Coal

 

          Coal! The amount of coal that passed through Pradeep Pushpak’s small office was mind-blogging. That lone man, in that huge building, in front of that small table. A table forever coated in black dust that seeped in through the choked cooler. Black dust that spun the same cooler and lighted up half of Maharashtra. The thick black air brought up black cough from Pradeep’s lungs and slowly suffocated him. The black cough would have been claimed by the Company, if they had cared to know about the Sub Transport Officer’s health. They would have fined him for carrying so much carbon back to his quarters. But thankfully all they cared about was the squiggle that was his signature, on the parchment that was the transport clearance, which was then duplicated and filed into corridors lined with cabinets that were dingier and darker than any mineshaft. All he knew that as long as he did this, the black gold would be hauled by engines to glow and smelt and shine in every house, hospital, shop and theatre, street and play ground. Thus, truckloads and trainloads of coal were sent into the Company’s plants as his nib scraped through the clearances.

 

            What was once a flourishing signature, soon weighed itself down with the burden of coal. Every year it grew flatter and flatter as the Company ate away at his soul, until the curves of the ‘P’s became mere blimps. He thought he had done everything right in life. Topped the Boards, IIT, then an MBA from Ahmedabad. Got an excellent package at the Company. Yet whenever he looked at the message on his phone, that his salary had been credited, it looked little different from the clearances he signed every day.

 

            He had stayed away from the green grounds whenever his friends called, the black-and-white question papers of his Coaching Class were more important. The black he filled in the OMR bubbles were obviously the right choice over the yellow beaches his friend circle walked through in Goa. Decidedly, the grey-washed walls of the Institute’s Library were his duty over the glitzy club Prerna had invited him to on the last day of his college fest. And so he had never done anything wrong! So why didn’t the Company’s Chandrapur outpost seem the promised manna, all that he had hoped for?

 

            He controlled half the state in his pen, yet the taste of this power was only ashen. The black overpowered all. He had to make his life more colourful.

 

            Pradeep signed his last order, a flat line. The next overcast afternoon, as the raindrops traced sooty trails down his desk window, Pradeep stood among his colours: reds and yellows and bright oranges. But the black refused to be exorcised. It only spread, at the tips of the oranges, in front of his eyes, at the desk. Three days later, when no truckload reached the Company’s plant, the black spread through the state.