Barbil was a place where I experienced many firsts. It was a mining town in the middle of a forest, where I stayed for 5 years in the 50s and had many adventures. In this third part of the series, I share snake encounters and other stories.

This is the third part of a four-part series of my adventures in Barbil, a mining town in the middle of a forest where I stayed for 5 years in the 50s. Read part one and part two before you read this part for context.

To be able to move around on our own, I soon decided to buy a military disposal Command Car. It was a very rugged four-wheel drive vehicle and seemed to be able to take us anywhere on any terrain. We covered many remote mining areas in that command car and made considerable progress in our membership drive.

One evening we were returning from a meeting and a film showing in a faraway mining area. Suddenly in the middle of a sharp hill incline, both the headlights of the Command Car conked out. It was a moonless dark night and pitch dark.

What to do in the middle of a deep forest if there is no driving light? There was not even a distant rumble of any vehicle on which we could hitch a ride.

Finally, an idea struck me. I started the generator we were carrying, that we used to run the film projector, to which I attached a 100-watt bulb. The wire was fairly long and I asked one of my assistants to sit on the sturdy mudguard of the Command Car and using a reflector, focus the light on to the road. Thus, I was able to drive, slowly, back to Barbil in the dead of night.

An Obelisk that was not Erected

During one of my trips to the wilderness, I came across a village called Asanpat. This is the area with a hilly terrain where the world’s oldest stones can be found. The stones are supposed to be nearly 3.6 billion years old.

Here I found a stone obelisk on which the entire story of Ramayana was engraved. After the carving was done, it probably could not be erected being too heavy and therefore, left there as it was.

At a nearby place, a group of geologists were prospecting for mineral deposits. I decided to pay them a visit. The group was living in tents. I was welcomed by them and was treated to a hot cup of tea. One of them told me to go out a little further. I did and found out a huge area which was a bog (dal dal) with a small raised portion at the centre which was solid enough to walk on.

One of the geologists told me that one night they heard an elephant trumpet pathetically. In the morning, they found the elephant fully sunk in the dal dal with only its tusks jutting out. Within a short time, the elephant completely went down in front of their eyes.

I Killed a Dog

No, no, I did not run over a dog. I was then living in the house of Jogeswar, a transport contractor, on rent. He was a happy-go-lucky chap. His business was transporting logs from the forest. Practically all contractors had guns in Barbil. Jogeswar had also bought a double-barrelled gun but he did not know how to use it and Neither did I. So, he would take me to an uninhabited part of the nearby forest and shoot for practice. Not that I became adept at shooting but did gain some rudimentary working idea of how to handle a gun.

There was a big empty space in front his house. All sorts of things, logs, ores etc., used to be dumped there for future transportation. One day we discovered that a mad dog had taken shelter there. The dog had actually bitten one of the labourers. I sent him to the hospital and decided to do away with the dog.

I asked Jogeswar for his gun and a cartridge and he gave them to me. I went out, aimed at the dog and fired. It barked once and fell silent. I thought I had missed but no, the dog was dead. I had shot him through the heart.

Saved from a Snake Bite

Being a jungle area, there were plenty of snakes but very few in Barbil itself. One reason possibly was that since so many ore-laden trucks used to move on Barbil’s bumpy unpaved road that the snakes avoided the roadside habitation as snakes feel the vibrations. But some still used to come near the houses.

One evening I was walking down to my place. There was no street light then in Barbil. As I neared my place, in the moon light I saw a Krait (the pahari variety) hardly inches from my sandal. I immediately jumped away and the snake slithered to a nearby ore dump and vanished. Since then I always carried a torch for as long as I was in Barbil.

This also reminds me of the story of how my friend Arun, the auto mechanic about whom I have mentioned earlier, killed a dreaded King Cobra. He was driving back from a mine in a pick-up. Being winter, he had closed the window of the pick-up. He was coming fast and suddenly he saw a big snake crossing the road. He could not brake immediately and passed over the tail of the snake.

The snake immediately struck like a whip on his window and since he had closed the window, he was saved. He then reversed the truck and killed the snake going over its body again. He realised only then that it was a King Cobra, nearly 12 feet long. The fellow even lifted the dead snake on to the pick-up and brought it to Barbil to show us the monster snake, which we all did.

Change of Guard

Our trade union was earlier affiliated to INTUC. But its leadership hardly bothered about us. Soon I got it affiliated to AITUC and invited its general secretary Dange to come and address the workers. He had come to Jamshedpur in connection with a planned strike in TISCO and readily agreed to come.

I hired a Fiat car at Jamshedpur and we drove to Barbil. Dange was lodged at the Barbil Dak Bungalow, the only place then for visitors to stay. Dange addressed a very big meeting. After the meeting, it started raining. We decided that he should stay the night at the Dak Bungalow and leave for Jamshedpur in the morning.

But there was no food arrangement in the Dak bungalow as the cook had gone on leave. The cook in our mess then volunteered to cook for Dange and soon he prepared a delectable dish of chicken curry, some vegetable and a sort of fried rice. I also bought some Rasgolla from a sweet shop.

When the food was ready, the driver of the Fiat was nowhere to be seen. I then decided to drive the Fiat from the Dak Bungalow to my place to pick up the food. On the way back, one of my assistants held the foodstuff precariously on his lap on the back seat.

On the uneven and slippery road, the car was jumping around a lot but we managed to reach the Dak Bungalow without spilling any food. Later we discovered the driver was totally drunk and sleeping in a corner of the Dak Bungalow veranda.

In the morning, I drove the Fiat back to the Dak Bungalow, handed the key to the driver who had by then fully recovered from his drunken stupor. We then bade goodbye to Dange with one of our men accompanying him to Jamshedpur.

In the final part of this series I will share about the times I went to jail.