Seeing the world through veil of smoke is common at Jharia as everywhere you go it’s fire, smoke and pollution. It seemed that dust and pollutants are now a second skin of the inhabitants of this place. It’s dusk and children accumulated by the fire made to prepare charcoal from raw coal. This gives them warmth and they spend hours by the fire after dark as these fire pits are cosy places to be in chilling winter. Bhowra is part of Eastern Jharia open cast mines. Jharia is India’s most polluted city because of open cast mining operations since long. In addition to the hazardous open cast mine operations, coal scavengers set fire to tonnes of coal for making charcoal which is later sold in illegal market. It is almost impossible to stand here barefoot as the ground is extremely hot because of the underground fire which is burning for a century now. The situation gets worsened during summer when the underground heat and the sizzling temperature make life unbearable.