“Ahh...!!!!!”
She said, sipping the hot tea in the cup. She gently lifted the spicy looking
samosa from the plate and crunched it between her white teeth, while her tongue
savoured the taste of it. Her eyes suddenly threw a concerned look at the
flow-sheet we had placed on her table.
She inquired, “Where is the material
balance?”
Le....Gosh!
All you need now is Material Balance. What the heck?
I would have felt much better if I could release the thoughts in the form of
words. Every other group had mesmerising clear concepts about the project from
their guides, but our samosa woman knew only one single thing, “MATERIAL
BALANCE”. I wished if I could bark at her, Ma’am
can we know what actually we are doing in the project?
“Ma’am, I think we will have to do
that again.”
“Is there any kind of dispute running
over you all?”
Her questioning reply hit like a stone
on my forehead. I didn’t know from where the word dispute arrived, all of a
sudden. To each and every doubtful query she had an answer of her own that
diminished our solving hopes and totally altered the direction of our flow
through the project. Little did she know what kind of woes we had surpassed not
only in starting but even for developing a taste for her silly ketoneous venture. Instead of steering
our wheels orderly, she would rather prefer building up a pile of flaws of our sleepless
late-night hopeful progressions, which I felt was not so sinful like she
expressed with her chesty sentences.
“Ma’am, actually we have a doubt on
the final flow-sheet you have proposed to us.”
“What...!!? I suppose you all had
shown me the balance for this flow pattern.”
My replying explanation was overlapped
right at the start as her mobile phone rang. This was not the first time and it
didn’t surprise me, but once again drastically minimized the enthusiasm of an
elated interrogation. Yes, we had shown her before, not once but thrice and
that too for three different patterns. Each time we presented her so desired
balance, the payoff was no different. She would just say with her flattering
but self-swollen tone, See now, I am
thinking you all have to add something more which I feel will result something
much better and practical. Look, why don’t you add a small .........
Why didn’t she seem to understand that
her tiny varying innovations per visit boasted of forcing us to throw away ten
pages of turmoil to a trash and bearing an ass burning repair of her shitty
crap? If she spoke so highly of her beloved material balance, she would really
have to know how her time to time small changes can unbalance the whole
material and our minds as well. And when I looked at her murmuring sweet voices
over the phone, no offence to the one on the other end but I really wanted to
relieve myself by fouling my mouth. Not only did mine, all of our four faces
revealed what was boiling inside.
Finally, after nearly killing us to
what we can call to be the last micron of patience or the first of an outburst,
she hung up, gave a toothsome bite of her half devoured samosa and asked us,
“What’s your problem, tell me?”
It would have been much more
appropriate if I told her that the real problem was she, but that would have
surely bankrupted our hopes for the marks. However, she wasn’t so humane in
that case too, if referred to the infamous figures on our mark sheets of the
last semester despite the hailed membranes we did prepare to save her nose from
the others of her kind. But unlike her, I spoke projectciously.
“Ma’am what about the water that goes
in through the scrubber? I think some quantity of it would be present in the
product and also in the recycle.”
And then she thought. After one month
of her profitless blabbering demands finally she got some seconds to think!
Were there thirsty desert Arabs inside the husky equipment to finish off the
water before it comes out from the column? She had already justified our
balancing as correct where we had considered water effect as zero according to
her.
She frowned and murmured, “Didn’t you
consider the water before? You should have done that.”
It meant that time had arrived for use
of the long awaited 20% solubility in water which she had only mentioned to
note it in the diagram, but never ever confirmed its appliance. The situation
also confirmed her necessity of virtual practicality, though her bookish
know-how was out of question. But she wouldn’t lose.
“What have you done to the condenser
here! Is this how you symbolise it? Being an eight semester student it’s a shame
not knowing it.” She suddenly broke loose and disparaged at us looking at her
deskmate.
“It’s okay ma’am. We will correct it.”
Chiranjib sounded signalling me to fuck off from the atmosphere which was
starting to grow stuffier per second. Our work was over. We had at last cleared
our doubt which was pinching me right from the start. And in the context, we
also danced a bit in the chance of lowering our unpleasant project queen,
though we didn’t show it. But still, in the end we had a new and horrifying
material balance ready to boil on our heads.
