Rooftops
 |
Modinagar factories, late afternoon.
|
From the roof I look
over Modinagar station directly below and out across the maze of
angular rooftops dissipating into a milky haze of morning smog.
Macaques rummage unseen, deep inside the crowns of fruiting trees. A
train pulls into the 1000 metre long platform, cutting off the flow
of pedestrians on the line. People climb into the open doors and
disappear into the windowless carriages.
I cross the roof to the
West, climbing between a web of cables, through narrow doorways,
along terraces and around rusted cages built over satellite dishes
and skylights to keep off the macaques. Drains clog with green algae
and another is full of old light bulbs that crunch under my feet.
Concrete turning to rubble and dust mixed with guano cascades down
the walls, collecting on sills, ledges and the broad leaves of garden
creepers grown wild below.
To the West I overlook
the sugar mill; decorated lorries, bullet carts and tractor trailers
loaded with sugar cane form a cue below. Macaques clamber, unseen on
the high loads nonchalantly chewing on the cane, an easy target ( I
have seen pedestrians in town steal a stick from the slow moving
tractors as they cross the road, gangs of school boys snap canes on their knees, the unsuspecting victim rumbling down the road behind them). Pure white egrets pick amongst the
empty trailers and heavy machinery, looking for insects, small
mammals and reptiles. A family of mongoose weave in and out of
corrugated shacks built around a giant silo. The convoy of sugar cane
snakes around this silo and into warehouses where cranes transport
the sugary loads into the dark recesses beyond. Above, more silos
rise amongst a network of overhead pipes. Chimney stacks reach even
higher into a static clot of yellow haze.
In late afternoon the
sun hangs above the factory, a visible disk smothered by smog, an
orange crescent around it, purple brown below. Macaques troop through
the factory in a long procession appearing and disappearing over
rooftops as they travel into the distance.
As night falls on the
31st, the convoy into the factory is double thick snaking
out the gates into the main road. Lorries hidden from above by the
gigantic bundles, spindly canes piled high and overhanging. Macaques
clamber over them, bathed in phosphorescent light. A boy washes
clothes on the pavement below, men mill around, a bullet cart starts
rolling, the farmer takes a running jump onto the edge of the cart
whilst examining his bill of sale he carefully folds it into his
pocket and pulls at the rains of his buffalo. The factory is lit
internally, the workings now visible, mechanical claws lifting cane
and piling it high in the yellow glow. Vertical sheets of shadow beam
into the night sky. Techno rumbles out of the streets beyond the
railway, mingling with the workers radio station punctuated by the
clang of metal claw and woody cascading of cane.