Snake on the Ladder.

This private company is nestled between national highways, railway station and lush green agricultural lands.

The entrance gate is built over a drain water canal. Encroachment of over grown weeds in the stagnated water gives the look of a medieval fort surrounded by water ways. Only a full fledged moat and draw bridge is missing; otherwise it would be a picture perfect setting.

The company MD is a naturalist – allows weeds and shrubs to grow at their own will or pace.

He has such a strong faith in nature - depends on sunlight for illumination and the depressions in the bay for ventilation.

He let nature to provide these every day and magnanimously allowed his employees to avail the same at the work place.

The cabling work for the installed machines rivals a spider’s web.

For all these miserliness, he possesses a brilliant brain – thinking ahead of others in the field, doing the impossible with unskilled employees and to capture the imagination of probable customers.

Over a period of time, he positioned himself as a designer, developer and producer of critical components for space related activities. He used to proudly say that, all the prototypes that were manufactured by him performed well.

He even started to design and develop special purpose equipments and then got them fabricated from vendors of questionable capabilities. Some miserably failed. A list of such useless items would easily fill 2 pages of an inventory book.

Being a born fighter, the failures never bothered him. He has a proud motto “Design, Build and Operate”.

This story is about one such equipment, fortunately functional but suffering unwanted handicaps. This twin tower was 6 meters tall and some of the moving parts were placed at the top. In his cost pruning exercise, he did not provide a ladder.

He will close his ears whenever such inexpensive items like a proper ladder, a plastic bucket or a torch light are mentioned. This psychology, even now remains a puzzle to Muser.

This heating & drying tower is to be used, in a first of his kind venture, to produce resin coated organic and inorganic filament bundles of various types and strengths.

The main reason for this attempt is to overcome the non-availability or market volatility for such coated products. As is his wont, the Top Man has already lined up buyers for this yet to be made product.

He has an uncanny ability in gathering needed information and technique, from internet & his extensive personal network. He requested Muser to handle the project.

At the appropriate time, he sounded the alarm on the anticipated shortage of people who took decisions. From that point on, the interested officials kept themselves abreast of even a minor advancement in the developmental project. Yet none asked for a solid proof and therefore, none was given.

He chose an opportune moment to propose the use of in-house made product in the production of pressure vessels.  This situation placed Muser in a tight corner.

Whenever highly placed officials paid a visit, The MD made it a point to introduce Muser and exaggerate the pace at which the work was being carried out. Muser was put in a Shakespearian– to say the truth  or  not.

All these added to the pressure, to come up with a good result. And the very look and layout of the equipment, meant for continuous operation was disgusting.

Determined to see through the Project, Muser began organising the required round the clock operation. The shift personnel managed to locate a dilapidated bamboo ladder left by a civil contractor. It was left behind due to the cost of transportation.

This ladder had very special qualities.  Auto-ambulation (Who ever needed it took it and left it somewhere else), Unique appearance (the missing rungs were strung with coir ropes of a blackish hue and were sticky due to semi-cured resinous mass). The same ropes were also wound on the vertical bars of ladder to increase hand “grip”.

We hit a road block right from the start of the maiden operation involving the heating tower and processing filament bundle to semi-dry state.

The operating personnel went up and down the heating tower using the shaky ladder - every five or ten minutes, to set things ready for a restart.

Finally, the plant stabilised to a normal run and a heavy down pour began – as though to cool the frayed tempers. There was no let up in the rain and also the need to continue production. By around 6 “O” clock in the evening, the rain stopped.

The change team took over and they started experiencing another set of interruptions – power failure, system malfunction and semi-dried filament bundle getting stuck in moving parts.

Finally nature relented and everything became normal and the plant was up and running. The operators dispersed for dinner to a nearby location. When the team returned to their respective operating stations, the power was out.

The work area was pitch black – no emergency light or even a torch light. The power failure lasted a good half an hour. The tower temperature plummeted to near ambient. But the filament bundle inside the tower became hard and rod like, due to the residual heat.

This filament bundle had to be gently moved down ward, manually, till the dried ends came out of the tower. One of the operators climbed the ladder, reached the top, opened the cover plate, and rotated the rollers to pay out the hardened filament bundle.

When he started coming down the rungs of the ladder and at mid-way, his hand felt something clammy and sending a chill feeling rushing through his spinal cord.

Who will not feel chills, in their spine, under this circumstance? He was actually holding a well grown snake, just below its head. The straining snake was trying to fight back and stuck out its forked tongue, which accidentally touched the wrist of the operator.

That broke his nerve. He let out an incoherent shout, started shivering head to foot and finally stood paralysed. The fear response made him to tighten his grip and sweat profusely.

The other personnel rushed near the ladder and did not comprehend the situation, though the man stuck in the ladder was gesticulating to direct their attention to the snake. After a few moments they all understood what the commotion was about.

Someone brought an empty drum and climbed on to it and emptied a can of a chlorinated solvent, available nearby. The solvent stung the stinger with such an effect, the snake simply became limp and stopped wagging its tongue.

It had an anaesthetising effect as it was directly poured over the eyes, on the head and in to the partially open mouth. The two meter long cobra’s last thought, before fainting, might have been - oh my GOD what a sting!

The rest of “Operation over kill” was neatly executed, after a snake specialist identified the snake as King Cobra. He also ventured to reason out why that snake had come this far, to die.

Due to the rains, its homestead must have been inundated. While shifting to a dry location it might have met a similarly displaced field rat and decided to finish the dinner then and there.

With the yet to be digested rat, it might have entered the factory premise and sought a warm and dry place for a night’s stay. When the operating personnel were taking their dinner, the snake climbed up the ladder and coiled itself on the vertical bar.It must have sneaked just before the power failure! The heavy meal and the warmth must have given it a false sense of security and drowsiness.

Next day, an exhibition of the dead snake was organised and among others the MD had been cordially invited to inaugurate the exhibition. Being an astute person, he understood their message.

Now, if you happen to revisit the factory, you will surely get the feeling of entering a well maintained medieval fortress – illumination, ventilation etc; etc;

Thanks to the Cobra, we have a better work environment :)