Man and Stone in the Movies

[Norman Watts <Norman_Watts@zzzzzzz>]

On three trips to the Himalaya I have each time been saddened to see
people recover stone from the river beds. Men with levers and
sometimes machinery pull boulders from the river bed, then they get
broken, then transported up to the roadside where heavy dust and
diesel fumes from passing truck and bus traffic coat the people and
vegetation. There the stones get broken into small bits, and smaller
bits again. This work is done by women. Then children break the last
bits down to gravel. Then someone shovels it into a wheel barrow and
throws it over the embankment to better shore up the roadbed against
the river.

n