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Journalism of Courage
In his small backpack, he kept three pairs of clothes, Aadhaar card, and the Rs 400 that he had. He wore a pair of mesh shoes, bid goodbye to his family members and left his kuccha house in Khirabeda in Chutupalu panchayat of Ranchi district.
“Kaam (work)” – that’s all he knew of what awaited him when he left sometime in the first week of November. In his 22 years, Rajendra Bedia, who dropped out after Class 9, has worked for as long as he can remember – at construction sites in Patna, Hyderabad. This was Uttarakhand, but how different could “kaam” be, after all? Every wasted muscle in his reed-thin frame knew what the burden of “kaam” felt like. He would do it one more time, come back with the money his family so desperately needed – for his mother to run the house, his father’s medical bills, younger sister’s marriage, his own some day.
He would eventually end up working on the 4.5-km Silkyara-Dandalgaon tunnel in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district, spending over 400 hours inside as parts of the mountain they bore through collapsed on November 12. As he stood behind the 60-metre mound of debris that had sealed the mouth of the tunnel, he was gripped by moments of sheer panic: would he see his father, ageing and wheelchair-bound, ever again? He hadn’t bid his mother goodbye – she wasn’t home when he left. Would he see her ever again? His sister?
On a weekday afternoon, Bedia and eight others from the village hired a Tempo Traveller to Barkakana railway station in the neighbouring district of Ramgarh. A four-hour train journey for Rs 65 each had taken them to Koderma railway station, where they spent the night.
“Hum bol ke aaye the ki kaam karne jaa rahe hain. Humko khud hi nahi pata tha ki kaam kya hoga, train par baithe to pata chala (I had told my family members that I was going for work, but I myself did not know what work I would do. It was after I sat in the train that I got to know I would be working on a tunnel),” he says, speaking to The Indian Express from AIIMS Rishikesh (where he and the others had been taken to after being rescued).
The contractor, who had approached them through others from the village who were already working at the tunnel site, had given them train tickets. So early next morning, at 3 am, Bedia and the others boarded the train to Rishikesh. It was to be a 31-hour journey, which he spent sleeping, chatting with the others and sneaking up to his berth to watch movies that he had downloaded on his phone of his favourite actor, Telugu star Allu Arjun. “His movies are the best… he always comes out a winner in the end. DJ (Duvvada Jagannadham) and Pushpa are my favourite movies,” says Bedia.
From Rishikesh, Bedia and the others were taken to their work site – a 150-km ride up to Silkyara, a village in Uttarkashi district, where they were to work on the Silkyara-Dandalgaon tunnel, part of the 889-km Char Dham national highway project in Uttarakhand.
He was mesmerised by the hills of Uttarakhand – “mazaa aaya pahadon ko dekh kar” — and the fresh air. At the living quarters, a 10-minute walk from the tunnel, he was pleasantly surprised when they were given beds and blankets and warm clothes. The food was good too — chicken curry twice a week, egg curry once a week, and chickpeas and vegetables the rest of the days.
The work was hard. His first day of work involved going into the cavernous tunnel and assisting with the plumbing and masonry. “I had never worked in mountainous areas before so the tunnel seemed scary at first. But I got used to it,” says Bedia, who worked 12-hour shifts every day. Bedia was promised Rs 19,000 and two days off work a month.
That morning on November 12, Bedia was on the night shift, when around 5 am, came the most deafening blast. “I was near the area that collapsed, assisting the mason who was working on the arch of the tunnel. It was as if an earthquake had struck. The tunnel was filled with smoke and dust and it was difficult to breathe,” says Bedia, adding that when he finally opened his eyes, he saw his fellow workers looking as stunned, each of them shrouded in dust.
Moments later, some of the workers rushed to the mouth of the tunnel, which was now a giant mound of debris. Some tried to shovel and claw through the mound, but gave up.
As the initial panic gave way to despondency, everyone sat numbed by the enormity of what had struck them. “I first thought of home, family… How did I end up here? Will I be able to see my father again? Who would feed my family, take care of them? Will they ever get to know what happened to me? And if they did, how will they react? Where will they go for help?,” recalls Bedia.
The situation demanded a hero, at least a leader. Luckily for Bedia and the others, there was “Negi ji” – foreman Gabbar Singh Negi, around 45, the most senior among them, who kept them motivated and told them not to lose hope. Negi’s stories of how he has been in a similar situation in the past — trapped for several days after a landslide in Sikkim – gave Bedia and the others hope. “He told us that in Sikkim, they had to survive on banana peels to keep themselves alive. His stories were inspiring,” says Bedia.
Luckily for them, the debris had left intact the electricity supply lines and a 4-inch water pipe used to drain water out of the tunnel – something that would prove to be a lifesaver for the first few days.
Someone in the group suggested that they intermittently pump out water through this pipe, a way of letting the outside world know they are alive.
The idea clicked, kicking off an unprecedented rescue operation involving multiple agencies.
Inside, it had been more than 24 hours since anyone had eaten. Some had dozed off, others walked around restlessly. Suddenly, almost magically, around 3 am on November 13, they heard muffled sounds from the pipe through which they had sent water out. Soon, there were voices — someone on the other side assured them that they would be out.
