jamshedpur. tatanagar, jampot. my residence this summer has been given various names but the asian birthplace of iron is only done justice by the title “city of steel”.

ranchi & jamshedpur are 80 km apart as the crow flies, 131 km by road and miles and miles of mazy motion as the river subarnarekha flows. even though i’m biased as a ranchiite, it’s hard not to like jamshedpur at first glance. the two major towns of the state make for an interesting comparison, and a national parallel can be drawn with new delhi & mumbai.

ranchi is the seat of power in all forms: political, religious, cultural. jamshedpur, on the other hand, excels commercially as the industrial heart of a minerally gifted state. take the rail connectivity for instance: while ranchi has better connectivity through rajdhanis and shatabdis, tatanagar station is ultimately superior in size and maintenance.

the best part about jamshedpur is the charming surroundings. as a walk in the telco colony will show, this place seems to be stuck in a 70s time warp: broad leafy avenues, snow white padminis, company clubs and kaiser bungalows. against the usual steel & glass structures, the town is representative of an urban vision that’s years old yet refreshingly original. its continued existence is proof enough of its success.

talking about infrastructure, it’s probably the largest such town in india operating without a municipality. yet the roads are butter smooth, power in uninterrupted and water can be drunk straight off the tap. i don’t know of any other indian city that has an industry right smack in the middle and residential areas in the suburbs; it’s usually the other way around. the verdant greenery foresting the entire city makes you forget the presence of heavily polluting industries. this high quality of life comes despite, and not because, of the government. there’s a lesson here somewhere.

it’s not only the commerce and the infrastructure which rival the best metros. the cosmopolitan character of the town comes as jamshedpur’s biggest surprise. people from all over india have flocked to work at this mecca over the past hundred years and this reflects in the daily encounters with the residents. for example, the local version of breakfast is idli-dosa and the dialect in office is an intriguing blend of bhojpuri and bengali. with tata steel and tata motors swallowing corus and daewoo trucks respectively, how much time till the civic makeup turns international?

in a town where the electricity, water, buses and even salt comes from the tatas, it’s no surprise that i’m currently undergoing training in a tata group company. short of living with the graduate engineer trainees (which i was prevented from), i don’t see how closer my life can imitate that of a tata motors employee: i do the same jobs, eat at the same hostel and work the same hours.

like all of my bitian classmates, the similarity of the menu in their hostel mess came as a shocker. it’s almost as if the cooks read our minds when they heated the dinner’s custard to precisely the same temperature. atleast i now know why tata motors is designated a dream company for campus placements at bit mesra: it’s the feeling of homecoming.