It is so dark now that Raimoti can barely discern the features of the strange creature that was once a sturdy young man. He tries to get closer to the dim form, but it hears him and lops off. . . Ahead is a black lake, and the creature is hunched over the edge. He glares back at Raimoti and swiftly slips into the still waters. There are no ripples. . . Suddenly, the level of the lake rises so rapidly that he leaps back. The cavern echoes with manic laughter, and a watery shape gushes out to lunge at him.
No, that's not Gollum. It is the Beast of the mines, a furious, subterranean wraith that haunts the imagination of Raimoti, an old, experienced miner and part-time mystic. The Beast is the one thing that plagues the otherwise ethereal Raimoti: it is the fear all miners share as they daily enter their dangerous workplace. No hazard is greater than the lake above them, with the everpresent threat that it will burst through the walls and ceiling and flash-flood the underground labyrinths of the Bagdihi coal mine. Safety standards certainly exist, but the distant Powers That Be are more than willing to shave a bit here and there in an effort to conserve costs and increase production. Near the Indian city of Dhanbad, engineers at Bagdihi - with the approval of their superiors - naturally saw fit to narrow the barriers that held back the waters in an effort to extract more coal. The result was a calamity that claimed thirty lives.
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