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Hukumchand Mill chimney will be history soon
WHAT DOES it take to hammer away a piece of history? Too much for those who once derived sustenance from it, and too little for those who are paid to demolish the same.
WHAT DOES it take to hammer away a piece of history? Too much for those who once derived sustenance from it, and too little for those who are paid to demolish the same.
Ask 47-year-old Vallabh Thakur, the professional chimney breaker from Morvi in Gujarat, who has been called here to chip off the 51.83-meter high century-old Hukumchand Textile Mill chimney block by block from the top. His two sons, two nephews and a cook will be paid Rs 1 lakh to accomplish the job in 15 days.
“Pulling down chimneys manually with the help of hammer and chisel is nothing new for me. I have broken over 32 textile mill chimneys in Gujarat, each measuring 60 to 100 feet in height,” says Thakur, unaware that his skill and number of chimneys he pulled down could find him a place in record books.
He says he has knocked down 20 chimneys in Ahmedabad alone. Besides, he flattened one each at Vadodara, Surat, Navsari Railway Station and Billimora, four at Petlad, and two at Dwarka RCC cement factory earlier. Offers to tear down more are still coming. “I have been asked to raze two chimneys of Malwa Mill here. In addition, there are six such orders for Ahmedabad and six from Delhi,” Vallabh, who works for eight hours a day, remarked.
Thakur recalls that chimneys of about 40 factories that made roof tiles (kavelu) were damaged at Morvi during the earthquake that shattered large parts of Gujarat three years back. “I razed all those damaged structures,” he states in a matter-of-fact manner.
The art of demolition was handed down to Vallabh by his father Siddhimala, an uneducated man like him. Following the family tradition, Thakur thought it appropriate to pass on the expertise to his sons and nephews. Only his youngest son Dhanji has deviated to set up a paan shop at his native town.
Back home, the chimney will turn into ground zero in next fortnight, another reminder that cloth mills have been wiped off. The chimneys of seven textile mills that billowed smoke were considered a symbol of City’s prosperity 25 years back. The air pollution caused due to smoke was unheard of those days. The denizens, especially textile workers and owners, took pride in the fact that Indore’s industrial expansion owed a lot to their cloth mills. But, as they say, all is history now.
