17 days trapped in a tunnel

A tunnel collapse last month left 41 workers stranded. They kept their spirits up by doing Yoga, cracking jokes, watching videos and playing cards. In this week's story, a DH journalist travels to the rural parts of West Bengal to talk to two survivors of the tunnel collapse.

It is afternoon when I reach Harinakhali village in West Bengal. It is a two-hour drive from Kolkata. The fields in the village stretch all the way to the horizon. My cab passes by clusters of houses, some partially constructed. And then I come across a few men on bicycles, goats in twos and threes, occasional bikers, elderly people idling on the roadside, and temples. Souvik Pakhira, whom I have come to meet, is sitting doing nothing. He has been told to rest for two months.

Souvik was among the 41 workers trapped inside a collapsed tunnel in Uttarkashi district in Uttarakhand for 17 days. The 4.5 km Silkyara Bend-Barkot Tunnel is a part of the Centre’s 900-km project to improve connectivity to the four Hindu pilgrimage sites. It was suspected a landslide was behind the collapse. The tunnel did not have an emergency exit and was built through a geological fault, a member of a panel of experts investigating the disaster had said in early reports.

When the tunnel caved in on the morning of Diwali on November 12, the media went into a frenzy. The multi-agency ‘Operation Zindagi ’, involving tunnelling experts from Australia, received worldwide attention in the days to follow. Every little victory was celebrated, every setback scrutinised.

But inside the blocked tunnel, for most part, the mood was calm, Souvik says. “What could we do but wait?”

After crawling out to safety, Souvik got a hero’s welcome in his village. Relatives thronged his place. Pujas were performed. Sweets were distributed to neighbours. Five kilos of bataasha (crystallised sugar candy) were offered to thakur (Lord Shiva).

Pumped out messages

Souvik Parikh with his family

Part of the lighting team, Souvik was working deep inside the tunnel. He was on night shift when around 5 am he sensed “something had happened”. The wireless sets couldn’t connect with workers outside the tunnel. His coworkers told him there was only rubble ahead of them and no exit. Their only connection to the world was a four-inch wide pipe that ran through the rubble to the outside. There was no mobile network inside.

“We pumped water through the pipe to signal that we were alive. Then, we started writing messages on bits of paper, covering them with transparent tape and pumping them to the other side,” Souvik recalls. From the other side, the four-inch pipe was used to pump fresh air inside. The pipe was also used to blow in puffed rice, popcorn and dry fruits initially, and to talk, even though the conversation was echoey.

This was Souvik’s second job. After completing a polytechnic diploma in electrical engineering in 2020, he found work in Pune. But soon, the Covid-19 crisis forced him to return home. He bagged the Uttarakhand job in February this year and migrated again. The first few weeks involved observing seniors and doing what they told him to. No one spoke of occupational hazards or doled out survival strategies.

But when the tunnel collapsed, his seniors were the ones to counsel newcomers like Souvik and offer hope. “The fear that we would run out of oxygen subsided when workers on the outside told us that a machine and many teams were working on the evacuation. All we had to do was wait,” he says.

The supply of dry food was steady. The workers drank water from a stream inside. The tunnel was sufficiently lit. Waterproofing sheets used in construction served as bedding. According to a report, they dug 50 to 60 pits to defecate; few bathed in water trickling from the rocks while others kept away fearing skin infections; some complained of constipation and nausea. A week passed since their confinement in the 2 km tunnel that was 8.5 m high.

‘Assisted the rescuers’

After nine days, the rescuers were able to drill a six-inch wide pipe through the fallen earth. It became their new lifeline. Now it was possible to supply fresh food inside. Khichdi (dal porridge), milk, rice, roti, oranges, apples and bananas were dispatched in plastic bottles, slit in the middle and then sealed. Dry fruits, salt and medicines followed. Drinking water, soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste also came in. All the trapped men also received a change of clothes.

How did the workers spend their time? They received packs of playing cards, phone chargers and a couple of mobile phones preloaded with video as there was no mobile signal for them to stream anything.

“Three of us were from the electrical department. We made charging points on the site,” Souvik says. The workers were able to charge their phones, which up until then, they were using sparingly only to check the time of the day. Most scrolled through clips and photos saved on their phones. A few shot vlogs about life inside the blocked tunnel. Some started journaling in their notebooks.

The trapped workers were from Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh and Assam. Language wasn’t a barrier. They would chat in Hindi, discuss their families, crack jokes, and make up ghost stories.

Some creative individuals made ‘game chits’ out of their notebooks. “We used these chits to play chor-police (a children’s game where police chase thieves),” Souvik recalls.

When utterly bored, they would walk up and down in small groups. Some workers practised yoga in the mornings.

Other times, these men assisted the rescue operation. Surveyors communicated exact co-ordinates where the exit could be planned. Machine operators excavated the soil blocking the exit. Labourers took turns to fetch food and water.

The men did everything to stay cheerful. If a worker was downcast, the group cheered him up.

Jaydeb Paramanik assisted in surveys at the tunnel site

Recorded conversations

Being migrant workers, they were used to living away from their families for extended periods. But the inability to speak with their loved ones or see them on video calls began to bother them.

