Shahabad

With a promise to myself, and to those I omitted mentioning in the posts that have gone by, that I will be coming back to the years from 1969 to 1977 in Wadi, as often as I feel necessary and responsible, I step out of what was once my womb. In real life, whatever promises one makes with respect to coming back to the womb – and every neonate, I am sure makes such promises to itself – one cannot and hence one doesn’t. But in a literary attempt such as a blog, once can and therefore, one does. With this solace I proceed further.Shahabad is a slightly larger town than Wadi. It is located to the north of Wadi at a distance of about 11 kilometers. The two towns were connected by a railway line which extended from Kanyakumari in the south to Mumbai in the north. By road, the distance was slightly more about 15 kilometers, for one drove parallel to the railway line till Rawoor, turned east, traveled about a kilometer through the village of Rawoor, turned north again and went parallel to the railway line towards Shahabad. Very near Shahabad, one crossed the Kagna (It was actually Kagina but we called it Kagna), a tributary of Bhima, which in turn is a tributary of the Krishna that ultimately flows into the Bay of Bengal. Bhima along with Tungabhadra are two major tributaries of Krishna. Kagna was an ordinary river and was rather dry during the blazing summer months from March to May. Sometimes during the monsoons, the river got flooded and the water touched the Bridge running across it. Having crossed the Kagna, you entered Shahabad. Travel further and turn right for the ABL colony and right for the ACC Colony, Bajaar and the Railway station. From the above, it derives that Shahabad had two Factories, ACC, as in Wadi and ABL – means the ACC Babcock Limited. The ACC factory here was much older than that in Wadi but smaller and used the wet process of cement making unlike Wadi which employed the Dry process. ACC, Wadi subsequently became the largest cement manufacturing unit in Asia and the first 1 million tonne per year plant in India and remained so, till the Larsen and Toubro Plant in Chandrapur overtook it. I am not aware of its current standing and Jayachandran, who is a leading light of the Indian Cement Industry can enlighten me by his posts. During 1977, when we started going to Shahabad, ABL was actually called AVB or ACC Vickers Babcock, an ancilliary of ACC, which made heavy engineering products like boilers and things. Before we left Shahabad in 1980 Vickers had withdrawn and it became ABL. Unlike ACC (both Wadi and Shahabad), which was pretty downmarket, with a dominance of Madrasis (by Wadi definition, anyone to the south of Wadi were Madrasis, and by Shahabad definition, anyone to the south of Shahabad were Madrasis and and by Gulbarga definition, anyone to the south of Gulbarga were Madrasis. But I use the term Madrasi in the real sense of the term here – the sense in which the thoroughbred Kapoors, Chawlas and Chopras use it), ABL had several Managers, who were actually the real McCoys , as the Americans would call them. Shahs and Wadehras, and Agarwals and Kapoors abounded. Also there were hardly any managers in ACC. There were people like burners and watchman supervisors and overseers and timekeepers, but the number of managers in ABL was a source of awe to us who came from Wadi. That is to say, ABL was pretty upmarket.