Beginning of professional life (down memory lane)

Beginning of professional life

 

It was a sunny wonderful morning in early November 1982 when I reached Delhi from Kolkata by Rajdhani Express with my college roommate S Sarkar. Sarkar, with English medium school background, become a rescuer for me by playing the role of interpreter for communication  in Hindi and English in the new environment. I was missing the cacophony of kolkata road, the crowded streets, friends and the street foods. Delhi specially New Delhi in 1982 was a much quieter city with broad and near empty roads with occasional plying of light green and silver colour DTC buses, much different than kolkata where buses  used to be bursting with passengers.  I remember, when I came for interview in the month of July with five of my classmates, we stayed in New Delhi Kalibari. The interview was held in Skipper house in Nehru place. Those days central secretariat was a big bus terminal hub adjacent to majestic north and south block, the seat of Indian bureaucracy. I had to change bus at central secretariat. It seemed to be a endless journey through empty spaces in the sprawling city. I could see the Nehru stadium standing in full glory and ready to host upcoming Asiad. SCOPE & CGO complex came much later.

The executive trainees were greeted by Mr. Raji Philip, a true HR person (those days HR was known as personnel dept), who had the uncanny ability to remember each and every individual’s full name correctly , even meeting him after a gap of one year. After the initial formalities of joining, we were send for medical exam. For ENT checkup, we had to visit clinic of Dr. Narrotam Puri. Mr. Puri was also famous all over india as sports commentator. His clinic was in Bengali Market, not very far from Bengali market. It was a pleasant surprise, which lasted for long to find a Bengali connection in the capital. Years later, much to my dismay, I came to know that Bengali market indeed has no connection with Bengal. The name originated from the name of Lala Bengali Mal Lohia who had build the market.

Me and my friend Sarkar stayed for initial few days at my aunt’s place in Shakarpur area popularly known as ‘Yamunapar’ or ‘Transyamuna’ area. Those days transyamuna was in developmental stage. For the first time I felt the vastness and diversity of India after getting acquainted with my batchmates of 30 odd young people. The undercurrent of excitement  passing through us, was amply advocating that we were in the process of metamorphosis from carefree attitude of college student to an would be executive of a nationally acclaimed power generating company. The inaugural session was held in Lodi Road auditorium which was addressed by the then Chairman Mr. D V Kapoor and Director(Pers) Mr. Saikia. In those days our company was in a nascent stage,  focussed on build power stations in remote areas of Singrauli, Korba, Ramagundam and Farakka. The speeches of top management were full of inspiration to become a part of nation building activity by adding electricity generating stations and lines for power evacuation .

After 3/4 days hectic schedule, I landed up in Badarpur GH with my bag and baggage. I was greeted by Gokhale (with whom I already got acquainted  during inaugural session) with a warm smile. He was busy putting a bare heater coil whose both sides connected with insulated wire, plugging it into the socket in the switchboard. There was no plug top. He just inserted the bare copper wire at the end into plug point. ‘What are you upto’? I was taken aback. Equal cool response from Gokhale was ‘I need some hot water to take bath, dear friend.’ With my knowledge of electrical I explained him it might pose a safety issue. Water is charged. The plug point may get heated up. I knew Gokhale is a mechanical engineer. His defended that it is a plastic bucket and even a layman knows plastic is insulating material. Cool. Hats off to innovative engineer. Soon I become an ardent follower of Gokhale’s desi method. My first lesson of ‘desi jugar’ helped in my professional carrier of eight years as maintenance engineer.

In those days, due to absence of NTPC’s own running plant, our batch of two hundred trainees were divided in to few batches and put under eleven months training programme in various branches of PETS (Power Engineers training society) Neyveli, Durgapur, Nagpur and Badarpur. Henceforth we all became power engineer, no more division of Electrical or Mechanical engineer. A few of our batchmates from Electrical were taken as first batch transmission line trainee whose training module was separate.

Those days Badarpur, though had the distinction of having a Delhi pincode, outside the plant, it was a little rustic Village with a Haryanvi flavour. A kilometre away was the Badarpur village market whose entry was through an imposing Mughal era gate located in a by-lane, off the national highway 2. The lane again merged with NH after the end of market. It was a usual sight in the market to watch elderly people with turban and white kurta, payjama, puffing majestic size hookah sitting in charpoy in their road side courtyard, basking in winter sun.

Daily dose of morning breakfast with ‘double anda’ omelette fried in  generous amount of oil accompanied with bread butter or ‘alu paratha’ had a direct positive impact on my body weight.. To take care of my increasing waistline, I started jogging in nearby Ali village. Both sides of the road flanked with yellow mustard field.

After two months of classroom training on power plant familiarisation, scheme tracing in Badarpur power station started. There were lot of drain valves in turbine. We were given booklet system-wise with name of all big or tiny installations. I remember searching for few drain valves in minus meter level in semi dark environment with help of a torch. Sometimes I had to crawl in the walkway for searching those illusive valves akin to my childhood game of ‘ice-pice’.

From my balcony, overlooking a small ridge, was the switchyard, beyond which the imposing  tall tower of boilers were visible. I became used to the occasional blow off of safety valves during unit tripping, tearing apart the silence of the surrounding. One day in the evening, suddenly the lights went off with thundering sound of popping up of the safety valves of all five units. I was plying TT. It was a grid failure. Few of my batchmates became excited and decided to go inside the powerhouse to take a hands on experience of how this emergency situation could be handled. Next morning, I met  Karunakar Murty in the canteen with a bandage on his forehead. Proudly he said, he was helping shift engineer in transporting hydrogen cylinder into the manifold at 0 meter. He slipped in some residual oil which spilled on the floor and banged his forehead against the cylinder resulting in 2/3 stitches.

I was privileged to watch many events of 82 Asiad. Our previous batch left hostel after completing training, to their new place of posting. They had no other option but to sell tickets to us, which they bought for themselves.

During the the training period, we were taken to Singrauli and Ramagundam. I remember, in the wee hours we alighted from train at Benaras and took a bus for Singrauli. The bumpy narrow road through vast wilderness, took more than ten hours to reach us Singrauli. It was sometime in mid 83 and by that time three 200 MW units had already been commissioned already. Ramagundam was very hot place that time. I was awestruck by the sheer no of wine shops just outside the colony entrance gate. Back in kolkata, near our hostel lined up chemists shops were there. In contrast I found very little no of medical shops. DSIDC wine shops were covered with grill and glass pane looking like jail. Standing in the queue to buy a bottle always gave a  feeling of some kind of committing ‘SIN’.

In those days, bulk of Delhi requirements of power was met by 720MW BTPS. From far off place, the emanating smoke from two chimneys was an indicator of healthy power generation. Even much later, in early nineties , when I was posted in EM, first thing was to clean dust from chair and table. One could never imagine that the crowning jewel of Delhi would ever come to a grinding halt due to environmental issue.

 

Debadatta Ray

Ex employee -001796

Date 11/01/2021

Phone 7466888823