India, Oct. 24 -- On November 12, 2023, a tunnel under construction at Silkyara in Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi district collapsed, trapping 41 labourers. For 17 days, the men survived in the darkness with one hope: that they would live to see their families again. Like all stories in which people come face-to-face with death, this is an extraordinary one of grit and tenacity, with the workers finally emerging back into the world on November 28. The Ramnath Goenka Award-winning journalist Saurabh Sharma vividly recounts the story of one of the longest rescue operations in India, in his first book, Operation Silkyara. Full of detail, readers are taken into the world of each character: Colonel Deepak Patil, who played a key role in the rescue operation; Gabbar Singh Negi, the leader of the workers, who kept them calm through the ordeal; Rajni, wife of labourer Virendra Kiskoo, who fights despair. Divided into nine chapters, the tautly written work keeps readers hooked. Indian reader will recall the 2006 rescue of Prince Kumar from a borewell, an operation that grabbed the nation's attention. This book attempts to recreate that sense of shared concern, and suspense, and succeeds. The reader is taken along as workers discover a drainage pipe and establish communication, making it possible to inform the outside world that they are still alive. Confined for what must have seemed like an eternity, fights break out in the tunnel and frustrated workers demand bidis. Sharma describes how bidis and food reached the labourers, and how they were counselled by a doctor. We learn of their sleepless nights, and how hope was kept alive, the worry and panic that gripped their loved ones, and how many families camped at the site hoping for a miracle. Operation Silkyara shows how people cling to faith in times of calamity and how it is often the only thing that keeps them sane. It also explores how long-buried folk beliefs re-emerge at times of great stress. Many saw the incident as a curse of the serpent deity Baba Bhokh Nath, who is also known as the protector of the mountains of Uttarakhand. The striking metaphor, of course, points to the fragility of the local ecology and ancient ideas of the disastrous consequences of upsetting the delicate ecological balance. Designed to connect Barkot and Silkyara, several environmental organisations had argued that the Silkyara Tunnel would harm the local ecology. These concerns eventually reached the National Green Tribunal and the Supreme Court. Sharma raises some too. "An off-the-record conversation with the state geology department revealed that work was done at a pace faster than was prudent," he writes, citing a statement from Bernard Gruppe, the German-Austrian engineering firm working on the tunnel's design: "The geological conditions have proved to be more challenging than predicted in the tender document." An excellent work of ground reportage, it is clear that Sharma did much legwork, camping for days on site and conducting extensive conversations with anxious friends and families of the trapped. But what of those who had no friends and family nearby? Indeed, the experience was even more traumatic for migrant workers. Many have decided never to return to work in the Himalayas. "I cannot step inside another tunnel ever again. The very thought makes me shudder as visions of being buried alive flash before my eyes," says Manjeet, a migrant worker who has resolved to never venture out of his rural hamlet again. "I will take manual labour like my father in my village, but no more tunnel jobs for me," he says in the book. It is true that migrant workers building the nation's roads in remote and inhospitable terrain have "no mechanisms for rehabilitation or compensation". Since they are hired informally, they are affected by the persistence of "structural vulnerability". The author hopes "this tragedy will nudge a rethink on safeguards for migrant labourers, who are literally building the nation's backbone in harsh conditions." At one level a story of hope and of overcoming odds, Operation Silkyara is also an indictment of our treatment of the environment and our treatment of itinerant workers on large infrastructure projects....