THE MECHANICAL FOREMAN

In the Indian industry of the 80’s, we had three categories of people in an organisation – workers, officers and foremen. I am not sure if you have had the fortune of coming across this particular breed in your career. They were a class apart – one that, I suspect, possibly evolved with the Industrial Revolution. My experience with them is confined to the construction and allied industries – I never had the fortune of meeting the factory variety.

Anyone who had put in a good twenty – twenty-five years in a company, was reasonably good at his work and could write or sign his name in English without tearing up the paper, was eligible to become a foreman. Background education was either absent or limited, or in most cases, suspect. But that was never a hindrance for them to propound theories on everything in life from astronomy to multi-vitamins.

There were some aberrations to this rule, of course – some who could not even write their own names, but good at their work, and survived with the help of a symbiotic relationship with the nearest manager.

They came in three flavors – dumb, not-so-dumb and smart.

The dumb ones slogged it out at work, spent the better part of their lives trying to be the perfect “yes-man” to whoever was the boss at the time, only to get promoted to the junior management grade –– which, if you ask me, was not a very good place to be in the first place, but something they learnt when it was too late. These foremen, very soon, found themselves doing the same jobs once again, but with an enhanced designation and reduced income. They then either retired, or died out of sheer boredom.

The not-so-dumb ones were essentially good speakers and had reasonably good analytical skills. The fact that they used those skills for all the wrong reasons is a different matter. They knew their job well, and knew how to advertise it better. Most of them were trade union leaders, and screwed up their own happiness regularly at three-year intervals, when the trade agreement negotiations came up.

These foremen-cum-union leaders, poor fellows, had to rough it out for three months, once every three years, to obtain a raise of, say, 15 to 30 paise per hour for the general masses and then claim a great victory, with celebration marches and all the works. When the new wage settlements were signed and sealed, sanity returned, and everyone could now goof off in peace, with all the work reserved for the overtime hours.

The smart ones were the lot on whose shoulders the company actually rested. Engineers came and went, like sparrows in search of food on a summer morning, but they remained – their years with the organisation (and not the work they did) adding to their personal value.

Back in those days there was a big gap between the “worker” class and the “management”, at least in concept and social perspective, if not in reality. These people straddled the divide like a colossus and enjoyed the best of both worlds. They had naturally higher salaries than most workers (and many engineers, too) and therefore their overtime earnings were like a small fortune each month. Then, they enjoyed all the little perks that junior managers had – the occasional car trip, access to telephone, and similar things. Some even had a small cabin erected at site for them. They never fell for that “promotion-to-the-management-grade” rubbish. The management, at the working level, relied on these men to deliver the day-to-day jobs and the general workers aspired to be like them at some point in future.

Most of them were “specialists” in something or the other and their “special skills” had almost a cult following. People wondered how they had acquired those skills without providential interference. They too, in turn, kept their “knowledge” a closely guarded secret and passed their expertise on to only one or two “carefully chosen” followers. Their skill areas were well-known, revered and respected and no one even dared to infiltrate the territories. No two foremen had the same territory or domain, either.

Remember, these were times l-o-n-g before insta-knowledge and expertise had been made so redundantly available by the Internet, Google and bullets on MS Powerpoint slides.

In many ways, they were the original “God’s Gift to Mankind” – an epithet that was later usurped by the software programmers of the IT era.

I shall talk about one such famous foreman.

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This guy, a bespectacled Jurassic geezer with a toothy grin, was THE EXPERT at aligning electric motors and gear boxes set on a frame. If he was at site, he was the ONLY ONE (chosen by Providence, I presume) who would be doing the job. The fact that he averaged between six and ten hours to complete one set of alignments, was a trivial, very trivial, matter indeed.

He always moved around with two helper-cum-shishyas (almost everybody else had one) who carried his bags of special tools, and one welder / cutter with his own set of equipment (“shishya” – student). From him I learnt about the intricate, soul-stirring technologies known as the “Thou” and “Haoa Maar” (“Haoa” – air; “Maar” – hit or shot).

In case you are wondering, a “thou” is supposed to be one-thousandth of an inch. He took great pains to explain to me that my engineering degree was not worth the paper on which it was printed, if I did not understand the relevance of “The Thou” in industry. He was right. I did not. I did come across the word some time in college, but no, I never realised it was one of the pillars of civilisation. That abject surrender apparently endeared me to him and I was promptly adopted as the “third shishya” – never mind the fact that I was his “manager”.

He opened his bag of tricks and showed me little plates of varying thickness and explained how packing had to be used as a first step towards getting The Perfect Alignment for a motor-gearbox coupling. He even gifted me a “thou – gauge”. I was visibly impressed, but what I have never understood is how he managed to get his “thou-specific” alignments with packing plates that were several hundred “thous” thick.

