Trains, Trainings & Transgressions

© 𝕾𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖍 𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖗𝖆

One doesn’t know how good one's memory is until one tries to forget something, as the saying goes. 

Ah, summer of 1977... end of the dreaded freshman year. YES!!! I was among the survivors. We were standing tall there. Feeling proud, dizzy, perhaps with the heady mixture of fumes on the crowded platform at Kharagpur junction, shoving our suitcases through the windows of three-tier coaches, on the trains bound for a multitude of destinations. 

I have not taken a train journey in India in nearly three decades but my brain is still trying to decipher the actual proportions of regular dirt, coal dust, belching smoke, diesel fumes, chemical cleaners, body sweat, human and canine waste and other unknown ingredients - that very special odor of humanity intertwined with the massive machinery of transportation unique to Indian Railways, not found elsewhere. Oh, the clothes in those suitcases absorbed that special travel aroma. It hung around for days after the journey, no matter how tightly those boxes had been sealed shut. Any ChemE's ever figure out the permeability of that miasma and process of osmosis behind this yet?

My main choice those days was the Howrah-Ranchi-Hatia Express. The "Express," I believe, was merely a PR hype for a train that took nearly 8 hours to navigate a 300km route. It stopped at nearly every station along the way with bone-rattling jerks. It started with a wheeze and a mighty puff at every stop, moving along at its leisurely pace when it actually locomoted between the scheduled halts and the unscheduled ones that we called ruktā pur. When the train ran on time, it reached my hometown in the morning around 6 am, not too early, not too late.

On that morning, it actually arrived at a perfect time so there wasn't much demand for the services of a few sleepy, surly taxiwāllās lurking around near the station smoking bidi's near their ancient boxy Ambassadors. I don’t recall if the three-wheeler rattletraps were as ubiquitous in those days as they are today, but distinctly remember those four-wheeler deathtraps. A convenient conveyance was contracted by a few of us strangers who formed an instant bond after we discovered we were all headed to the yyy mohallā's, xxx nagar's & zzz puri's not too far from each other. After a brief, friendly but tense verbal duel with the grumbling cabbie, several of us piled in, ignoring any concept of personal space. Many of our boxes and bags were stuffed in the dicky with a broken lock that didn't quite close properly. A number of suitcases were also piled on the top, strapped down with sturdy ropes snaking in and out of the windows. 

The concept of automobile air-conditioning in those days was essentially either all windows fully up or fully down using a hand crank. There was only one hand crank available for all four windows in this jalopy, which the cabbie offered to us, but it was never needed. When fully up, the merest touch of the crank on the remnants of the crank mechanism protruding by the side brought the windows down fully at an impressive and terrifying speed. We just left the windows alone while getting getting reacquainted with the place, fresh māti ki mahak blending with the unburnt petrol fumes from the exhaust of our cab and others on the road, all of them desperately in need of regular maintenance.

I was looking forward to the summer, returning to my hometown. With an IIT brand and a swagger to assert my rightful place with the prestige I was due - among my homies and assorted other neighborhood Sharmaji's betas & betis who were engaged in their educational pursuits at other lesser portals of learning, not Dedicated To The Service of The Nation. 

Unfortunately, something called summer PT (Practical Training) interfered heavily with my dreams of social dominance. I had to spend the next eight weeks at a place called the Heavy Engg. Corp. While IIT was already operating on a five-day week, dang HEC place was a six day operation. I am not sure what your summer PT experiences were, but mine are below. 

This PSU entity was originally set up with Russian and Czech collaboration to design and manufacture, in theory, all the required heavy-duty pieces and parts for humongous steel mills and other such very large industrial installations. Its three divisions were focused on Foundry & Forge, Machine Building & Machine Tools of gigantic size parts and equipment. If you feel you don’t know what that means, fret not. In spite of spending two summers there, most of the learning of any manufacturing basics evaporated quickly, thank heavens. 😁

What do I remember from those sixteen weeks? 

First, getting to the plant required me to leave home fairly early. I had to either walk or take a rickshaw to mid-town, then take a bus for the hour-long ride (seemed longer) that dropped me off about half km from the main gate of the plant. The first day, I had to walk through a gauntlet of striking workers, shouting many impressive slogans like nahi chalegi nahi chalegi, inqilab zindabad, and other choice words aimed at the management. I still don’t know who "Mr Rao" was but apparently he was a deeply despised and thoroughly corrupt individual, according to these strikers and he was being requested in no uncertain terms to cease his dhokāghari & bhrastachār, etc. Immediately. This gauntlet repeated nearly every day with a different cast of characters as I found out there were 23 unions representing the workforce, and on any given day, one or more was on strike. The trek back home every day was also the same multi-modal journey. This routine taking most of the waking moments six days a week ruined most of my social plans over those two summers. 

Once past the gate, I reported to the Training Office. There were these two stalwarts in the main office that eyed me up and down, causing me to check if my fly was unbuttoned. They oversaw the engineering summer interns as well as their own apprentice trainees. After waiting for about an hour, I was summoned into the inner, dark, cool office of the elderly boss that I nicknamed Sleepy. Sleepy usually snoozed most of the day in his air-conditioned chamber. Rumor was that there were very few offices equipped with A/C units, none other in the entire place for someone at his rank. Sleepy apparently knew some dirt about some higher-ups and had finagled enough funds from the training budget to furnish his office properly for the blazing summer while everyone else roasted. 

