Story: The Tale of A Friendship And Exploring The Wilderness Around

Story: The Tale of A Friendship And Exploring The Wilderness Around

Aniruddha Sarkar

02 July 2021 (edited on 14 June 2024)

#01

(Little things matter: As a new person in new surroundings, I had a few unique opportunities to explore the unknown and thus learn valuable life lessons.)

Palit was a great company. A calm and quiet chap from Kolkata, he had an extraordinary talent for mathematics and music. He was a direct recruit from the IIT KGP campus to our workplace, a large Mainframe Computer Center of a leading PSU Steel Plant in the then State of Bihar, India, now in the State of Jharkhand, India.

Palit had a unique competence: he could write a complex algorithmic program correctly in his first attempt. It happened that one of his programs was running for hours together. First, he doubted whether the logic was running into a loop. After a few diagnostics, he realized his program logic was perfect and efficient. However, given the complexity of the problem he was trying to solve, this program would complete execution in 300 years given the speed of the Mainframe Computer processor!

That was in late 1979. I joined this PSU Steel Plant at 9 AM. By 5-30 PM, I realized I had nowhere to go for that night.

The Graduate Trainee Engineer (GTE) Hostel was out-of-bound for me. As per the rules explained by Admin, all direct recruits had to fend for themselves. My reporting boss requested Admin to arrange a company guest house accommodation somewhere until I could find one private accommodation on rent. However, that did not materialize within a day. My spoken Hindi skills were also not strong enough for day-to-day survival outside the office. Overall, I was at a loss in the new environment.

At 5:30 PM, Palit came to me. A man of few words, he simply said, Sarkar, Chalo ( meaning Sarkar, let’s go). I followed him obediently with my luggage, without any question. Within an hour, Palit comfortably settled me as his guest in his private mess in the Co-operative Colony of the Steel City!

I came to know shortly the most important rule here. The Landlord and his family, who were staying on the ground floor, were strictly vegetarian. So, all the boarders on the first floor needed to follow that food habit. We would by and large comply. On special occasions, we would, however, make a few exceptions and would get away with those.

In the evening, after office hours, we used to have a great time together. The boarders were from various professions. So, we never discussed office. Palit would pull his flute and start playing popular Hindi music number tunes. The entire neighbourhood would listen with silent appreciation. A few of the boarders had outstanding talents for other musical instruments, including sitar and mouth organ. That way, our mess started receiving a positive identity as an excellent group of boarders having a decent upbringing.

During winter evenings, we would play badminton on a vacant plot of land next to our mess. We would sometimes plan for brief weekend trips as well.

Shortly, I rented another accommodation close by and shifted there. But my bondage with this first mess remained forever.

#02

Shortly, one more college batchmate of mine, Anjan, joined. We two needed more space. So, we rented another accommodation and formed a spacious mess. We ultimately shifted to an independent house with a larger space. The owner used to stay in Sector III. We ultimately had a taste of owner-free living! Over a period, Alok, and Anupam, also joined us, Anjan and Aniruddha (myself).

Friends jokingly named this mess “Aa Babu-der mess”. Meaning: all the occupants here had their names beginning with the first letter of the Bengali alphabet, “Aa”.

A few more friends used to gather here in any of the large rooms after work hours. To name a few of the friends: Sibaji, Palit, Pradip, Thridibesh, Amalendu, Navendu Da (Sen Gupta).

Now see the fun. We had enough space for multiferous creative activities and pure Adda (gossip, intellectual debates, sharing knowledge, unwinding ourselves in a positive sense).

We also took up multiple extra-curricular activities.

Alok started creating Oil Paintings and composing Poetry.

Palit (his first name is Kollol) practised Instrumental Music, particularly Flute.

Anupam and Amalendu practised classical music with Tabla and Sitar.

Anjan and Sibaji joined a leading Drama Troupe.

Navendu da, an acclaimed artist cum established literary contributor, started reading his Drama Scripts for review by us.

Pradip composed Instant Poetry.

Tridibesh was a great critic.

A highlight: Sibaji was a great philanthropist, an appreciator of art, music, and culture, and a general troubleshooter for all. Over and above everything, Sibaji was a perfect human being.

With such a great association, we started publishing a Bengali Literary Magazine named ‘Chorus’ soon. This magazine was an instant hit.

We also set up an Explorers' Club.

Every weekend, we used to plan a trip somewhere without knowing much about the place.

#03

Let me narrate here one such endeavour to explore the unknown.

Those were our initial days of stay in the Steel City. We were unaware of the geography.

One day, Palit and I reached Sector IX by public transport on a Saturday afternoon after office hours. That was around nine km from where we stayed.

Then, we started walking beyond the city limits, covering at least five more kilometres on foot. We passed through several tribal hamlets.

By the evening, we reached the bank of a river. Local people told us, it was the River Damodar. We read in our school textbook about this formidable river originating from the Chhotonagpur plateau.

This River Damodar was the woe of Bengal because of its devastating floods every year.

The Government of India wanted to tame this river. Thus, the complex Damodar River Valley Corporation (DVC) Projects came up.

It comprised a network of large Dams, many Hydro-Turbine-based Power Generation Units, large catchment areas, spider-web-like irrigation canal systems, etc.

The local villagers told us that on the other side of the river, there was Dugda Coal Washery?of Central Coalfields Limited.

We two, Palit and myself, decided to cross over to the other side of the river. There was a place where the river was relatively wide. Large boulders were strewn in plenty. However, those boulders were very slippery with fungus.

Many people were crossing the river from the other side with bicycles carrying semi-processed coke for domestic use as fuel. This coke used to be sold for cooking purposes in our Steel City.

