My extreme moment: Professor V Subramanyan

Small groups of men were standing at regular intervals with a heap of lethal weapons like crowbars, sickles and spears. On spotting me, a whistle went across the valley and the felling of trees abruptly stopped...

I was a young geologist with the Atomic Minerals Division at the time, looking for uranium in the hilly tracts of then Bihar, camping at a village off Ranchi. My daily job was to go over the hills, checking the rocks for the presence of uranium using an instrument called the Geiger-Muller counter that detects radioactivity. Being a government officer, I was decorated in a Khaki uniform and a khaki hat.

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That day I had been hearing noises of people cutting wood on the other side of the hill all along the climb. When I reached on top, the sight that unfolded before my eyes froze me in fright. Small groups of men were standing at regular intervals with a heap of lethal weapons like crowbars, sickles and spears. On spotting me, a whistle went across the valley and the felling of trees abruptly stopped. The nearest group moved menacingly towards me, sizing me up all the while.

All of a sudden it occurred to me why they were approaching me threateningly. They had mistaken me for a forest officer who had come there to stop their wood cutting. And they were now gearing up to give me trouble. I started passing my instrument over the rocks more frenetically than before to distract them, and kept reiterating that I was trying to locate minerals in their hills so that mines could be opened up and all of them could get employment. By that time my local guide, a slow walker, had joined me. He explained to them that I was the 'engineer saab' camping in their village. Gradually the suspicious frown on their faces changed into a friendly grin and they moved away.