#25 Nothing Visible- Siddhartha Deb
Intrigue, corruption, and disaster at a coal mining
operation. In other words business as
usual. Everyone is untrusting or paranoid
about others at the mine. Workers worried about the managers, managers about
the head office, everyone about the new accountant, outsiders, locals, ancient
spirits, whatever is unknown, etc.
The plot gets interesting so I won’t discuss details. Most of the story is about gaps between
social classes. The office workers drink
tea while the miners work so long, one of the older men doesn’t even know his
name or age anymore. When a new accountant shows up he believes at first he has
a working class job until he visits the mines, and sees what working class
really means. Worrying about safety, his
co-worker tell him “your head office status will protect you.”
His housing is also far different from the men: “The
building had clearly been constructed to make some people richer rather than
because there was a pressing need for officer’s housing”
His safe status doesn’t last long. When there is an apparent
accident trapping 64 workers, he is given an armed guard to fend off a
potential communist uprising within the workers. There is a theme obvious from
the title about visibility, about people’s feelings, motives, real selves. The
moment the accountant first showed at the camp his view of the pits literally vanished
in a cloud of soot.
Overall this is a nice representative story about the Indian
Caste system. The writing is clean and formal. A nice read.
Notable Passage: “An engineer knows that there is a gap
between numbers and reality. Between theory and practice. A gap in which the
unexpected can occur.”
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