After the motor and gear-box were placed on the frame and packing plates of different “thous” placed all around, the Master shook his head in disdain. The work was half-done. The Perfect Alignment could only be achieved through the intricate workings of the “Haoa Maar”.

This consisted of picking up a five or ten-pound hammer (“hamma” in his parlance) and swinging it in well-coordinated motion to hit a point a few feet away from the frame holding the offending motor-gearbox couple. The resulting vibrations Alone, could provide the Perfect Alignment. That is the concept of the “Haoa Mar”.

There were “Ek Haoa Maar”, “Do Haoa Maar” and many other subtle variations to the exercise. And you had to give a respectful time gap between each “maar”, to let all the vibrations die down. A difficult technology to master by any yardstick. That is what he told me. I agreed then and have remained in total agreement ever since.

Shishya no. 1 was ordered to start off with the haoa maar. He took a five-pounder and banged the steel structure a few feet away. “Arey-re-re !! Zyada ho gia !!! Ulta baju maar !! Pyar se !! Ek haoa, bas !!! (“Hey !! Too much !! Hit the other side !! With love !! Only one haoa – that’s all !!”)

A soft plonk ensued. “Ek aur !!.... “Nahi !! Abhi ulta baju do haoa de !!!..... (“One more !! No !! Now hit the other side with two haoa !!”)

And so the circus continued for a significant period of time. 

All that rattling of the steel structures attracted a small crowd of onlookers to watch the great Master at work. They could only watch in total silence. No one was allowed to even whisper. (As a shishya, I, of course, had the privilege to ask questions).

A few hours and some twenty or thirty “haoa mars” of different intensities later, the motor and gear-box set were transformed into a work of art – the Perfectly Aligned Couple.

How it came about remains a mystery to me to this day. No one could define the exact moment this was achieved, that is no one, except Him. Apparently those vibrations caused infinitesimal movements that Only He, with a million dioptres sitting on his nose, could gauge.

Putting the couplings on and bolting them up were jobs reserved for lesser mortals like his shishyas. After powering up, the smooth whine of the thingamabob was supposed to be the reward of a job well done.

Thus worked The Master, to the utter astonishment of the onlookers. And woes betide anyone who did the job any other way.

Long Live the Foreman !!!!!

*****

In Search of a Snowfall

I have harboured a long-time desire  to witness a snowfall. It made me go up to Auli – a Himalayan ski resort at an elevation of about 10,000 feet and sub-zero temperatures, in end December of 2010, only to witness snow coming out of snow cannons, for skiers who had booked slots a couple of years in advance. It was like tooth-paste on a mountain slope. 

I have seen “fallen snow” in so many places across the world, but never a snowfall. Thus when events finally made it possible for me to visit Canada during the last week of November the following year, I was thrilled. We were to go to Winnipeg (the city where Winnie the Pooh was born) to meet a customer. I read up some sites on Canada and started dreaming about snow and snowfalls…. I also borrowed some stuff from colleagues who had been there before – a monkey cap (yes, for the first time in my life !!!), gloves and a Papa Grizzly jacket. These jackets are meant for the Canadian winter and I can find no other expression to describe them…

The route was Kolkata – Dubai – Toronto and then a domestic flight from Toronto to Winnipeg.

The Dubai – Toronto leg was all of fourteen hours in an A380 aircraft – my first on that plane. (The A380 does provide one with a very different flying experience, but that is another story.)

If you lay the surface of the earth on a flat Euclidian plane, then the contours of the sunlit area form a parabola. (I do not know why that happens and if you can’t figure that out, ask Euclid – he was the fellow who said it…).

Our flight path to Toronto from Dubai followed this parabolic contour; one-side of the plane was always in the sun, the other in darkness. We flew straight up north from Dubai, over Iran, the Caspian Sea, the Russian plains,  then in a wide curve over Sweden, Norway, crossing the Norwegian Sea north of Iceland, past the southern tip of  Greenland, then over the Labrador Sea, Newfoundland and Quebec province, finally landing at Toronto.  We actually did not turn south – we went straight across the globe and Toronto came in our path. (That is where I guess Euclid gave up in sheer desperation and 3-D geometry was born…)

We flew above dense white clouds for the entire area from north of the Caspian Sea till the southern parts of Quebec province, I really could not see anything down below, except for a few frozen bodies of water amid green grass that were visible through some holes in the clouds over Newfoundland. The cloud cover slowly dispersed as we started our descent towards Toronto. All I could see were brown fields with grain waiting to be harvested…. The whole of the Canadian plains seemed to be divided into large rectangular plots in myriad shades of brown. Not a speck of snow anywhere.

We landed in Toronto around two in the afternoon on a Monday, where the outside temperature was a healthy eight degrees Celsius with a wind chill that made it seem like four. Got out of Terminal 1, had a smoke outside, took a sky-train to Terminal 3 for the next leg of our flight.

Snow ? Where was the snow ? And the cold ?

