The Great Downpour

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIII

Day Three

Three things happened at the crack of dawn all at once. The first of these events woke up all the eleven people who had gone to sleep the previous night under the shelter of the teakwood trees. The event was a flash of lightning that was followed by the most God-awful sound of thunder. The clouds had been building up throughout the evening of the previous day and it was a matter of time before they opened up. Flashes of lightning and sounds of thunder kept recurring, closer and closer each time. In no time at all, it began to rain torrentially.

The second event was the change in direction of Rising Water and his mate’s sojourn. They began to move in the downstream direction of the river at about 4:00 a.m. At the rate at which they were moving, they would be upon the heroes and heroines of this story by late afternoon of this day.

The third and the final event was the mobilization of two helicopters by the Government of M.P. at about 7:00 hours on this day. The helicopters left the army HQ at Gwalior and made their way towards the Pench National Park.

For the eleven people stranded in the park, the start of the day was marked by their waking up to the sounds of thunder and the flash of lightning. Everyone began to immediately fold their extra clothes and so on. Turn by turn they went and rinsed their mouths and washed their faces. Seeta attended to Chand, no longer hiding her affection for him from the others. Both Nanda and Rati helped Yash to clean up. The friends decided that since they were all going to move as a single team, it would be prudent to do something to move the two friends who could not walk on their own. Again, it was Sandesh who took the lead in helping to construct two carriers that the others could carry on their shoulders so that Yash and Chand weren’t left behind. Each of the nine fit members spread out to bring back vines and sturdy branches of trees. It was tough going, since the rain intensified. A blanket of darkness began to envelop the entire park. A particularly strong bolt of lightning came down so low that it hit one of the teakwood trees just 50 metres away and uprooted it. Terrified of the possibility of something similar causing damage or injury to them, the friends worked at a feverish pitch. Once sufficient branches had been collected, the men got together to remove the leaves and twigs off the main branches. The work was back-breaking. The next job was to fashion two strong carriers that could accommodate, ironically, the only two large men of the entire group. Each of the carriers had to be created with enough strength to hold 100 kilograms of weight, give or take a few.

“The basic design is to first make a strong seat from four branches, then a ten to twelve inch high back-rest to hold these guys while we move and finally, four hand-holds for us to carry the carriers and their cargoes to safety.” Sandesh kept at it even though he now had to shout to be heard above the sound of the rain and the other noises of the forest.

The two carriers were finally ready to be tested “live”. Sandesh began this by asking the two invalid persons to clamber on to them. Yash was able to do so easily, but for Chand, every movement of his body was so painful that it took all of Seeta’s coaxing and cajoling for him to move on to the seat of his carrier. While Sandesh and Muhammad would lift Yash, Farhad and Gangadin would do the same with Chand.

They knew that the job would require every single ounce of energy from the four lifters. The girls agreed to provide the much needed moral support and at the same time, also help by bearing the weight from below the seat on some occasions. The onus of providing a regular supply of drinking water also fell on them.

The progress was tardy and fraught with near disasters. At one point, the rocky ground was uneven, and Yash almost fell off the seat when Muhammad lost control and fell. Mercifully, Nazima immediately ran and supported the seat from Muhammad’s end.

“Thanks, Naaz,” said Sandesh and Yash almost in the same breath. Naaz simply nodded while Muhammad relieved her and took the handle back in his hand.

At another point, a group of wild boars stood in their way. The four weight-bearers laid the carriers with their occupants down and sat down with sheer fatigue. The girls were a bit nervous, seeing so many wild animals blocking their way. Sandesh allayed their anxieties by remarking that boar usually did not have the courage to attack full-sized humans, so they needn’t worry. “However,” he paused for effect, “they might just get to be a nuisance, so I suggest that we all steer clear of them and try and go ahead.”

The boars were about twelve or thirteen in number and kept snorting and grunting as the dozen passed by. One of the boars, perhaps the group’s alpha boar, made as if to attack Nanda from the rear with its small but sharp tusks, but Bhairavi, Nazima, Rati and Seeta made such noises that the boar hid its tail between its legs and made a dash for it.

The boys all laughed at this latest attempt at spontaneous humour. The caravan continued.

The rain continued to fall with the same intensity as it had since morning. As the morning advanced, the wind velocity increased so that the cold draft of air buffeted them with stronger and stronger force till they were all leaning into the wind and walking with a much laboured step.

They must have proceeded more than half a kilometre when they came upon a most horrible sight. It sank their morale like nothing in the past two and a half days had: the river was being fed by two tributaries! Both of these tributaries were more or less of the same width and they joined at an angle of less than 30 degrees, so that it was impossible to predict which of the two would lead them up to the Reserve Office and the rope bridge and which one would not.

The four men lowered their baggage and sat down on the wet rocks, contemplating what to do next. There was gloom in the eyes of most of the intrepid travellers.

