I was the one holding the rope and it was an old hemp rope the boss hadn't replaced in years and it was knotted in two places and in one place it had already snapped once and we'd tied it back with a piece of twine and that twine I could see well because it was right there where the rope ran through my closed fist when Arun went down first, and Arun was the youngest of the four of us who'd worked at Marwah Printers since February, he'd come to Sultanpuri last from a village in Bihar that I wouldn't even know how to name, and the supervisor Jayant that day had said "go down and clean the pit, there are no masks today, they took them to the store of the other factory and nobody went to bring them back, but it's a half-hour job, be quick".

And we hadn't said anything because you don't say anything when you've been there four months and the rent on the room in Sultanpuri you pay by splitting it three ways with two other cousins and your mother back in the village is waiting for the money every week, and so Arun took the rope around his waist and lowered himself into the pit, which was narrow and deep, and we could already smell it from the edge but Arun said "all fine" and started down, and I held the rope and felt Arun's weight pulling me down slowly and felt his feet on the iron ladder going one rung at a time.

Then the rope went slack.

It went slack the way it does when the weight is gone. I shouted "Arun, Arun, answer me" and Arun wasn't answering and Sandeep had come to the edge of the pit and Sandeep was thirty-two and had a two-year-old girl in Sultanpuri and he said "I'll go down and get him", and Sandeep tore the rope out of my hands and tied himself and went down, and this time I held the rope already knowing something, and that something was that inside the pit there was an air that hurt the lungs, and Sandeep got halfway and I noticed the rope going slack again, and Sandeep from the bottom said nothing, and Chand, who was the oldest of us and was forty-two and had four children and a sciatica that made him walk crooked, Chand tore the rope out of my hands and said "what a useless rope" and he went down too.

And I was alone at the edge with the rope in my hand for the third time and the rope had gone heavy because it was still, and still means no one is moving down there, and I took a step toward the edge and put my foot on the iron ladder and the smell hit my face like a soft slap, and Ramesh, who was on the other side of the yard, saw me and ran and grabbed me by the shirt, pulled me back, told me "not you, Vinod, not you". And I stayed on my feet with the rope in my fist and my foot still on the first rung and Ramesh holding me.

I could have gone down and I would have died like the other three, this I know now and I knew it then too but not clearly, I knew it in a dirty way, the way you know a thing when your head tells you one thing and your body tells you another, and Ramesh was holding my shirt and I let go of the rope. The rope stayed on the edge of the pit.

The firemen came at twelve twenty. They pulled out Arun first, then Sandeep, then Chand. Arun was still warm. Sandeep had his mouth open like someone about to say something. Chand had his eyes closed and looked like he was resting after a long shift, and I thought that Chand always rested like that, on the floor of the changing room, during the break. They laid the bodies in a row against the wall. The doctor came after. He said the same words three times. Brought dead. Three times. Brought dead.

I called Arun's wife. Her name is Lakshmi and she lived three doors from my room in Sultanpuri. I said "Lakshmi" and then I couldn't say anything else and Lakshmi understood because the third time I said Lakshmi without saying anything else she dropped the phone and I heard her screaming on the other end, and then a neighbor picked up the phone and said to me "what happened" and I said "the pit, the pit, the pit", and then the neighbor hung up.

The police came and took Jayant away and then went to get the owner Suraj Marwah and the contractor Neeraj who had sent us there without masks. I gave my statement and signed and the officer asked me if I wanted something to drink and I said no.

I left the yard of Marwah Printers at sunset. The rope was still on the edge of the pit, they'd left it there the way I'd left it. I sat down on the industrial embankment behind the factory and watched the sun go down. My hands were empty. I realized I hadn't let go of the rope properly: I still had a little piece of it in my fist, a torn piece, long as a finger. Tight. I'd been holding it since Ramesh pulled me back and I hadn't noticed. Now I noticed. I looked at it. I didn't let it go.