The Great Downpour

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXIV

Carmen Lancaster flew down to India by an Air France flight and reached New Delhi at 6:00 a.m. in the morning. She had received news of Rati the day before yesterday when the college authorities had called her up to inform her about the fact that Rati had got lost with ten or eleven of her friends in a National Park less well known to the world as compared to the Kanha National Park. She had immediately searched the internet for “Pench” and come up with a handful of entries. My daughter is all alone! I must go to India and help in the search, or at least be there when she is found.

She remembered her days of estrangement with Vijay so many years ago. It seems like a lifetime has passed. Her romance with him had been so … so marvellous, and yet, once the novelty of an international marriage had faded off, the days and nights had turned long and boring. In addition to the fact that Vijay was unable to do something purposeful in Paris was the fact that she had begun to tire of his parents who seemed to meddle in their personal affairs. Unused to the Indian mindset, she considered their loving overtures to be interference. The marriage soured rapidly after that, but there was a brief period of rejuvenation when Rati was born. Vijay was extremely tender and caring, she recalled. The first few months of parenthood went like a breeze, and Carmen began to entertain hopes of a relationship that would grow with the passage of time.

The differences started to crop up when his mother came down to Paris to “help” in her mothering activities. Indian cultural methods like an oil massage, giving the baby a concoction of grounded herbs everyday and using chick-pea flour as a massage to “remove the baby’s unnecessary body hair” sowed the seeds of discord. Unfortunately, instead of taking a firm stance, Vijay began to take her to task for not “permitting” his mother to “do their baby a lot of good”.

Carmen tired of it all and took it out with him on one rainy evening when her mother-in-law wasn’t there. She called her a “meddling Meera” and also the “cheapskate from Varanasi”. Vijay had heard all that he could. Rati was just six months old then. He packed his mother off to a hotel in Paris. The next day, he picked her up from the hotel, and flew off to India forever.

She got in touch with the French Consulate in India who directed her to the attaché in Bhopal. As it was, she had to go to Seoni via Jabalpur, so she contacted the attaché via telephone and asked him to contact the People necessary to extend help to her. She had a telephone number of a friend of Rati, and she dialled that next.

When she explained who she was, Nanda’s mother, who had answered the phone, broke down and revealed that her daughter too was a part of the group that was lost in the National Park.
Carmen apologized for re-opening Mrs. Tripathi’s wounds and begged to be allowed to visit them if possible.

The Tripathis remembered Rati from her recent visit to their house and were only too glad to be of help to her mother. Accordingly, Carmen Lancaster, with the help of the attaché, secured for herself a safe car to take her to Jabalpur. She would arrive there by nightfall.

***

A general strike was called in the city of Jabalpur by the Opposition Party to protest the government’s inaction in finding the lost students. The parents of the students of St. Aloysius College had all joined the procession that the Opposition party had taken out at 1:00 p.m. The procession would go from the Municipal Headquarters to the Mission School at the other end of the city. Cries of “Murdabad!”(Death to the XYZ) were being shouted by the parents. When the procession reached outside the High Court, the police escorts requested the processionists to keep quiet as per the rules and regulations, but the strikers were in no mood to listen. They vent their ire on public and private property, breaking windows of shops, uprooting bus-stand props, removing lamp-posts and the like. Police jeeps were sent out to all the disturbed areas to control the mobs.

The state Chief Minister and the Jabalpur Mayor addressed the people on the state radio and television channels and exhorted them not to take the law into their own hands. The Chief I.G. of police came on air on the radio and soothed the frayed nerves of the people by promising that the severest of severe punishments would be meted out to the dacoits. Anyone who had helped abet the crime would also not escape being tried and punished. The people finally returned to their homes by 8:00 p.m.

Back in the municipal Hospital, all the dacoits were discharged; eight of the nine dacoits were sent to the Central Jail at Bhopal. Only Nishaanbaaz was taken by a special vehicle to an isolation prison outside Seoni. There, he was interrogated more forcefully by the policemen. At about 6:00 p m, he lost control over himself and confessed to the police.


***

The helicopters were being disallowed from progressing to Seoni as the wind speeds had increased to over 60 kmph and it was the control centre’s opinion that the copters might not be able to maneuver safely with such high wind speeds. They were all made to land at Jabalpur.

At about 3:00 p.m., the rain stopped over Seoni and its surrounding areas. The copter pilots got their orders to move at about 4:00 p.m. They were over Pench National Park by 4:35 p.m. They began reconnoitering from the Seoni end. While one copter would cut through the sky in a north-south direction, the other would do so from East to West and back in a zigzag manner.

The pilots had decided among themselves not to descend below an altitude of 300 metres from the ground since the climate continued to be difficult. The rain made visibility tough too, and the pilots knew it beforehand, so that they progressed slowly.

The area around the rivers was filled with trees with hardly any open spaces visible from the top. The copters’ first trip covered a distance of just ten kilometres from the Reserve Courtyard in the downstream direction. The pilots were unable to fly deeper as the intensity of the rain precluded any further visibility. Lightning and thunder made radio-communication between the two pilots well nigh impossible. As a result, they returned to the Reserve Office courtyard within twelve to fifteen minutes after take-off.