“I vote that we split up into two parties and see where each of the tributaries leads us,” opined Seeta. She was still depressed as there was no news of her brother Sundeep. Either he had saved himself from this entire (mis-)adventure, or he was still lost. It seemed pointless to ask eleven people to leave everything and go look for one person, so she had kept quiet so far. Now she decided to take the matter into her own hands with regard to Sunny.

“What do you mean?” asked Sandesh.

“It is my feeling that sooner or later, we will stumble on to some clue regarding which is the right route. When we all tumbled down one of these rivers, we lost so many of our possessions, right?”

“Right,” said Sandesh, beginning to see where this was going.

“So we should be able to …” began Seeta.

Sandesh cut her short by finishing for her. “…find some articles or pieces of these that belong to one of us! Wonderful idea! Why did I not think of it first?”

“Correct. At the same time, I also propose two more things,” continued Seeta.

“Continue, please …” interjected Sandesh.

“Firstly, we do not carry Yash and Chand when we split up. Once we know the right path, we can take them. One or two of us can stay with them. Second, once we decide which path to take and go ahead, we leave behind something to let Sundeep, if he comes here, or any search party know that we have gone past this place,” finished Seeta.

“I think both these are excellent ideas,” said Farhad, and added, “What do you say, Sandy?”

Sandesh turned to ask Yash how he was feeling. Yash, who had hardly complained of the pain that he was feeling inside his shin, smiled wanly and said, “I am fine, thanks for asking. Just get on with it!” Sandesh looked at Chand, who was equally encouraging. Chand gave him a thumbs-up despite the agony that he was experiencing.

Sandesh then agreed with the plan of action. He appointed Muhammad and Seeta to stay back with Chand and Yash. He split up the remaining people into two teams. Farhad, Nazima, Bhairavi and Gangadin would follow the left-sided tributary, while Rati, Nanda and he would take the right-sided one.

Accordingly, the group split up. The group that followed the left-sided tributary said their good-byes to Sandesh and the two girls and set off. Sandesh set off too, accompanied by Rati and Nanda.

The going was a bit easy, since there was no dead load to be carried, and Rati and Nanda were quick walkers too. In the next hour or so, they had covered nearly two kilometres, but without any success. On one or two occasions, they did find a few human items, such as a plastic glass and a child’s rattle, but it was obvious that these were not their belongings. However, for the sake of reporting, they picked up both these items, as well as a belt-buckle, a white-but-soiled dupatta and a bunch of keys that hanged on a small pen-knife key-chain. They decided to take an about-turn so that they could get back to the confluence of the two tributaries and show these items to everyone.

In the meantime, the other team also set off on a similar adventure. They found a cap of a lens from a camera, a crumpled baby-napkin, some broken cold-water bottles and a plastic-bag containing some clothes and a wallet. They also saw some small cardboard boxes on the far shore, and were almost sure that they were a part of the lunch rations that Farhad had brought in. They were excited with this find, and turned back to meet the others after this.

Both the teams arrived at more or less the same time. In this interval, Chand’s condition had become a bit worse. His fever had risen further and he was becoming drowsy and not replying to simple conversation from Seeta and Muhammad. The items were all laid out for everyone to see. It was Yash who became the most excited of all on viewing the items.

“That lens cover … it’s mine! It’s mine!” He began to shout, grabbing Farhad who stood next to him.

“Are you sure?” This came from Nanda.

Yash took the cover in his hand and carefully examined it. After what seemed to be a long wait, during which he squinted at the back of the cover twice, he looked up triumphantly at everyone and nodded his head vigorously.

There was jubilation in the camp as everyone relaxed and cooled off.

They decided to make a flag-like pole at the confluence, using a large branch. Sandesh tied his wind-cheater and Bhairavi her dupatta on the pole with vines. They placed the pole in a location that was easily visible from all four directions. Along with these items, Seeta also put her bracelet with the image of Lord Shiva on it. She hung the bracelet from the top of the pole. Sunny also has an identical bracelet and will know that I was here!

They decided to begin the journey immediately.

***

Rising Water was beginning to feel the pangs of hunger again. His mate had allowed him to mount her just a few hours ago, and logically, there was no reason for him to become angry. Therefore, the tigress was not a little surprised when he went off on a prowl all by his own. He came back to her in less than 10 minutes. He was growling angrily as he was getting completely drenched in the heavy rain. Twice he circled her and signalled to her to get up and start moving with him, but she refused as she was still in the mood to be with him and did not feel like walking.

A state of “status quo” was maintained for nearly an hour. After that, the tiger became more and more irritable and he started prodding her with his nose, asking her to get up and move. Finally, the tiger won the round of wits and the tigress purred softly and got up, stretching her legs. She began to move forward.

If the pair had persisted on their track in a straight direction, they might never have crossed the track of the collegians, but they changed their direction at about Noon and began to walk almost at an angle of 90 degrees to the original direction and this time, they would be in the same straight line as the boys and girls who had come to the forest. The time to rendezvous: approximately 10-12 hours from then.