Re-living the horror

It was a Friday. I woke up late. There was complete silence. I am staying in a sort of guest house that is built as part of a stadium in Madinat Zayed (Bida Zayed), around 150 km from Abu Dhabi. There was pin drop silence and no one was around. I felt very lonely and abandoned. The silence and loneliness brought back memories from another era.
I think it was 1983. I have recently arrived from Mumbai to take up my job as Sectional Officer in Viskha Steel Plant Project site. It was a big change from the fully air-conditioned Head Office of Gammon India to a huge construction site, just starting construction, without even the basic facilities.I was in charge of the Batching Plant and probably 6-9 months into the job when this happened. The labour camps were near our batching plant and we had a small contingent of labours staying right next to our office. There was an epidemic of Cholera that started to spread through the labour camps. Of course, it was the 80's and the Project Management teams in India those days have not even heard of Health, Safety and Environmental standards, let alone practice it in construction sites. People were dying around us. People were dying at the work sites. Nobody really cared. They were poor people from Orissa, Bengal and Andhra. They were expendable.
I shared my responsibility with Ruj, who was from Bengal. He very often stayed back home on some pretext. Very often, I had to stay back after day work for the night shift also because Ruj has not turned up and there was concrete to be supplied. The nights there in those days were so lonely and frightening. There was death looming around the corner or around us all the time. There were cases where parents left small sick children behind and ran away with there life.
I usually had a jeep and driver at my disposal during the night shift for any emergencies. One night, I was at the batching plant. The jeep broke down and I was told that it will not come back. That meant that I, along with the 50 odd people working at the batching plant will be without any transportation means for the night and the nearest small town is away 20 KM. The last bus for supervisors to return home from site is at 10 PM and the next transportation will be in the next morning.
I decided that I cannot stay there with the responsibility of the around 50 people under my command without even a jeep to take us to a doctor in case of emergency. I asked every one to pack up and leave by the 10 pm bus. We left.
When we arrived next morning, we found that there was heaps of aggregates lying around all sides of the office and in front of the office door. (We used to get special basalt aggregate from Rajamundhry, 200 KM away and aggregate from Anakapally, 40 Km away usually at night!). All hell broke loose and everyone landed in the batching plant from AEE to CE to AGM. I was grilled. I stood my ground and told them that I could not take the responsibility of 50 lives without even the basic transportation for emergency when you have people dying all around you with Cholera. Finally, our Dy CE, Kapoor told every one that he agreed with my action as it was correct under the circumstances and he took the responsibility as my department head! God, I loved that man!
Since then he had a soft corner for me and I adored him too. After 2 years when he got transferred to Jammu, I arranged a farewell dinner in the Batching plant for him and we both had tears when we said good bye.
I felt I was again at the batching plant, in the night and lonely...
Not a nice way to wake up on a holiday!