A blast and a tea: Gonggar
En route to Lamabagar, we disembarked in Gonggar to wait for a connecting bus. A bus that, as we were to find out a number of hours later, would never arrive. As we waited in the small, riverside town, we were kept busy by exploring the development of the Tamakhosi Dam project’s transmission line station, which was sited just up the river around the bend from the line of small hotels and shops facing the road. In fact, the town itself seemed to be very much a product of the road and the hydro-power project. It was occupied by numerous mechanics yards and industrially sized vehicles and equipment. Across from the hotel where we ordered tea and biscuits we could see occasional welding sparks flying inside a small corrugated tin structure in a yard of deconstructed engines and vehicles. Three small children played driving in an inoperative truck cab, watched by a patient grand relative.
We wandered up to the hydro-power site where we found the entrance of a massive tunnel burrowing into the hillside. As a result of our curious nosyness and obvious foreigness, we were taken under the wing of a bored looking young engineering intern dressed in hardhat, fashionable jeans and knock-off Vans shoes. He was doing a placement working for the Chinese contractor on the project, which was responsible for the civil works of the project, including the roadways that we had been studying. He spoke perfect English and chatted with us about the project for a while, pointing out different structures and providing details of size and discharge rates. He also told us about the institutional organization of the project and the different contractors involved. The Chinese and Indian contractors brought in their own skilled labourers and machinery for their section of the project. Our intern friend described how hard communication was between him and his peers as a result, with them often resorting to google translate to communicate with each other. The different categories of labourers on the project were visibly differentiated by their coloured coloured hard hats, and different company’s staff occupied segregated living quarters. They apparently tended to socialize separately as well. We encountered a sizable group of staff from one of the Chinese companies at the roadside hotel later that evening, when they came down for a night of merry making and toasting.
Mid-conversation with our new acquaintance, a siren sounded and he said, time to go! They had apparently been prepping for one of the several daily blasts used to carve into the solid rock of the hillsides. He took off at a pace just short of a run. We followed, awkwardly weighed down by our bags. It turned out we had a long way to go to reach a safe viewing distance, across the river and a significant ways up the bank. One of the engineers explained that a rock had recently flown across the river and into an engineering building during a blast. Since then, the company had been taking additional safety precautions. When it finally happened, the blast was more felt than heard, as it hit us with a wave of energy, even from our location across the river.
While a group of us huddled under umbrellas to observe the blast, we met a lead engineer from Italy and a finance manager from Bopal India. They graciously invited us back to their residence for a cup of tea and ever-available biscuits. The residence was incongruously well furnished, with large plush sofas, an ornate glass table, an enormous monitor set up for teleconferences and—amazingly—an oven. The oven had been used to bake a cake last week that we heard was delicious, but was unfortunately now finished. The Italian lead engineer insisted that if we came back in two months he would have a full terrace and grill constructed for entertaining guests.
We chatted amiably over our tea and the finance manager showed us where the rock had come through the window the previous month as well as terrifying live video taken in Gonggar of the second the of the 2015 earthquakes. He also showed us live video taken of a sudden flood from a burst artificial lake, which had carried a massive steel girded motor bridge kilometers downriver and left it a mangled on the bank. It was a brief but fascinating look at a life of isolated routine and dormant but real risk that these imported staff led. It was also, of course, a stark contrast to the experiences of those providing the daily wage labour of infrastructure construction.