Day 3: Clouds of hope

The new day dawned cool and unusually pleasant, with a slight hint of impending rains in the sky and the trademark heat wave absent for once. I entered through the large gates of the plant at quarter past nine and went to the office, where I was greeted by the secretary's customary scowl. Which meant that coming 10 minutes early on the day couldn't make up for being late the previous day. I proceeded to my work place to meet the familiar faces, all sans my boss Mr B. Very much in sync with my routine by now, all of them went back to doing their jobs after exchanging quick smiles with me. I settled down and braced myself for the day's education.

Mr B was mostly missing from the office today, so I was with Rajbeerji and Sharmaji all the time. I was given a flow chart to study, prepared by Sharmaji, enlisting all the major processes being carried out in the steel plant in sequential order. I hung around the cool office for as long as possible, soaking in the theory in great detail, but had to eventually venture out into the now familiar heat once again. I noticed that the plant was kind of quiet today, and not much activity was in progress. The reason, I gathered from Sharmaji was that it was time for the furnaces to be revamped from the insides following the furious applications they had been subject to in the past few days. Without the melting of the metals, there was no question of casting taking place. So only the laboratory analysis of the scrap iron samples was happening on the day.

The rebuilding process of the furnace lining was also an interesting job. The present lining was being scraped out using pointed metallic sticks and new material was being plastered in along the sides. And at the distant end of the plant, an end I hadn't found time to explore yet, the rolling mill was in operation. Long red hot rods could be seen snaking their way through the sliding machines, where they were being cooled and formed into the required shapes and cut into desired sizes. As always enthralled by the sights, I stood watching and talking to the workmen for a long time.

A relatively quiet day thus passed, and I ran back home at quarter to 4 with a silent prayer of rain on my lips.