At Terminal 3, I met my first home-grown Canadian – she was the security person standing at the check-in counter. An elderly lady in police uniform, with a walkie-talkie; she asked if I had any liquids, explosives or firearms in my baggage…. Then looking at my sealed baggage still with the tags from the previous flight and my stunned expression, she burst out laughing. “I know it is silly, but I am still required to ask you that firearms question,” she said.

“And what if he says ‘yes’ ?” asked her colleague, another security officer, a tall lady with sparkling eyes. “Oh, then I would like to run and leave him to his designs,” said the first one, and we all burst out laughing. A far cry, indeed, from the typical security folks we come across in most airports of the world…

We took off for Winnipeg at around six in the evening. It was pitch-dark and I was unable to get a window-seat. The stewardess greeted us saying, “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the flight to Honolulu, Hawaii.”  There was a gentle chuckle from the crowd and then she explained that we would need to refuel at Winnipeg on the way…. Some more Canadian humor.

The air-hostesses were quite lady-like and smiling but after observing the calm insouciance with which they picked up pieces of heavy cabin luggage and swung them into the overhead lockers with one clean sweep after another, I decided against becoming too friendly with them. (I generally steer clear of visibly strong women given my delicate build, like a bottle-gourd on a diet – a survival skill honed through nursery-school skirmishes with female class-mates….)

As we were coming in to land at Winnipeg, I was thrilled to see snow everywhere…. The airport was covered in a white sheet of snow…. Wow !!!! They said that the outside temperature was minus eight degrees Celsius, with the wind chill taking it to minus fourteen !!! Aha !! I was beginning to feel happy finally. My colleague assured me that “snowfalls were round the corner"….

We got out of the airport terminal and had to walk to one corner of the building to have a smoke. By the time I lit up and had a couple of puffs, my ears had fallen off and I was wearing a couple of cold metal tubes in place of jeans. All the stuff I had brought from India for this weather was still locked up in the suitcase. About five or seven puffs later, the cigarette simply fell off my frozen fingers into the snow. We rushed into a taxi – and warmth, and reached our hotel some time later.

All hotels in Canada are non-smoking and “if someone spoiled your room by smoking, then they would charge you, as the room-owner, five hundred Canadian Dollars for operation cleanup”.  That meant every time we wanted to have a smoke, we would have to go out into minus fourteen degrees and do it. Pretty challenging thought, that. But the snow made all the difference – it had snowed over the weekend before we landed and everything was beautifully white.

I switched on the TV for weather forecasts and then my hopes began to fade. They said it would not snow in Winnipeg for the next few days. The next morning the temperature was around zero with the wind chill taking it to minus four. We went about our business and then for lunch at the “Concourse”….

All major buildings in downtown Winnipeg are connected by a vast network of underground tunnels that house supermarkets, post-offices, food courts and what-not; one does not need to go out into the wintry cold at all, unless one is going home. These are known as “Concourses”.

As we were chatting up some people from our customer’s office, my colleague mentioned that I was desperate to see a snowfall and one lady said, “How sad, the weather is unusually balmy for this time of the year..”

“Balmy ? Balmy !!! Balmy ???? The Webster English Dictionary says, balmy means mild, summer-like, warm.  At zero degrees, with a wind chill to make it minus four, she calls it “balmy” ? And then it dawned on me - she was speaking Canadian !!!! Definitely not English. But that cognitive Canadian balm was yet to embalm my conative Indian yearning…snow…??

For the next two days, the TV kept saying it was snowing here and there, all over the place – Johnson, Halifax, Polson, Bolson, His son, Her son, St. John’s, St. Peter’s and half of the apostles’ towns, but not in Winnipeg. The weather turned steadily warmer and the snow kept melting off the streets. On day three, we had walked for about a kilometer to the office and I was actually sweating. Yes. I. Was. Sweating. The Papa Grizzly jacket had become useless.

And just to let you know, while the rest of the world has snow, the Canadians have it in three flavours – flurries, snow and ice pellets. All those places around Winnipeg got their fill of flurries and pellets, while the snow kept melting off the streets of Winnipeg.

These Canadian weathermen, so unlike their colleagues at Alipore in Kolkata, are dreadfully accurate – I wished they got hit with ice pellets.

We took the plane out of Winnipeg and back to Toronto on Wednesday afternoon. The flat lands of Manitoba State, of which Winnipeg is the capital, were still covered in snow. And the flat lands around Toronto still had crops waiting to be harvested. Toronto was a “balmy” thirteen degrees with bright sunshine (that’s “balmy” in English not Canadian). As we planned to leave Toronto that Friday, the TV forecast snow for Winnipeg the following Monday. And snow for Toronto as well, the day after.

Having witnessed first-hand the early Canadian winter, I have decided not to believe anyone any more. Late November in Canada is just like late November in Kolkata. Only colder. And more windy.

Meanwhile, my search for a snowfall will have to wait some more – for another time, another place.

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