39. Refugees, all of us

Prahlad spoke to no one in particular under the rapidly greying afternoon sky. We used to come here all the time and bathe under the gushing waterfall. Joshi looked at what appeared to be a concrete tunnel ending in a small tank. Water from the tunnel gushed into the tank and the overflow created a cascade of some sorts. Villagers, apparently, were simultaneously bathing themselves and their sundry scooters, cycles, and occasional taxis under this torrent.

‘The water was cool all the time and it felt like our own waterfall back then’. But now, there were a few people hauling water in frayed plastic cans and Joshi could not help imagining that this contamination laden discharge from deep mines was for household consumption. Perfect, he thought to himself, ‘Surely, George Orwell would have approved of this dystopia, perhaps written a book too.”

Prahlad paused for a moment and walked on. Everywhere, there were signs of degradation and disuse. The mine, one of the oldest in the entire eastern mining belt was one of its jewels. He softly spoke, the best coal was mined here, ready to burst into a flame and providing much of the initial supply as industries sprouted in the region. The British really, had discovered the first mines and settled here in large numbers. Transforming this slice of rural Bengal, they changed the geography upside down. What was inside the earth was brought out in the scale of millions of tons. And what was outside or above the ground was left to decay. Rice fields had been transformed into coal washing units and sacred trees were converted to ammunition dumps. The British did not stop at mere cosmetic changes to the land.

In what was an enduring image of those days, they created the most raucous club, seen anywhere between Calcutta and Jamshedpur. Host to a million parties and card games, it was a generous replica of the old London life that they missed all the time. But it’s very incongruous location would have been dubbed racist in the present day. The club was directly opposite to a village populated by Baoris and Santhals, the unfortunate original inhabitants of the land. It offered an unhindered view of the daily life of a perplexed populace who in a matter of few years, were clutched from their hoary forest dependent lifestyles in a remote village of the Chota Nagpur highlands and transformed into efficient mine workers toiling for the British Sahab.

The club conveniently investigated the community pond in front. Was it a particularly cruel decision by a sadistic official or an accidental choice, we will never know but the club’s gazebo, a favourite of the whisky drinking sahab offered unrestricted views of village woman taking bath in full view. A common practice in these water rich lands, the multitudes of ponds offer easy access to public hygiene and is preferred by most women, enjoying their daily communal bath while planning their foray into the fruit laden forest. The sahabs partook of this view, permanently shifting the status quo of age-old cultural practices into yet another pastime of the powerful.

Yet the club was only the least of inconveniences of the bewildered Santhal. Expansive, high roofed, thick-walled, delicately designed yet sturdy to outrace the debilitating tropical climate, these bungalows with their impossibly huge gardens had come to silently gobble ancient adivasi land. Slowly, but irretrievably their lands were lost, their rice, pastures and even ponds were taken by the white man and all they got in return, was the privilege of being of service to his master.

A new artificial kingdom had been born in Girmint, unlike that of the rajas around. This one commanded absolute respect and total obedience. While the raja would tax his subjects in the early days and take some of his grain, the new kings took away their forests and homes. Left marooned, many of them sought work in the growing mine while others shuffled across to distant refugees.

The population metamorphosized completely. It was either a mine scape, already sagging under the weight of previously unfathomable capacity of man to extract coal from the depths of the earth. Or a refined sophisticated county town, carved with ornate public declarations, clean straight roads that merged on a cemented roundabout that helmed a strong bodied miner declaring to everyone in sight, ‘Mining for the Nation’.

The British preferred the comfort of their buildings and would only walk out to go to his mine where he worked with maniacal efficiency, a ruthless push for further growth and maximum extraction. He appeared to be in war with the land, obsessing over it day and night. He demanded respect from all, the villagers, locals and officials at the mine. He laid the seeds of what we see across the eastern coalfields.

And as he left, he left behind a legacy that sought to seek acquiesce from his erstwhile ruler. Everything was kept as was, including the total alienation of the indigenous person. Lands were being lost, the vulnerable populations being absorbed into ever hungry mining beast and their aspirations were now limited to finding a job at the mine or as a helper in one of the many majestic houses, safely placed away from the mines. Memories of his earlier self were limited to cultural practices, an occasional puja or passing of oral histories from their only connect to the world as the first Santhal had known.

The mine became a rallying point for development. New records were set every day. The weighing centre would record increasing hauls from the deep underground pits. Everyone was happy. They would work hard and party hard as my grandfather kept up with doing in the later years. The mine’s success was an early endorsement of the nation shining campaigns that egg us on to do our best these days. Everyone was pleased and they ordered a dedicated railway track to haul the coal directly from the mine and take them to distant engines of growth, factories mushrooming in thousands across the entire land. They even sanctioned a swimming pool for the club. The officers could keep more than four servants to man the house and occasional allowance to travel back to their homeland in the north Atlantic.

It was the golden age of the imperial growth and surprised the rulers even more. Targets were made and constantly achieved, there was money being made by virtually everyone in the system, everyone but the hapless labour.

