Bangladesh Underground

Miners return to the surface after eight hours underground.

Out of the chute, large rocks tumble. Bang, crash, bang! The oversized shed is dusty, the noise deafening. People in hardhats and blue overalls with reflective strips can barely talk over the din. Working above ground, they’re watching granite chunks fall and move off along a conveyor belt. With lives shaped by geology, they’re supervising the crushing machine.

Western thought would have us as individuals. In the villages the pull of family bonds happily holds sway. But there are other ingredients in the human. There’s history. There’s climate. And there’s geology.

Bangladesh has a lack of surface hard rock, the inspiration for the hard rock mine.

The mine at Maddhapara, Parbatipur.

It’s nothing new. Bangladesh is a riverine country, most of it. It’s an alluvial landscape that favours rice. Geology rules the farmer’s hand and trains Bangladeshi tastebuds. Rocks are rare here – a scarcity that has, for centuries, impacted upon human society.

Ramsagar tank could hardly have been dug in rocky terrain. At Kantaji temple, building and sculpting in clay reached its zenith for a lack of stone. Both of Dinajpur’s icons testify to geology’s influence; it’s hardly surprising, then, if at Maddhapara in Dinajpur’s Parbatipur geology similarly rules.

Except that at Maddhapara it’s not a lack of stone that’s the driving factor but a rock deposit. The two premiere underground mines in Bangladesh are both in Dinajpur. Maddhapara hard rock mine has been operating for over fifteen years.

Sorting and crushing the stone.

Miners leaving the lift.

“Are you scared when you go underground,” I ask a passing miner outside the crushing machine shed, where words can be heard. “No,” he laughs, a little hesitantly. “What about the first time?” He thinks. He doesn’t like to tell. “I had three months training,” he says.

The idea to construct the mine arose from there being a lack of surface rock in the country. Crushed granite is used in apartment construction, coastal and river embankments, bridges, roads and as railway ballast. Modern Bangladesh can’t get by without it and the Maddhapara mine is projected to contribute 9.2 million tonnes over a six-year period, reducing import needs.

In the entry building to the mine, beyond the safety signs, the rows of head-worn lights and the stores of gum boots and hardhats, miners sign on to start their shift. Outwardly it appears to be a well-organised outfit – but it wasn’t always.

Rows of helmet lights at the ready.

Safety chart.

The mine was constructed and operated for the first fourteen years by a North Korean company. “They had about 17 deaths,” says Md. Zabed Siddique, General Manager of Germania Trest, the consortium consisting of a Belarusian state-owned company and a Bangladeshi company that was contracted to operate the mine since late 2013. “Now there are only minor incidents.”

As he speaks there’s a distant thud and the ground shakes a little. “There are five or six blasts daily,” says Siddique.

Miners descend via a large elevator, complete with an exit sign in both English and Korean, into the tunnels that are up to 300 metres below the surface and stretch for 1.5 kilometres, growing longer every day. There’s an underground railway to transport both rock and miners, who complete an eight hour shift. With three shifts per day, activity at the mine never ceases. 

Mine buildings with ventilation stacks.

Md. Zabed Siddique, General Manager.

“Our miners are mostly from poor families,” says Siddique, “But they don’t think about owning a fancy car or a big house. They’re hard-working and honest. For me, that’s one of the best things about working here. We’re lucky.”

Miners earn 18,000 taka without overtime and if they work underground there’s a 100% mining allowance. During an eight-hour shift there’s a one-hour break, below the surface. The mine directly employs over 700 people.

“There’s a prayer room which is a hole in the wall inside the mine,” says Siddique, “and a medical room.”

Miners coming out of the lift after their shift.

The lift shaft.

Maddhapara also employs 57 foreigners, engineers and managers earning up to $1000 per month, mostly from Belarus and Ukraine. It explains the four-star accommodation block with Russian cable TV and the cafeteria menu featuring Russian food – on that day scrumptious pilmeni, Russian dumplings.

“When the North Koreans were here, they weren’t allowed to leave the compound,” says Siddique, “but nowadays the foreign workers can visit Bogra or Rangpur on the weekends.”

One of the two lift shafts.