“That was the first time we spoke to someone outside,” says Bedia, “Though we could not hear them too well or speak to them, we finally felt safe. We knew everyone was working to get us out. That was very reassuring.”
Minutes later, something else came out of the pipe. Puffed rice (murmura) and cardamom seeds pushed through by the rescuers using pressured air. Eyes lit up and everyone crowded around the pipe. “The murmura was dirty, mixed with the dirt in the tunnel. We spread it out on Geosheets (a geosynthetic material used in construction work), cleaned it by rubbing it on our shirts and ate it,” says Bedia.
Later, the rescuers outside also sent boiled chickpeas through the pipe. When there was no food to be sent, the pipe pumped in the much-needed oxygen.
There was no dearth of water, though, in the tunnel – two kilometres beyond where they were stuck was water seeping through the mountains. They used a vehicle inside the tunnel to ferry and collect water in a jar. “We used the same water for drinking, bathing and cleaning up,” says Bedia.
Ten days later, on November 21, a bigger, six-inch pipe pushed its way through the debris. Through this pipe, the rescuers sent paneer biryani, khichdi and fruits – and, at 3.53 am, an endoscopic camera.
This was the first time the world got to see the men trapped inside. “If you are all are okay, show your faces to the camera, raise your hand and smile. We will soon reach you, don’t worry. Slowly pull the camera and show everyone,” said a rescuer, as a worker put his hand inside the pipe and pulled the camera inside. At 3.53 am, a rescuer instructed them to clear the camera using a piece of cloth.
“The rescuers asked us what we needed. We said we need chargers so that can play games to keep ourselves busy.”
Now, there was so much food that the men could barely finish all of it. “We were thrilled. Until then, we had only been eating murmura. When we ate, there were lumps in our throats… food has never tasted this good. We ate and ate,” says Bedia, adding that the rescuers outside kept them updated about the operations outside – the auger machine, the progress it had made before breaking down and the rathole miners who were being brought in. “They told us even if the rescue takes a month or two, we will be out,” he says.
The rescuers also sent a wire with a microphone and speakers connected to it. This is how Bedia and the others chatted with the rescuers above and, later, with their family members. “We gave them our family’s phone numbers, they would call our people back home and put their phones on speaker. I spoke to my family and assured them that we were okay,” says Bedia.
As the days stretched on, Bedia and the others slipped into a routine. The initial anxiety had worn off and they were now 41 “friends” brought together by a strange twist of fate.
Nights were spent on the tunnel floor, with the construction material coming in handy. “We slept on Geosheets and also wrapped it around ourselves when we felt cold,” he says.
The group also played games on their phones, but it was their improvised card games that were a big hit.
Bedia bonded with Sukram, Anil (both from his village) and Manjeet from Uttar Pradesh over ‘Raja, Mantri, Chor, Sipahi’, a card game with four players that involves a hot chase for the chor (thief).
“Negi ji carried a lot of papers with him. We used that to play card games. We had a lot of fun. We spoke about our lives in the village, how we danced at weddings, and made fun of each other. Sukram ended up being ‘chor’ several times, but we almost never guessed it right,” says Bedia.
The other workers too used Negi’s sheets to play card games. “They cut the sheets into small rectangular shapes and made 52 cards with symbols of spades, diamonds, clubs, and hearts. We all had a lot of fun… we also played a game called Call-Break,” says Bedia, who also watched reruns of Allu Arjun’s movies on his phone. He says that once they got the chargers and power banks, they could use their phones freely.
As Negi ji encouraged the group to watch their hygiene and mental health, the workers would walk over a kilometre inside the tunnel. At a demarcated area, they would relieve themselves and cover it up with soil.
Negi had also assigned specific tasks to the workers – small groups tasked with cleanliness, keeping a tab on the food and so on. Bedia was in charge of bringing water from the other end of the tunnel.
“The walks and the bonding helped. We all slept peacefully at night,” says Bedia.
There were occasional moments when one among them would panic, but the others stepped in to reassure them.
“We knew that since we were 41 of us, something must be happening to bring us out alive. The setbacks that the rescuers faced didn’t matter to us. We prayed and we knew we would come out safely,” says Bedia.
By the afternoon of November 28, the hammering got louder and louder. Outside, the rat-miners were at work, stepping in after the auger machine had broken.
A little before 8 pm, the moment they had been waiting for finally arrived. A rat-miner stuck his head out and the workers erupted into shouts of delight.
“We pulled him towards us. We hugged each other, clicked pictures. The rescue pipe was large enough for a person like me. I jumped over it, bent my body and walked towards the exit. It seemed like a five-minute walk, and I was finally outside,” Bedia recalls.
There were more hugs outside, a group of doctors pulled them aside to monitor their blood pressure, and they were herded into an ambulance. As the lights and the cameras followed them, there were smiles all around. “It was a welcome I will never forget,” he says.
Once the health check-ups at AIIMS Rishikesh are done, Bedia will soon go home. But that’s when the “real worry” will set in.
“There are no jobs in Jharkhand. What will I do there? Though I know my family will insist that I stay back, do I have an option but to go where my work takes me?”
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