The long passageways are stacked with fresh paper and toner. They smell of something queer, like ink or perhaps glue. The people who work in there wear paper caps and aprons that have long since been stained. They go up and down ladders with catlike agility, removing some things and re-arranging others.

The main photocopying machine at the far end of the passage sputters and coughs all day long. Essays and reports and everything else that someone deemed worthy of having in black and white spills out onto the tray, taking birth into a careless world. One where we fell trees so that we may able to read our horoscopes in the trains on our way home, only to discard the print once we reach home.

There are several such photocopying machines, dotting the passageway. They make lesser noise but guzzle as much ink. The men and women who handle them lose count of the number of paper reams they tear open to feed the hungry stomach of this angry looking apparatus. They sit hunched over tiny tables alongside, punching uniform holes through formidable stacks of paper, to bind them eventually, sponging off the papers the Chemistry thesis that leaks off or the novel that some kid is a little too proud of having written.

They look at the calendar hanging on the wall often and smirk knowing that come April, all this paper will be lining someone’s garbage bin or covering someone’s greasy sandwich.