There’s a Russian physician on-site and a team of interpreters, though underground with the Bangladeshi workers communication consists more of basic Russian and Bangla words together with hand signals.

“The interpreters work hard. Sometimes we need them for long hours,” says Siddique, “and I have never known one to say ‘No I can’t, I’m tired.’ They’re very dedicated.”

Loading granite.

Signing off. They always know exactly who is underground.

Perhaps a less obvious sign of the presence of foreigners are the small bottles of nitric acid hanging at intervals along the building walls. “It’s to keep snakes away,” Siddique explains. You can’t help but laugh – to think of the many millions of Bangladeshi villagers who dare to live without such protection, including the miners living nearby. But then, snakes really must be scarier if you come from a country where they are less common and less venomous.

Yet despite the efforts made towards foreign comforts it can’t be easy. Braving a very little Russian, I strike up a conversation with a young guy chatting with his friends outside the cafeteria. Thankfully, he adds a very little English into the mix.

Loading a truck.

He says he’s from Dnepropetrovsk, a beautiful city on the Dnepr River in central Ukraine. Somehow I manage to ask what he finds difficult… He says he misses his family; and seems to say the heat – but it can’t be what he means. Dnepropetrovsk will easily reach forty degrees in the summer, except that it’s a dry heat – it’s the humidity he’s referring to. And he probably misses the dramatic season changes. Ukrainian winters reach minus twenty.

The mine has been operating for over 15 years.

Conveyor belts and stockpiles at the mine.

For the Bangladeshis there are also some drawbacks to working at the mine. Siddique is from Chandpur and can only meet his wife and daughter about once a month. 

 

The power of geology is undeniable. It can bring a man from Chandpur to North Bengal. It can entice fifty-seven from Europe. It can create livelihoods for about 700 local families. For the rest of us too, in the food we grow up with, in the way we live, in the culture we share – and even in our thinking – have no doubt, the influence of a little geology is there.

There's a bit of geology in all of us.

This article published in Star Magazine, here: Bangladesh Underground

Miners.

The Living Stone of Middle Shilua

The stone's growth maybe centred on its unusual folds and creases pushing outwards.

In making sense of the physical world there is, surely, an over-reliance on the eyes. Ears too can play a role; hearing is not less of a primary sense than sight. Besides, sometimes if we pay sufficient heed to the things we hear our lives are simply more enjoyable. I’m thinking of those wonderful words, “I did not see it but I heard…”

Middle Shilua in Pathan Nagar Union of Chhagalnaiya Upazila in Feni District is in many respects a nondescript village. It features the typical pond-and-paddy landscape; there are small stores along the main road for groceries, tea and gossip; it can surprise nobody that adhan’s melody rings forth five times a day from the village mosque. All is as it should be in Middle Shilua, except for the presence of a large, conspicuous stone.

Seven elephants could not lift the stone, I heard.

Under normal circumstances even a stone, no matter what its size, might not be more than a triviality. But the Village Flute was drawn to Middle Shilua because it heard a remarkable thing: that the stone in Middle Shilua is one that grows.

Twenty-eight-year-old Shekawat Hossein lives in the village. His house pond, beside a smaller side road, borders the small yard enclosed by a low brick wall in which the stone is situated. It’s easy to find him for a chat.

“I did not see it but I heard,” says Shekawat, “that people once tried to lift that stone with the help of seven elephants but it would not budge.” While he has not personally observed the stone growing, he remarks that it is not easy to take notice of such a thing when one sees the rock on a daily basis. It’s certainly true that those with children or houseplants might be the last to register the incremental growth of offspring or plant.

Shekawat is heard to say that it is those who leave Middle Shilua and return after a number of years who can best attest to the stone’s enlargement, which may involve the rock’s unusual folds and creases gradually pushing outwards.

A stone that lives and grows has understandably been a village talking point for many generations. Indeed, over the years the stone has successfully established for itself a tin roof shelter and a donation tin with a sign of dubious origin that instructs every visitor to leave money before departing the area. The stone has even influenced the village’s name – in Feni’s brand of Bangla, shil means stone.

Gazi Habibullah heard it is a miracle stone.

