Everyday heroes

I t is not easy for anybody to be a hero for life. Extraordinary personalities by virtue of their hard work and luck reach the pinnacles of fame as heroes. The achievement could be in any field of human activity. But many of us can become temporary heroes by occasional momentous performance or even by chance.

Once I was working in the automation department of a huge process plant. Our job was to attend to, and set right, the faults occurring in the automated systems of the continuously running plant. One day, the valve of a huge pump did not close within the stipulated time of a few seconds. The fluid flow could reverse and the consequent damage could cost millions of dollars before the manual procedure for closing could be completed.

The team responsible was immediately deployed and all the top management officials rushed to the spot. But nothing happened. The team could not diagnose the trouble after struggling for more than 10 minutes. At this juncture, somebody said I was a senior person in the department, having long years of experience.

Within no time, I was summoned to the scene. I just looked inside the control cabinet and spotted a relay which had not duly picked up. I asked a technician to bypass the relay and that was it. The valve closed immediately. People raised me up in the air and the managers praised me, saying I had saved millions of dollars.

I was the hero of the day. It was something like a doctor saving the life of a patient by his expertise and timely action. Years ago, I had been on an official tour to a place called Damanjodi in Odisha. Damajodi is in the tribal district of Koraput. On my return, somebody told me that there was a passenger train from Koraput to Visakhapatnam at noon.

During daytime, one could enjoy the scenic beauty of the hills, forest and several tunnels on the route and I opted for it. The stationmaster was surprised to find me asking for a ticket as it was common in those days for the villagers to ride ticketless unquestioned. Hours passed. The train was speeding through the hilly tracts of Dandakaranya.

Suddenly, the train jerked heavily with a thunderous noise and halted abruptly. Everybody was thrown away from the seats and frightened. After a few minutes, people alighted and found a few of the coaches had derailed in the thick forest. There were no fatalities. The only communication possible was though the dedicated telephone junction boxes of the Railways installed beside the track at every two kilometres or so.

The cabin crew set out and found one, connected their spare instrument and informed the authorities at Visakhapatnam. The rescue train had to travel all the way from there, maybe 200 km, to the accident spot. It arrived at 10 p.m. The cranes lifted the coaches and put them back on the rails. At the Visakhapatnam railway station, I was welcomed as a hero for being the survivor of a train accident.

As a special consideration, I was accommodated on a Chennai bound train to continue my journey. Though the exhilaration is momentary on such occasions, the surge of dopamine it generates is ample to motivate us to take more challenges. pgmathew65@yahoo.com COMMents SHARE Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit.