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Listen to excerpts from Outlook's India, Trapped issue by Pragya Vats

#Israel #Gaza #Palestine #Uttarakhand #Uttarkashi #Tunnel #WestBank #Jerusalem
Transcript
00:00 I am Pragya and I bring to you excerpts from the current issue of Outlook titled "Trapped"
00:06 that looks at two cover stories, one where poor migrant workers trapped in a tunnel make
00:12 it alive after 17 traumatic days, the other for the Palestinians trapped in Gaza, the
00:18 ceasefire may be short-lived before the next round of attacks by Israel.
00:23 The other cover has illustration of the olive tree, a symbol of Palestinian culture and
00:30 resilience.
00:31 The Palestinian poet in exile Mahmoud Darwish has always used olive tree in his poetry.
00:37 Lines from his poem "The Second Olive Tree" reads, "The portrait for the olive tree is
00:42 neither green nor silver.
00:45 The olive tree is the color of peace if peace needed a color."
00:50 Over a million olive trees have been uprooted by the settlers in occupied Palestine since
00:55 1967 to build new settlements according to Harid's newspaper and other agencies.
01:02 Deep, Down, Dark by Ashwini Sharma, Muhammad Asghar Khan and Shalendra Godiyal from Outlook.
01:10 In the never-ending war between man and nature, 41 brave workers trapped for over 400 hours
01:18 under 60 meters of debris won the battle of sheer survival.
01:23 The tunnel was that kind of place where hope disappeared.
01:27 Just like the sunshine had, always a place of the poor, of those who know the risks and
01:33 yet they sign up for the job, like the 41 workers did.
01:38 It is a story of migration and of the different universes people inhabit, like the construction
01:44 workers did.
01:45 Outside, people kept a vigil, family and rescue workers.
01:50 On television and other media, we kept the vigil too.
01:54 Most were in their 20s, in the claustrophobic rubble.
01:57 They must have oscillated between the past and the future.
02:01 The present was darkness.
02:03 They had each other and they had cards that they had made out of paper.
02:07 A deck of cards to perhaps play the game of fate, to give them a sense of hope in a piece
02:13 of paper masquerading as a card.
02:16 To perhaps not think about what if nobody would come for them or if they wouldn't manage
02:22 to pull them out.
02:23 They kept death at bay.
02:25 Somehow, with cards, Ludo and each other, was there hope then?
02:30 They didn't know, but maybe didn't want to talk about despair either.
02:34 Anil Bedia from Khera Bera village near Ranchi was the first worker to be rescued on November
02:41 28th.
02:42 But when he was trapped inside, especially during the first couple of days, there was
02:46 fear and uncertainty.
02:49 There was absolute no contact with the outside world, but he was ingenious enough to create
02:54 a deck of cards by just tracing designs and numbers on pieces of paper.
03:00 A deck of playing cards was also a means of solace for the 33 miners trapped after a tunnel
03:06 in San Jose gold and copper mine collapsed in 2010 in Chile's Atacama region.
03:12 Buried 700 meters deep, some of the miners lost 22 pounds in body weight during the ordeal
03:20 before they were rescued after 69 days.
03:24 Playing cards also defined the fate of Rana, a trapped coal miner played by MacMohan in
03:30 Yash Chopra's Kalapathar.
03:32 Suspected as a card sharp, Rana purposely draws a low card from a deck, sacrificing
03:38 an opportunity to be rescued at the very end in favor of a fellow miner, just before the
03:45 chunks of coal and a barrage of water bury him in the film.
03:50 For Bedia and other workers, the cards served as a way to pass the time while they waited
03:56 for fate to deal them their hand.
03:59 The rest of the time, he and his co-workers walked around the tunnel.
04:04 Tiredness and sheer fatigue put them to sleep often.
04:08 Sometimes, they played Ludo, another game of chance that originated in India and was
04:13 known as Pachisi, where the roll of quarry shells defined the moves.
04:18 "We would chit-chat or play Ludo to kill time.
04:22 On some days, we would take walks to stretch our legs," says Chamrao Rao, who is from
04:27 Kara block in Jharkhand.
04:30 For this and more, read the current issue of Outlook.

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