As the rulers realised that the current stock of labour is not strong enough, they began looking for replacements. Spreading outwards, numerous workers, their families and occasional totally unrelated professionals would turn up. Picking up whatever came their way, they lunged for the secure jobs at the mines. Vastly resilient and in large numbers, the migrants took over whatever was left of an ancient way of life. Workers colonies spread, with them came further appropriation of land and the hapless adivasi could rarely secure a mining job now. Many migrated further forest-side and the remaining lived on coaxing life of an unresponsive soil.

The mine rose to its zenith when demand came to export the coal in order to test a new invention that would transport a large number of people across the length and breadth of the country in a previously unheard of timeline. The railways had been born and significantly come to be accepted as the engine of ultimate growth. Production further jumped. People were beyond joyful now. As close to a paradise as one could have imagined, the mine magically made money out of everything it touched.

It ended soon enough. Years of cutting through ancient seams of coal, in an increasingly radial design had led to a situation that one needed wooden beams and embarrassingly, large quantities of another mined resource, sand. It was a real life manifestation of the saying, ‘A foundation built on matchsticks’. And a hundred and fifty years of sustained digging of the earth’s bowel had left innumerable scars on the earth’s insides. If it were a living being, we would have been shot for this.

The mine had reached places that looked alien in nature. Deep caverns, velvety spores strangely related to the common moss found in the forests and the sudden falling of the air’s quality without reason kept the officials at tenterhooks. The club was no longer a place for partying. It had turned into a fortress where scenarios were being prepared all the time, scenarios that involved a lot of search and rescue of missing personnel.

It happened one monsoon day. Numerous streams had been dumping their excess loads into the deep pond where Prahlad had seen the dead body of a friend. The pond was but a closed mine, closed for a long time, apparently over its tendency to fill with water.

The pond soon overflowed, resulting in a cascade of waves that came to our houses. The pond also exerted its pressure downwards where miners were busy collecting more and more coal in the least possible time. While warnings were shared, no one paid heed, neither the officials nor the workers. Later some survivors would recount, “It felt that we were feeding the nation those days. Our fire lit up the world and we felt morally accountable for slowing the nation’s growth. We always worked, day after day, though the rains and in winter. We worked even when we were told not to.’

After days of record-breaking rains, the land, particularly susceptible to turn into an ocean after a day’s rain, hung up its shoes. A crack formed and an unaccountable tonnage of water roared past the hapless crew. It was the rains which saved the mine from imminent closure. Attendance had been particularly low that evening and there was an ambience of rain induced fatigue amongst most workers. While the rest excused themselves, a team of six people went down to investigate reports of a possible mine breach in one of the upper seams.

While the seam was closed, the old British era trolley system was still operational. The officials could quickly reach the suspected site of breach and as they neared, things seemed to be in order. There was hardly any sound of water dripping and the cavern was nearly dry. Yet, something felt wrong.

Someone shushed everyone and put his hands around his ears. First nothing. And then a slow hum. As if, someone was rubbing a piece of rubber against steel. Almost indiscernible, it was there. This hum. To some it felt as if someone was grinding wood into metal. The team members panicked and rushed back to the pit head. As they frantically pressed all the buttons in this straggler of an elevator, held together by bits of wire, they could hear a distant sound. Though the pit was above them, the zig zag cutting of mines was designed to give a few extra minutes to fleeing miners in the case of a flooding.

The dull thump fell silent for a while and then a sudden wail lit up the mine. Machines clanking against each other, conveyors being tore apart, large globs of virgin coal rolling towards you, mines can be an especially dangerous place.

The old machine, against its own will but perhaps because he felt benevolent towards the team members, began its slow upward climb. As they let out half a breath, the elevator strained as it did always. It was too soon though.

The swirling waters reached the pit heads and rose fast. Very soon, a groaning lift (can’t imagine calling it an elevator now) began floating as the waters reached their knees. In reports written long afterwards, the editors copied a statement verbatim, “It was silent. Too silent but it seemed to have a face of its own. As it rose and our lift also crawled upwards, we felt light. I felt that I was floating. But as it rose above our knees, we began panicking. The lift had slowed down, partly due to the water’s weight and partly of its own capabilities and we were shivering in cold rising water. I thought that I will die.”

The wasters rose till the waist level when the lift abruptly pulled our bewildered lot to the surface. They survived, the pond was drained and sealed off permanently. The colliery surprisingly obtained a clearance certificate and mining returned to the mines.

There was a change though. The last of the British had left and difficult circumstances were becoming common each day. Above all, just like any other resources, this particular batch of coal had reached its peak output. It would get more and more costly for the authorities to mine. And soon, a day will come when the cost of mining will outweigh the profits earned. The mine is neglected and left alone, as it dangles its certificates of excellence. Its time as a human experiment was over. It could now soon return to total oblivion. Prahlad’s father took over in its last gasps and spent most of his life laying the mine to a slow sleep while sustaining dependent populations, now left partially unemployable.

What we are seeing now, Prahlad added is the final moments of a glorious if brief chapter of the story of our earth. Its time was there and now it is gone. Abruptly, he turned and said, Lets go back.