Travelogue 3

Note to self: When someone offers you a plum and slightly rewarding job at an internationally reputed firm like Infosys, take it!

So welcome to the cement life out here. Part three of my travelogue delves into the psyche of the cement plant management (junior levels) whom I would like to term as the Cement Dud(e)s, pun intended of course. Well to their credit these souls are highly gifted, talented and intelligent, fresh out of the NIT’s and reputed Engineering colleges and are very efficient. But they out of some Universal conspiracy chose to spend the rest of their lives at a plant which works round the clock (24 hours and I have verified logbooks!), are on duty even at night when called upon, and well have nothing else to do in life. Drones and slaves are not what I envision engineers should become, but I guess that can happen even at Infosys. The guy starts his day at 6 in the morning goes home back at 8 in the night and as he progresses up the ladder would return home only at 3 am to sneak 3 hours of sleep and have a family which does not recognize their faces. These guys clock some serious hours on the clock and I don’t mean punching in your card and going off to sleep till you get off. It is all hands on deck all the time out here.

I mean who cares if they are paid close to 6 lacs per annum, have all their accommodation and food taken care of and have free mobile prepaid connections (also they have to wear the same dirt coloured uniform day in and day out), why would you take it up? May be they want to be in the production sector, may be they enjoy the life. Sure you have instruments, devices, coal pits, log books, and understand strange terms like NCV, Clinkerisation and SLD, you are perfectly normal. You represent the group of people who do the dirty job that none of us dare to do because well you are the only ones who took it in the first place! Sarcasm apart these are the brightest people around. Is it a pitiful that their entire existence survives around a cement plant, maybe not. To tell you the truth I don’t think they would want to have it any other way. That's what puzzles me.