Deep, Down, Dark

OutlookIndia

Listen to excerpts from Outlook's India, Trapped issue by Pragya Vats  #Israel #Gaza #Palestine #Uttarakhand #Uttarkashi #Tunnel #WestBank #Jerusalem

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00:00 I am Pragya and I bring to you excerpts from the current issue of Outlook titled "Trapped"

00:06 that looks at two cover stories, one where poor migrant workers trapped in a tunnel make

00:12 it alive after 17 traumatic days, the other for the Palestinians trapped in Gaza, the

00:18 ceasefire may be short-lived before the next round of attacks by Israel.

00:23 The other cover has illustration of the olive tree, a symbol of Palestinian culture and

00:30 resilience.

00:31 The Palestinian poet in exile Mahmoud Darwish has always used olive tree in his poetry.

00:37 Lines from his poem "The Second Olive Tree" reads, "The portrait for the olive tree is

00:42 neither green nor silver.

00:45 The olive tree is the color of peace if peace needed a color."

00:50 Over a million olive trees have been uprooted by the settlers in occupied Palestine since

00:55 1967 to build new settlements according to Harid's newspaper and other agencies.

01:02 Deep, Down, Dark by Ashwini Sharma, Muhammad Asghar Khan and Shalendra Godiyal from Outlook.

01:10 In the never-ending war between man and nature, 41 brave workers trapped for over 400 hours

01:18 under 60 meters of debris won the battle of sheer survival.

01:23 The tunnel was that kind of place where hope disappeared.

01:27 Just like the sunshine had, always a place of the poor, of those who know the risks and

01:33 yet they sign up for the job, like the 41 workers did.

01:38 It is a story of migration and of the different universes people inhabit, like the construction

01:44 workers did.

01:45 Outside, people kept a vigil, family and rescue workers.

01:50 On television and other media, we kept the vigil too.

01:54 Most were in their 20s, in the claustrophobic rubble.

01:57 They must have oscillated between the past and the future.

02:01 The present was darkness.

02:03 They had each other and they had cards that they had made out of paper.

02:07 A deck of cards to perhaps play the game of fate, to give them a sense of hope in a piece

02:13 of paper masquerading as a card.

02:16 To perhaps not think about what if nobody would come for them or if they wouldn't manage

02:22 to pull them out.

02:23 They kept death at bay.

02:25 Somehow, with cards, Ludo and each other, was there hope then?

02:30 They didn't know, but maybe didn't want to talk about despair either.

02:34 Anil Bedia from Khera Bera village near Ranchi was the first worker to be rescued on November

02:41 28th.

02:42 But when he was trapped inside, especially during the first couple of days, there was

02:46 fear and uncertainty.

02:49 There was absolute no contact with the outside world, but he was ingenious enough to create

02:54 a deck of cards by just tracing designs and numbers on pieces of paper.

03:00 A deck of playing cards was also a means of solace for the 33 miners trapped after a tunnel

03:06 in San Jose gold and copper mine collapsed in 2010 in Chile's Atacama region.

03:12 Buried 700 meters deep, some of the miners lost 22 pounds in body weight during the ordeal

03:20 before they were rescued after 69 days.

03:24 Playing cards also defined the fate of Rana, a trapped coal miner played by MacMohan in

03:30 Yash Chopra's Kalapathar.

03:32 Suspected as a card sharp, Rana purposely draws a low card from a deck, sacrificing

03:38 an opportunity to be rescued at the very end in favor of a fellow miner, just before the

03:45 chunks of coal and a barrage of water bury him in the film.

03:50 For Bedia and other workers, the cards served as a way to pass the time while they waited

03:56 for fate to deal them their hand.

03:59 The rest of the time, he and his co-workers walked around the tunnel.

04:04 Tiredness and sheer fatigue put them to sleep often.

04:08 Sometimes, they played Ludo, another game of chance that originated in India and was

04:13 known as Pachisi, where the roll of quarry shells defined the moves.

04:18 "We would chit-chat or play Ludo to kill time.

04:22 On some days, we would take walks to stretch our legs," says Chamrao Rao, who is from

04:27 Kara block in Jharkhand.

04:30 For this and more, read the current issue of Outlook.

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