run the world economy. Infact it’s a big paradox as well pretentious that the world still suffers from huge discrimination and ethnicity of the class, creed, caste , country(which school, what its pedigree etc) where the technocrats or the architects who are supposed to obliterate these difference are them selves inflicted with over dose of it.

The youth everywhere are same energetic , enthusiastic , enterprising and yes vulnerable to sheer exploitation also. The super clan of professionals just exploit them as ants. They come out of their dingy holes in Kolkata or Peking every morning to get to their job place and come back again in the evening or night on the little sustenance whatever they can afford to. They are as always the lowest paid, least privileged and labor class of the IT sector some got defined as code writer, some are designer and some may be system integrator, the job profile of all these abbreviation will certainly overwhelm the salary structure of these hapless humanoids or human robots living their life sans any complain, any issue.Like  those equally  disciplined(in movement and work)  and disenchanted (from any special aspiration)ants the daily journey of these youth just starts and ends for collection of food not any cultivation of frill or even any fringe incentive .