Covering 170 square miles, Jharia is India’s main reservoir of coking coal, the hard coal used to make steel. It has been on fire, calamitously, since 1916; entire villages have disappeared into the smoking ground. Undermined railroad lines have fallen into the earth, followed by farms and streams. When I visited the region, toxic fumes shimmered in the air. Issuing from cracks in the earth, they wreathed the ruined buildings and black, leafless trees. In the evening, patches of smoldering red were visible, scattered like watching eyes across the charred landscape: Mordor without the Orcs.