Sleepy cut me down to size and put me in my place efficiently and ruthlessly by asking just a couple of sharp and specific questions about casting and machining; I didn’t learn any of this actually until the third / fourth year at Kgp. My freshman year workshop experience from Kgp was clearly worthless. Sleepy tut-tutted his annoyance loudly, bemoaning the future of the country and general lack of technical talent, aptitude, capacity, or desire to learn the right skills among the youth. His two minions, both ex-machinists who had had some unfortunate industrial accidents earlier in their careers and had found desk jobs in the Training Office, snickered loudly and sniffed disdainfully at appropriate points during Sleepy's inspired speech. Or, I suspect, a speech he had honed and delivered multiple times to hapless trainees to establish his reign of terror early. 

I was the only person from IIT there. My cohort included a pair of Saxena's who were cousins, both attending BIT Mesra. There were some others from nearby RITs. I had a heck of time explaining the difference between IIT and ITI to Sleepy and his two henchmen who asked me what "trade" I was pursuing. By now I was quite afraid to toot my own horn about eventually becoming a MechE in the face of my already evident abysmal knowledge and colossal ignorance. I clearly was found lacking with no redeemable qualities and was scared to drag KGP's reputation further in the mud. I still get flashbacks of that ragging-level first-day chat.

We dubbed the other two Sleazy and Wheezy. Sleazy had a scar on his pock-marked face that helped form a permanent sneer when talking. Wheezy was clearly asthmatic and took a variety of pills and potions from his desk drawer throughout the day. 

I later found out that the dad of one of the Saxena cousins was a senior level executive at HEC. Apparently, that had then led to a similar "cut 'em down to their size" interview on their first day. The cousins and I became friends quickly with a common set of enemies in the HEC Training Office. We developed deep and mutual distrust and loathing of the training department personnel, and I think they reciprocated the same way. 

The Training Office was near the main entrance to the plant. We had to sign in, in-person in an attendance register in front of either Sleazy or Wheezy. And the same while leaving at the end of the day. We quickly learned to stay away from that office during the rest of the day by finding many hiding spots. We learned the daily routes and timings of the two junior training managers who walked around making sure the trainees were actually on the plant floor. We did learn a lot about goofing off without getting in trouble. Not much about engineering. I recall the three of us sneaking out to get back to town to watch the shenanigans of a husband with a roving eye played by Sanjeev Kumar with a beautiful wife played by Vidya Sinha in the then recently released Pati, Patni & Woh. I had such a crush on Ms Sinha then. 

Our escapades were clearly not as amusing to the others in our cohort as they were to us three. The $hit really hit the fan about a week before the summer training was over when one of the cousins sneaked off during the day to take care of some package delivery for his girlfriend, a certain lovely Ms Sengupta who was summering in Singapore. I willingly participated in the plan to cover for Cuz 1 with the clarity and logic of our teenage brains. Cuz 1 could not return to sign out in person that particular but Cuz 2 had practiced enough to forge his signature perfectly while I distracted Sleazy with a prolonged discussion about some questions about the casting defects found on the "cup and cone" for the blast furnace that had ruined some project manager's career that day. We walked out that evening jauntily, elated at having pulled it off successfully. However, maybe it was Sleazy's deep distrust of us, or maybe his suspicions were aroused due to my displayed level of interest in the topic discussed. Most likely, one of the other trainees in our cohort ratted us out for whatever reason. The trio was summoned the next morning to Sleepy's inner chambers with Sleazy and Wheezy present, and the attendance register was brandished as evidence of our heinous perfidy. Cuz 1 was summarily expelled from the Training Program while we got a prolonged tongue-lashing. We protested the best we could about the lack of evidence or any corroborating witnesses to come forward in public, etc. but it didn't sway Sleepy. Eventually, Cuz 2's dad came into the picture and spent some of his political capital soothing an aggrieved Sleepy. I don’t quite know whether he used any or all of his arsenal of sām, dām, dand or bhed to get Sleepy to reinstate Cuz 1 for that last week. He told us in private to, and I quote, "Cut the $hit out, guys." but with a twinkle in his eye as he left quickly to go back to his executive offices. I later found out he was an ex-Kgpite from many many moons ago. Whew!

I did create two impressive and thick PT Reports, one at the end of each summer. These files with full of details about the industrial facility, their machine tools, the processes, etc. etc. which I submitted to the MechE dept. And promptly erased those lost summers from my memories. Or so I thought. What I omitted from the reports was a deep personal resolve - to never ever get into the manufacturing operations again in my life. I deeply respect and most humbly salute those colleagues around the globe who did and who do.

© 𝕾𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖍 𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖗𝖆 

PS: The timeline may be off a bit, but the names and incidents are absolutely real. The Saxena cousins exist and so does Ms Sengupta. Sleepy, Sleazy and Wheezy are probably employed in the netherworld by now, running El Diablo's training office.