“I heard it is a miracle stone,” says elderly shopkeeper Gazi Habibullah. “I heard it holds the power for helping others and that beneath the stone lie the riches of seven kings.” The problem is, he continues, that nobody can lift the stone to retrieve the wealth – not even those seven elephants. It is only the rightful owner of the riches that will be able to lift the stone, he heard, an owner who will be born of no mortal father.

Undoubtedly the Middle Shilua stone is a curious one. There are many places where stones belong: on mountaintops, along desert ridges, in the asteroid belt beyond Mars and even under the ocean. But like most of Bangladesh the land about Middle Shilua is the creation of great rivers that have refined and deposited particle of sand and earth to make the alluvial soils. It really isn’t a proper place for a large stone, whether or not of the living kind.

From his Dada, his uncle, Habibullah heard that the rock came at first, quite mysteriously, out of the mud in the very spot where it sits today. He heard that from its first appearance the rock gradually grew – and with his hands Habibullah demonstrates how protruding areas that were once the size of a tennis ball are now grapefruit size.

I heard meanwhile, from Habibullah, that the current tin-roof shelter is the second of its kind – it needed to be rebuilt when the stone grew too large for the first. Even today the stone protrudes beyond the roofline – could this be evidence of growth?

Habibullah recalls the stone’s yard was first demarcated during the British period, and from the generation before his he heard there was once a sign on which was written “If anyone destroys this stone’s character or site they will be held accountable in accordance with the law.”

Shekawat’s father, Mohiuddin Chowdhury Milon, says that during the British and Pakistani periods many upper level government servants including the Subdivision Officer would visit the stone. He was heard to say that as a child these official visitors used to encourage him to study and give a few rupees in ad hoc pocket money.

The stone sits in its own walled yard, under a shelter.

Mohiuddin heard the stone was constructed by the Mogh and from when he was a child until not so long ago he observed that many Hindus made puja worship there. Alternatively, it is to be heard there was once a Buddha statue in front of the stone because the Buddhists of Tripura believed the site sacred.

Village account says there is the outline of a human foot with five toes to be seen on one side of the stone while the footprint of an elephant adorns another. These features are not straightforward to see but are easy enough to be heard of.

So it was that, armed with curiosity and a few photographs, I made my way at a later date to another place where rocks might belong – the Bangladesh National Museum in Dhaka. There, I heard from Dr. Niru Shamsunnahar, expert in the history of terracotta in Bangladesh and helpful Deputy Keeper of the Public Education Department that it might be worthwhile to consult the Bangladesh District Gazetteer for Noakhali, of which Feni was a part in 1977 when the book was written, for further information about the stone.

Similarly I heard from Afroza Khan Mita, the Assistant Director of the Department of Archaeology, that the Shilua site was a protected archaeological site in Bangladesh and that more information could be found in A.K.M. Zakaria’s 1984 book Bangladesher Pratnasampad, Bangladesh’s Artefacts.

In these two books it states that at Middle Shilua there is a broken protima, a religious image that is thought to have been colossal in size and is extremely old, dating from the second century BCE. On the pedestal were once inscribed some writings in an obscure language and underneath the stone may be the ruins of a temple, which might only be verified upon excavation.

The stone may be a broken 'protima'.

Interestingly, in neither book did it mention that the Shilua stone was growing. Nor was it specified that the stone wasn’t growing. In neither book did it mention the seven elephants or positively negate the possibility of finding seven kings’ wealth underneath. Perhaps the researchers for those books hadn’t heard these things – maybe they never spoke to Habibullah’s Dada.

In the Gazetteer there was, however, a photograph of the rock from the early 1970s and it was certainly of interest to see that in light of the photos I took in recent days.

And yet it might be a mistake to base an understanding of the rock of Middle Shilua on an over-reliance on the eyes. No, being neither villager nor archaeologist I hesitate to state definitively how the two photographs compared in terms of the rock’s size – or comment on whether or not it is a living stone – not least because sometimes life is simply more enjoyable if we pay sufficient heed to the things we’ve heard.

Shekawat Hossein says it's not easy to notice the stone growing when you see it every day.

 

The stone of Middle Shilua. Has it outgrown its shelter?

This article is published in Star Magazine, here: The Living Stone of Middle Shilua