A manhole worker with Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, Kanu's job is to clear blocked sewer lines. He enters the sewers, dives into the grey sullage, and removes the obstruction with his bare hands. ``I have to drink, it dulls my senses; if I don't drink, I will be sick with the stench,'' Kanu says. Kanu (name changed) is only one of the 900-odd manhole workers in the city, many of whom drink liquor to forget the hell inside choked manholes.

Mahesh Vaghela has been trying to de-clog a manhole with the help of an iron rod, but hasn't succeeded. ``I think I will have to enter it,'' he says. Clad only in shorts, he lowers himself into the manhole and disappears into the frothing sewage. Every morning,Mahesh goes to a liquor den in Naroda, downs a couple of glasses, and then takes a bus to work. ``Otherwise how do you think I went inside this rotting gutter?'' he asks.

The AMC Nokar Mandal, a trade union of municipal employees, has been demanding that workers be given liquor permits to be able to buy good quality liquor. ``It is simple. Just like a soldier fights on the border, a manhole worker goes down a hellish gutter. He can work only if he takes liquor,'' explains mandal secretary Harish Makwana.

H P Mishra of Kamdar Swasthya Suraksha Mandal, which is trying to persuade the workers to give up liquor, says alcoholism has ruined family life for many workers. ``They have got this wrong notion that they cannot do without liquor; their superiors have stuffed it into their heads,'' Mishra says.