The pilots went in to check with the police officers who manned the various offices in the Forest Department’s centre. They met with Inspector Dubey too. He was glad to see them and sorry too that they could not begin extensive searching on account of the rain.

“It’s always like this in Pench from July onwards. I have been stationed here since three years. I live in this very courtyard,” said Dubey.

“What about the land SAR?” asked one of the pilots.

He explained to them that a land team was already into the park since yesterday morning and he was in touch with them until recently. Now, however, they must be in the deepest portions of the park where mobile connectivity was unavailable.

“What about you and your own team of hawaldars? Have you made any effort?”

“Yes, indeed I have. My hawaldars and I went by jeep almost twenty kilometres into the park today afternoon, but we could not find anyone,” said Dubey.

“Well, the question I am about to ask begs a simple answer, Inspector,” asked the pilot and continued, “Why did you not go further?”

“I had to return because that was the time when the rain intensified and we had reached an area of the park that is known for dangerous quicksand,” said Dubey. He certainly did not mind the questions, but he was getting a little annoyed by the comeuppance of the pilots.

“We heard that your superior died very nastily,” asked one of the pilots, changing the subject.

Dubey took a deep breath and answered, “Yes, he died badly. I would have thought that a bullet would have sufficed. But Shastri, my C.F.O. had five bullet wounds inside him. Now why would a dacoit do that?”

“Could it be some sort of a vendetta? It is common knowledge that there is no love lost between forest officers and dacoits and they are always crying for the heads of each other?” asked the second pilot.

Hawaldar Jitendra Pandey joined in the discussion.

“Sir, I have heard that Pahelwan had announced a reward of Rs. 2500/= on the head of our beloved C.F.O.”

“What? How is it that I never hear these things?” questioned Dubey.

Pandey laughed and said, “Because you are a senior officer, Sir.”

Dubey felt anything but jovial and made such a surly expression that Pandey shut up and went back to his own work.

He had another thought. “I was informed by my Seoni superiors that many of the dacoits are alive. Have they said anything of substance?”

“Yes, haven’t you heard? They have arrested one of the teachers from the College for aiding the dacoits from outside and passing them information that proved to be useful in planning the mass robbery. It is quite another matter that their plan went haywire and they ended up being dead or injured!” said the first pilot, obviously abreast of the most recent information from Seoni.

“He was their history teacher, I believe …” said the pilot, adding that he could not, for the life of him, remember the name of the teacher. “However, I think the name was a Christian one ...”

Dubey was lost in some private thoughts and the pilots too kept their silence as there wasn’t much more to be discussed. After a few minutes, the Hawaldar came back with a tray full of cups of hot tea and a plate of biscuits. Dubey became the courteous host and offered the tea and the biscuits to the pilots. The latter partook of these heartily.

It was nearly seven p.m. when the rain let up. The pilots debated whether it was worth going into the forest again for a spell, but decided against it for obvious reasons. They requested permission to contact their superiors. The superiors also concurred with their assessment and asked them to return to Seoni for the night.

Thus the pilots took off back for Seoni at ten minutes past seven and were back there within the next ten minutes.

***

The group heard the distant drone of the helicopter as they were all walking past a deep gorge on their left.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!” Rati shouted as she jumped up and down repeatedly. Bhairavi heard it too and started leaping up with joy. Soon, everyone had heard it and there was a wave of jubilation among everyone. Gangadin was whooping with joy too.

“It’s about time, yaar! I am sick and tired of eating pears and figs!” said Nanda.

“Ha ha! Imagine eating tasteless, spiceless roasted fish for breakfast, for lunch and for dinner for two whole days!” said Sandesh.

“Enough of these sick jokes!” said Seeta. She added, a bit more sedately, “Just look at Chand! If he doesn’t get medical attention soon, we might even lose him …”

This dampened everyone’s mood as they realized the truth of what Seeta had said. Chand was indeed looking bad; the two people carrying him had to walk very slowly as he flitted in and out of consciousness and often leaned on one or the other of them.

To the utter surprise of everyone, though, the drone that had raised their hopes a little while ago began fading in intensity!

“What happened? Why did they not come this side?” asked Yash. He had begun to hope for a rescue today and the gradual disappearance of the sound of the rotors of the copters meant that a rescue today was out of the question.

Farhad supplied the answer. “I think they had to abort the search because of the increase in the rain and the extremely poor visibility. Besides,” he continued, casting his eyes upward and sweeping his hand at the trees, “look at the trees overhead. Is there any chance that they will see us even if there was no rain?”

“We must keep going and hope that they will resume the search tomorrow,” said Bhairavi, whose comment elicited a nod from most of the listeners.

They continued to plod ahead, each one dreaming of a rescue before tomorrow was done.




- ##Dr.Taher##

Check out:

The Great Downpour  (13+) A handful of college students fight for survival in a Wildlife National Park. #866998 by Dr Taher writes again!

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I do not suffer from insanity. I positively enjoy every moment living it!