As I was introduced to everyone for the first time in the production plant I was taken to the Tunnel dryer area (referred to as ‘TD area’) As I shook hands with everyone there was this guy who was busy scribbling something. He looked up and saw me, he got up quickly and scampered to me and said ‘Sahab, Namaste, vo main temperature likh raha tha isiliye aapko dekha nahi’. The introducer meanwhile rambled on about the importance of controlled temperature in the TD which was apparently a big deal. I asked him, ‘kinte saal se ho yahan’. He beamed at me and proudly said ‘Sahab, 26 saal se main hi temperature likh raha hoon’, sounding as if he what he did was indeed the most important job in the whole world. I did not spare a second thought for this man then.
As I became a regular in the plant, I saw him every day, his eyes always lit up when he saw me. He would always come to me and tell me about the problems he had in the TD the previous day and how he had solved it. I knew he was looking for recognition of his hard work and wanted to be in the good books of his boss (in this case me) as I too on some level did the same thing with my superiors. I sometimes wondered, what a waste of life, imagine the whole life spent just writing the temperatures. But he did this seemingly monotonous job for 26 years with full conviction and enthusiasm. This was his life, his identity, his earnings, his specialization, his purpose.
Now, one fine day as I was sitting in the office I got to know that the TD had some problem and had to be shut down. I went to the TD area and automatically asked about him in a mood to tell him off about his carelessness. I was given a meek response by this person ‘Sahab, aapko pata nahi ? uska to kal accident ho gaya tha, aur aaj subah uska dehant ho gaya’ I felt like I was suddenly drenched in cold water. I looked around for a familiar face in the TD area and quickly realized that he was the only person I knew in the area and then saw the TD which was shut down apparently missing him too. The TD could not work without him for one day and there was everyone who had hardly noticed that he was no more. I felt this strange connection between me and the TD. I called a few people about what had happened, nobody seemed to have known and sadly nobody even bothered. I went to his house for the last rights, I saw his body, his face badly battered but with a mysterious smile, half expecting him to suddenly wake up and tell me ‘sahab, sorry main TD ka temperature control nahi kar paaya, kyunki saala ek truck ne mujhe kuchal diya tha’ I instantly came out his house where some people were busy discussing the score of the match they had to miss whilst they were here. I felt the selfishness of the world which was so brutal, so alarming that I felt cheated. All these people, I thought, wore a mask of goodness everyday but were inherently self centered to the core.
We had a condolence meeting the next day. I could feel the unrest among the people who had to be here after their working hours. This is it, I thought, this is the world where you live in where nobody is bothered about anybody but them and the world was as fake as it could get. As I returned to my section through the TD area I saw some people assembling something on the TD which I found out was a small instrument that would beep when the temperature would be out of the defined limits. This is all what he did, I thought. The world did not even stop for a day to replace him and that too with a 1000 bucks gadget. His 26 years of work, all along, could have been done by this instrument. His life being so worthless in one way and so worthwhile in the other. I mentally saluted this man, this man who wrote the temperature.
