Food and the Bone Mill Odor (10)

Note : Railway Diaries follows the Number on the Post Title

Behind the Londa Railway Station at the UBL end is the famous bone mill. To the left of the station is the bone mill, adjacent to that are the paddy fields and on the right side of the railway track is a stream. Sometimes we had to wait at UBL end of Londa station for crossing or just detention which would extend to long hours.

Having confirmed with the station master we slowly open the Tiffin box and begin our dinner in silence. The pungent odor of the bone mill is something that everyone has to smell one day and during those initial days I was about to throw up if someone asked me to have my food there. Days passed and there was no option but to gulp down irrespective of how the place was.

Sometimes I would put my head outside the window and look at life near the bone mill, you can see the workers carrying baskets filled with bones on their head, crows, eagles, vultures feeding on the heap of bones and now and then a dog that would steal the biggest bone and bring it over to the track. All this made little impact on the people who lived in the quarters nearby or the villagers who lived in and around the bone mill. The odor of the mill would travel to more than a kilometer’s distance in winter.

I certainly am not complaining here about the bone mill but this was one of those experiences which taught me to respect food because when you’re hungry and you feel the cramps in your stomach, the place, the smell and the stink really doesn’t come to your notice and when you’re done with your food all that you think about is – how do the people working in the mill eat at the same spot they work in.

It’s all about what you think is imperfect and insane in the world because the same thing is perfect and sane in the same world.