Silence of Ruins
Abandoned to some… And then ‘an-untold-story’ to some…
I was in West Bengal, visiting Calcutta and then suddenly I got an offer to go to the country side of West Bengal. I have never been to a Bengal village in my life. So I promptly replied “yes!”. So after an hour and a half of journey by local train I reached Arambagh.
Arambagh is a town and a municipality in Hooghly district in the state of West Bengal, India. It is the headquarters of Arambagh subdivision. Arambagh is the largest sub division in Hooghly district.
The country-side was very peaceful & calm. West Bengal is still a farming dominated state so the country-side was endless flat and green fields.
Then I came across this abandoned place. This place was once a paper mill. The paper pulp was made from recycling waste like cloth & rubber. The was of industrial use (like packaging). The mill was shut down few years ago, since then local people invaded the place robbed all the machinery that was left and sold them in the scrap to make themselves big bucks (as per village income). When I entered the place, there was an air of desolation. The whole was not just abandoned but ruin. One could say how viciously they must have robbed this place, down to the last nail!
The place was vandalized & filth yet it was so full of patterns & textures and light & shadow interacting with each other in such a manner to give such a strong emotions statement that simply couldn’t resist myself. And I spent almost an hour photographing this place.
A local guy who accompanied me, told me that when this place was up & running, it was among the highest paying institutions in the state. Also he showed me the supervisor’s room from where he used to keep an eye on each & every employee. And it was also said that the employee who was seen skipping his job or fooling around, the supervisor used to take out the register and put a red cross in front of his name on that day, signifying cancellation of that day’s salary. ‘No Work, No Pay’ was the company’s moto.
No matter how decimated this place maybe but nonetheless it tell you about the progress of industrialization. As we moved to digital world the consumption of paper fell from every sector of market.
Here are few picture of the Paper Mill I clicked…
Originally published at aperturephotostudio.wordpress.com on December 12, 2015.
