GHOST CASTING

“Death is often as casual and unexpected as birth!You never know when it can happen to you!”

“Mr. Saikia! You have to report in the evening shift at 6 PM tomorrow. Your duty is from 6 PM to 6 AM in SMS 1.” Oh great! Another emergency duty because of the stupid strike. These Union leaders care so much about the well being of the plant. Why can’t they work also for it a bit. Chuck 9 hour duty! Work for just 4 hours and we will be more than happy! Politics! Its infiltrating in every dimensions. So much for “Prevent dis investment of the company.” There’s always two sides of the same coin. Sometimes I wonder whether this whole dis investment thing is a boon or a bane.
……..

“Please report to Mechanical In charge of Casting Machine 3. There is some problem and you have to rectify as early as possible. You have to go below ground level to check what’s wrong. Just be careful all right! We have to make do with very less number of people and there will not be anyone working for you. You know! Opening and tightening and all that goes along with it.Get the necessary tools and equipments from the stores.” Oh! All right that’s expected. I seriously hate working in this old phase. Its so hot and dusty. No wonder everyone wants to leave this place. Even the drinking water is boiling hot inspite of a cooler fixed to it!

Its dark in here. I checked the time. Its 2 AM in the morning. There is a constant sound of all the steel casting machines running above me. As I go deeper down the tunnel below ground level, those sound keeps fading away and a foul smell of stagnant water comes in. The light is very dim here. Have to report to the safety department about it. There are so many pipelines of different gases, water and hydraulic oil running through them at various levels of pressures. Going deep into the chamber of waterlines alone is not cool. Especially after that recent fatal accident that killed 19 executives. Now I am beginning to realize that I am yet to recover from that incident. Lots of weird thoughts started coming in. I am trying hard to think about some merry stuff but somehow the different faces of all the blast victims are flashing through my mind. I remembered some old guard telling me something like ” You know this site used to be a graveyard before this Casting Shop was built. The Land acquisition was a very tragic incident. Lot of people were displaced.”… Its natural I guess. After all you never know what can happen to you when you are surrounded by enormous pressure lines of inflammable gases and hydraulics ranging from 50 to 300 kg/cm2.There is an eerie silence around and a distant sound of the rattling steel casting machines above followed by sounds of water drops echoing around. The bulbs started to flicker a bit! Oh damn! I forgot to bring my torch. I tried to check both my cell phones. No signal. I checked my walkie-talkie. It was working.“Saikia! Saikia! Come Online! Come online!” Me: ” Yes sir! Cheppandi ( ‘Tell me’ in telugu).” ….“Did you find the Valve? Tell me as soon as you get it. Let me know which line auto valve to switch off.”… Me:” Allright sir!”.. “And listen!”.. Me:“Yes sir?”…“Try to do it a bit faster. Its urgent! The pressure is going high at an abnormal rate. You know what it can result to?” Me:” Yeah sir!” Beep! The line went off. That Idiot! So easy for you to just operate the buttons in the AC control room when the actual thing is here where I am. At the same time I was a bit scared too! Inexperienced that I am, How am I supposed to know which is the faulty one among the hundreds of valves spreaded all around the chamber?.. Won’t be tough! There was a faint hissing noise coming from a 100 mm diameter pipeline. I read the tag attached to it.“LPG” OMG! How am I suppose to arrest this leak now.I was not informed of this. There is no shut down valve nearby for this LPG line also. The walkie talkie buzzed again “Saikia! Saikia! Emergency! Emergency! Please evacuate the area as soon as possible! Come out of the chamber NOW! The ladle(holding the liquid molten steel) gave way and all the molten steel is pouring on the floor and going below. We are all evacuating the shop floor! COME OUT NOW!” Suddenly there was a huge deafening noise from above. The whole chamber started to shake a bit. “WHAT! But sir! How can I come out now??? There is no emergency exit! Tell me which exit to choose..Sir! Please Please! I do not want to burn here! There is an LPG leakage also.” The whole shop will get blasted if the LPG is ignited by the 1560 degree Celsius temperature of the heavy molten steel that is pouring down… “Sir! Sir!” No sound from the walkie talkie. I started to perspire maybe because of the hypertension or actually because of the rise in temperature due to the hot molten steel pouring down under. The temperature started to rise!

I wanted to call someone. The situation was a complete lost case! There is very slim chance of surviving here. Maybe I should call my family. There was no signal anyway. But I still kept dialing on and on. What a tragic way to die. The fire alarm detected the high temperature and started to shriek in the chamber “WEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeWEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeee!!” ( Like that of fire brigades).The flickering bulb gave way and it became pitch dark and the other alarms also started to ring now! “TRRRRRRRRRRIIIINGGGGG!!! “TRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIINGGGG!!!”

“TRRRRRRRRRIIIIINGGGGGGG!!!TRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIINNNGGGGGG!!” It was pitch dark. I tried to look around for some light source. The alarms kept ringing. I opened my eyes! It was the phone!! I am getting a call somehow!! I picked it up “Hello!” …“Hello! Saikiajee!! So raha tha kya? Uth jao! 5.00 PM bajgaya. Yaad hai na? Aapka 6 baje ko duty hai……” ….

“Oh crap!”

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