Here, water was waist-high. There was a reasonably strong current. The flowing river water here had a pitch-dark colour and odour of coal tar. The Dugdha Coal Washery upstream possibly discharged coal waste into the river.

We two got into the river bed, locked our hands together to brave the current, and crossed the river. We finally reached the Dugda Coal Washery locality. Both of us got fully drenched up to the waist. The coal particles got stuck in our trousers and were creating discomfort.

On this side of the river, we found many private processing units that manufactured coke for domestic cooking. These units were all like unorganized cottage industries.

Here, the air was thick with the smell of burning coal tar. The locals used to burn the excess carbon before the coal and mud were pressurized with heat to form hard pieces of coke. As we crossed this locality, our eyes had a burning sensation due to thick smoke full of coal particles.

There was a vast range of undulating Chhotonagpur hills running parallel to the river Damodar for hundreds of miles. We scaled the height and reached a highway by the hillside. This road was coming from Mahuda More Junction of Dhanbad-Ranchi Road and connected the Chandrapura Thermal Power Plant of DVC.

The time was around 7 PM. The place was reasonably dark. We started walking along the highway towards the DVC power plant, around six km away.

Then I remembered, one of my relatives stayed there. One of our roommates, Alok, had an elder brother who was also a Senior Engineer in DVC staying at Chandrapura. We knew the names but no addresses. We thought the township might not be very big. Here everybody might know each other. However, we were not sure.

Did we long to have a good shower to clear dirt from the body? Probably yes.

Palit and I reached the residential township of the power plant in an hour. As luck would have it, neither Alok’s brother nor my relative was available in their respective residences. Both were out of town. We gathered from their neighbours. However, we could locate the two residences correctly.

It was 8 PM. We left for the railway station on foot. We had to gain further height.

At the station, we came to know that the next train was a passenger train from Chandrapura station to Bokaro Steel City station. It was scheduled to arrive at 10-30 PM, after a gap of over two hours. The train would change its engine here, which may take some time. It would take another forty-five minutes to one hour to reach Bokaro Steel City Station, some 16 km away.

Both of us were hungry. We ate some snacks and had a great tea in the earthen pot from a registered stall on the railway platform. Then there was a long wait. We kept on moving from one end of the empty platform to the other end multiple times.

We could view the entire river valley, the silver-coloured River Damodar flowing down below, and its adjoining forest cover in the moonlight. The nightly beauty of the wilderness mesmerized us.

At 10-30 PM, the passenger train arrived. A coal-based engine pulled the train. One new engine replaced the old one. The journey started again. The jhik jhik sound of the coal engine, intermittent whistles to warn wildlife crossing the track, the deep forest cover all around the river valley, the silver-white Damodar river down below, occasional halt at signal points inside the deep forest, crossing the river over a rail-bridge, the flashing of fire at slag-yard of Bokaro Steel Plant at a distance, we witnessed all these within that one-hour journey. By eleven-thirty pm, we reached Bokaro Steel City Station.

Now, as we came out of the station area, there was no transport. Incidentally, we two were the only passengers to get down here. Someone told us to walk up to the Ranchi-Bokaro Highway. We might get some public transport if we were lucky.

We walked another two kilometres to reach the highway. And, finally, we got a trekker (Land Rover) that dropped us at Co-operative Colony in the Steel City, some 14 km away, well past midnight.

Do you call such unplanned adventures mindless?

Probably, yes, these were so, if you go by the conventional wisdom.

But, then, we could trek on foot a large distance. We mingled with commoners on the way.

We asked them which were the roads, and which were the nearest railway stations. We decided on our next course of travel based on the gathered information. The uncertainty element at every twist and turn added extra anxiety as well as thrill.

In the process, we knew what this geography exactly was. Thus, the day’s journey turned out to be like solving an unknown puzzle.

For two of us, Palit and myself, here is a list of the takeaways:

• We, by chance, discovered what was the unconventional short-cut route to reach Chandrapura DVC Township from Bokaro Steel City, which otherwise was a long detour of approximately 60 km on the motorable road via Mahuda More in 1979. (As per Google Maps, the route we traversed on foot in 1979 is now connected via an all-weather road bridge over the river Damodar at Budhidih near Dugda.)
• We found out what were the lifestyles of people in the tribal villages around the steel city.
• We could find a way to cross the formidable River Damodar.
• We discovered that a ropeway was under construction to transport high-quality coking coal directly from the Coal Washery to charge the Coke Oven Batteries of the Bokaro Steel Plant.
• We learned from a local person what the coal washery processes were. He also told us that the adjacent villages’ economy largely depended on the discharged coal and mud from the washery. He explained to us how those discharged materials were being converted into coking coal for sale as a domestic fuel in our Steel City.
• We found out that Chandrapura Thermal Power Plant was one of the primary sources of electricity for the Steel Plant and the Steel City, although the Steel Plant had its own Captive Power Plant.
• The situation taught us how to survive till late at night with little food and drenched dress in unknown geography with the hope that we would somehow manage some transport in the dead of night to return to our Steel City home. If no transport was available, we had the conviction to trek that fifteen km distance by the highway to reach our adopted home.

As I sum up today, we learned to live with uncertainties and still tried to explore the unknown with the hope of surviving by overcoming all hurdles.

Dear Reader, if you notice, in these pandemic-driven uncertain times in 2020-2021, we all are busy overcoming many hitherto unknown hurdles as those crop up now and then. Still, we are looking forward to a brighter tomorrow WITH HOPE AS THE KEY.

Dear Reader, let us be optimists.

We have the power to take the bull by the horns.

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A warning: The route map depicts a stretch via the Damodar River bed near Dugdha Coal Washery. Locals generally followed this route. However, One should not cross the river from its bed without consulting experts. Sudden release of bulk water from dams situated upstream may trigger flash floods.