The Half Truth

Dear Editor,
I am behind bars. After much persistence, efforts and coaxing, these people gave me your postal address. I hope this reaches you and you go through it without throwing it in the bin even before looking at it. Sorry for my harsh words, but kindly understand what state of mind I’m presently in.
I’ve been here in this dingy smelly lock up for the past 8 months. These guys arrested me from my work place. I’m a civil engineer, now after 27 years of experience, have got into the design aspect of construction. I’ve been presently working for the metro constructions in the capital, I mean I was working, till I got arrested. I’m sure you remember the major accident when the under construction pier fell down and led to a few people’s lives. I was one of the few who were arrested. It’s been a year now but I still remember every detail of the visual in front of my eyes. I was on site after the accident, but then when I saw the chaos and the disastrous outcome, I tried hiding my face somewhere, choking with guilt and shame. I was one of the chief designers of the metro bridge dissecting through that part of Delhi. Although it was not the first one to be built in Delhi, and we had done a few before, this one was the first of its kinds. It was crossing through a locality that had a steep diversion, and hence it was designed to have two piers rather than one central to keep the bridge balanced. It was accepted and approved by all governing authorities, and only then did we start with the construction. But once the construction began, slowly but surely we understood, at least I understood that it is going wrong. There wasn’t enough space for two piers, there are residential colonies on both sides and it will be majorly blocking or may be even crashing into them when the piers get made. I immediately informed my seniors and asked them to look into the matter, as the construction had just begun and it was still possible for a makeover.
The idea travelled sluggishly through the clogged arteries of the obese organization I was working in. It wasn’t accepted till they finally saw it themselves. And at that moment again, all designers were called and asked to brainstorm and find out a solution. In such cases, the only solution we felt could now solve was to make a single pier cantilever, removing the other. There are success cases of cantilever constructions within the city itself, so the proposed idea looked executable. But yet there was this problem. I saw it coming again. Since the original design of the bridge was through two piers, suddenly making it cantilever could result in a weak base. For such cases, the whole basic formation is different in a way that the balance is shifted completely on the beams.
I did not speak or discuss this with anyone, may be with this intuition that again nothing will be done about it till they themselves find out. I know I have been spineless in keeping quiet about it, and perhaps I even deserve a punishment. All I want from you sir is to not let this incident pass into people’s minds as such a basic error with a few designers being faulty at their jobs. There is much more to it which I’ve tried telling you through this confessional letter, more of which I’ll describe once I get a reply from you.
Thank you for your cooperation involved in the above stated matter,
Yours sincerely,
Krishna Iyer

My boss suddenly appeared on my desk,
“What’s up Arnab, any interesting letters today?”
“Yes sir, there are a couple, one is of this lady who says she was a prostitute in her past life, and she visits all her customers and her families everyday in her dreams, and that too sequentially and the other is…”
“Oh fantastic, I only have one column for you this week Arnab, get this lady on the papers. See you in my cabin when you are done with this.”
“Yes sir!”