“Soon, that was taken care of,” Souvik says. “We would speak through the pipe and the messages would be recorded by the rescue teams outside and sent to our families,” he explained.

The rescuers worked out another solution. They connected families on conference calls, lowering the phones with a tether to get the workers to speak to them.

While the National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Force, Uttarakhand police, Indian Army Corps of Engineers, and Project Shivalik of the Border Roads Organisation were planning strategies to save these workers, their families were praying for divine intervention.

After the news of the tunnel collapse broke, Souvik’s younger brother, who works as an assistant surveyor in Jharkhand, rushed back home to be with his family. “I couldn’t sleep that night. But when I heard Souvik’s recorded voice later, I felt better. He asked me to be brave,” says Souvik’s mother Laxmi. The family was glued to the news all day.

The anxiety and anticipation that followed the deployment of 12 rat-hole miners is etched on their minds. On Day 17, when the rat-hole miners were inching closer to the trapped workers, the entire neighbourhood had gathered around Souvik’s house. Laxmi had lit incense sticks and lamps and blown a conch.

Equipped with shovels, spades, drilling machines and pans, the miners dug a record 10 metres non-stop for 24 hours, bringing the marathon operation to a close on November 28.

The stretchers brought to the site remained mostly unused. Amid a shower of marigolds and loud cheers, the evacuees came out on all fours through the new vent. They stretched their legs and began to walk soon after.

“When Souvik came out, he called us via video. I saw his smiling face. He looked fit. I told him to get the medical check-up arranged by the authorities and then come home straight. While the state government had sent officials to fly him home, he took a train because of some mismatch in the schedules,” Laxmi says.

Now she wishes Souvik finds a job closer home. “But people from the local administration, who came to visit us, say he is quite qualified and won’t be able to find a suitable job in our village or a town nearby quickly,” she says.

Souvik’s father Asit Pakhira is a farmer. He inherited land from his father, which he shared with his brothers. Joining the conversation, he says, “We have worked hard to get Souvik educated. If everyone stays (back) in farming, then what use are these qualifications?”

At this point, I ask Souvik if he would work inside the tunnels again. “Hain (yes),” he says with a smile. As I get up to leave, I see Laxmi offering water to the tulsi plant in front of their house.

‘We knew we’d come out’

On my way back to Kolkata, I stop by a roadside tea shop in Nimdangi village. Tapas Paramanik, a tea seller, has been waiting for me. His 19-year-old son Jaydeb was among the three stranded workers from West Bengal. The third worker is Manir Talukdar from the Cooch Behar district.

Jaydeb is tired of giving interviews, peeved especially by the same roster of questions. His village, unknown and irrelevant until now, has become the cynosure of reporters and politicians. And so, most of my questions are met with silence or mono-syllabic answers.

He was studying civil engineering at an ITI (Industrial Training Institute) when he landed his first job in the Uttarkashi tunnel. He used to assist in surveys.

Labourers at construction sites usually make upwards of Rs 15,000 a month, he says, explaining why they migrate. He doesn’t reveal how much he makes with his skill. Like Souvik, Jaydeb initially learnt on the job, and found strength to brave the uncertain days from his seniors. One of the two senior foremen on the site harked back to the time when he was stuck in an earthquake in Sikkim.

Jaydeb says, “All of us had the belief that we would make it through, if not today, then tomorrow. Ours was not an isolated case. Such incidents keep occurring, our seniors told us.”

Jaydeb’s family was visiting their relatives in Durgapur for Diwali. They got a call from a police station asking if Jaydeb was related to them.

“His mother fell ill later, out of worry. There were disturbing thoughts in her mind,” says Tapas, as he fries fish for lunch.

Jaydeb’s cousin’s husband was posted at the tunnel site outside. The family was glad they had a ‘source’ on the ground to tell them the real picture. “It’s difficult to put into words how much the villagers rejoiced when Jaydeb returned,” he says. God heard my prayers and saved all the men, remarks Jaydeb’s mother, Tapati, who is sitting in the verandah.

Sadasib Prabhu, a farmer who is now a sevak (volunteer) at an ashram, agrees. He has come to meet the family. “The villagers couldn’t believe that such a thing could happen to one of their own. Our lord listened to us,” Prabhu says.

Farming and odd jobs are the sources of livelihood in this village. Increasingly, young men and women are moving out for better jobs. The boys usually work as goldsmiths, serve in the army, teach in schools and colleges, and take up bank jobs, says Prabhu.

Abhi, Jaydeb’s cousin, is studying in Class 12. He wants to join the army. “Jaydeb da (elder brother) has 10 friends. They taunted him that he got stuck in the tunnel because he did not come home for Diwali,” Abhi says, bursting into laughter.

For the families of these 41 workers, November 28 became the Diwali they could not celebrate. The tunnel had collapsed on the festive day, trapping their sons behind the rubble. But this is a story with a happy ending. All of them returned safe and sound.

Tracking migration 

As per the report ‘Migration in India 2020-21’, the total migration rate in India was 28.9% — 26.5% from rural areas. Recently, the West Bengal government aggregated and digitised records of over 18 lakh migrant workers employed in far-off locations. This is an attempt to provide assistance, including financial compensation, in issues related to accidental injuries, wage, abuse, trafficking or exigencies.