The Great Downpour

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVI

Day Four

During the latter half of the night, it stopped raining. Seeta woke up to check on Chand. She saw that although he was breathing regularly, his breathing was becoming increasingly laboured. He was moaning with the pain. Over an hour, he kept going in and out of consciousness. Once, he became lucid enough to say, “I am dying, Seeta”, but for the rest of the night, he said nothing coherent. At one point, he opened his eyes wide, sweating profusely as he fought with the demons of his nightmares within his mind.

Increasingly worried about his health, Seeta was wide awake when she heard a growling noise just as dawn was arriving. At this twilight hour, it was still too dark to see anything, but she turned uneasy. She debated about whether to wake up everyone or to let them sleep. She decided to wait till she heard anything more. As minutes passed, forest sounds increased as birds, insects and smaller day-time animals began to emerge from their homes. A rabbit ran past where Seeta was resting. Some parakeets flew overhead, creating a noise that is so characteristic of parrots and parrot-like birds.

Within half an hour, daylight had broken over the tree-tops. The birds were chirping away. A few sparrows came over to where the group slept and began to feed on stuff that was not easily visible to Seeta. She got absorbed in watching the antics of these loveable small birds. The larger, darker males were quibbling among themselves for the attention of the smaller, lighter females. The sparrows are remarkably agile birds and when Seeta quietly tried to take her hand near one of them, the bird twittered and jumped back. It tilted its head to look at Seeta, then chirped an alarm call and flew away. Its flight triggered the flight of all the remaining sparrows as well and having reached the safety of the trees, the sparrows kept up a din that slowly woke up many of Seeta’s friends one by one.

“Good morning,” said Yash, who was the first to wake up. Gradually, everyone woke up, and morning greetings went back and forth between them. Our friendships have grown so much in the last three days, thought Sandesh. We are so close now, thought Nanda. This is ideal! I am so glad I came to this “picnic”, thought Rati. I am in love with Sandy, thought Bhairavi.

One by one, the dirty and tired boys and girls went to the bank of the river to wash themselves. The sun rose higher as they began to spear fish for breakfast. The vegetarians began their quest for fruits. Gangadin was soon roasting the fish over the fire. He is the oldest among us, and yet, he has served us so well and hasn’t complained or grumbled even once, thought Sandesh. He said this to the gang. They all agreed that his behaviour and demeanour had been exemplary indeed.

Over breakfast, Sandesh once again assumed the role of the leader and addressed everyone. The mood was somber as each one of them was feeling home-sick as well as worried about his/her survival chances in the forest if their rescue was delayed longer. At the same time, there was the unsaid thought about Chand’s physical condition. Seeta had already checked on him and found that he was not responding to her calling him, to her touch or to her shaking. The growling of the tiger the previous night also weighed heavily on everyone’s mind as they were all jumpy and nervous at the sound of the most innocent things in the forest.

“I have no hesitation in saying that I speak for all of us. We are all sick of this forest. We want to go home. We are much closer and stronger friends, thanks to the many adventures we have had and the dangers we have fought. We are indebted to Gangadin, who has served us way beyond the call of his station and duty as a peon of the college.” He called Gangadin to him. The peon was Humility personified. He explained that he had just performed his duty. Nobody should say that he was doing anything extra-ordinary. In his own words, “I am like your father. If I won’t look after you all, who else will?”

It was decided that Chand’s condition precluded his being carried on a seat and a stretcher was fashioned for him using branches of trees and dupattas lent by the remaining girls. He was laid on the stretcher and Farhad and Sandesh took over the responsibility of carrying him, while Gangadin, Muhammad and the girls would carry Yash turn by turn till they were rescued.

The group began to move soon after that. It had gone a mere hundred metres when the drone of the helicopters was heard again in the distance.

***

The two helicopters began their reconnaissance from where they had left off the previous evening when heavy rains had driven them back after a very short stint. The pilots were optimistic that they would find the lost youth today as the skies were relatively clear, the rains had stopped or were only coming with a weak intensity and the winds were not too strong either. Visibility was far better than the previous day as the sun had come out and the humidity had climbed down to below 65%. Unlike the previous day, the pilots had now established wireless radio communication with the Reserve Office at Pench as well as the SAR team that was in the Pench Reserve. As a result, they were confident that today would be a successful day in terms of achievement of their objective.

They were now flying nearly 25 kilometres out of the Seoni end of the Park. The river was quite active. The pilot in the leading copter was just remarking to his colleague that he could see the fish clearly in the river! The pilot in the trailing copter could hear him too. He said something like “Now you’ll tell me that you can also see and count their scales!”

But it was true. The topography of the entire area was seen clearly by both the pilots as well as their colleagues. They were covering the distance of ten kilometres in the direction of the Reserve Office, so that when they turned and pointed the copters’ noses towards the Reserve Office end of their run, they immediately spotted the fluttering piece of cloth at the top of an erect tree-branch swaying in the wind at the confluence of the two tributaries of the Pench River.

“Do you see what I just saw?” asked the leading copter’s pilot.

“Yes, I see the flag-like contraption at the confluence of the two streams of water,” replied the pilot who was flying the second copter.

“I am reporting it in,” said the first pilot.

“Roger that,” said the second one.

“Calling Control, come in, calling control, come in, over.” said the pilot.

The Main control centre was located in the Army and Navy HQ situated five kilometres away from Seoni.

“Come in, Alpha, come in Alpha, over.” replied the Radio Officer manning the listening unit in the HQ.

“We are able to see a flag made out of a dupatta at the point of confluence of the two tributaries of Pench at …” He gave the exact location of the spot.

“Can you land there and verify the find physically? Over.”

“No, can’t do that, Sir. But we can go in lower and see more closely, over.” said the pilot.

“Go in and see what you can find, over.” answered the Radio Officer at Seoni.

“Will do so, thanks. Over and out.”

The pilot banked his copter down till he was just hundred feet from the ground. He saw nothing else except for the flag. With his binoculars, he could even read the label on the dupatta. The label read “Groove”. He turned the copter out and back over the canopy of trees. He reported his find to the control centre.

“How long can you continue the search before you have to come back to re-fuel? Over.”

“At least an hour more, Sir. Over.”

“Okay, continue the search. Over and out.”

***

Sundeep and his colleagues heard the whole conversation clearly in the Radio Vehicle.

“If they are at the confluence, they are over 100 kilometres from where we are,” said Commander Pradeep Mehra.

All through the previous day, the SAR team had covered just over a hundred kilometres on account of the near storm-like weather and the inhospitable terrain. The vehicles had to stop nearly four or five times, the last one being for more than three hours as two of the jeeps had nearly sunk into the wet quicksand. Sundeep and the other civilians had lived a very frustrating day, with no progress and no news at all. In the evening, a radio message had been received that the helicopters had been unable to make any headway owing to the inclement weather and the strong winds.

With the receipt of the upbeat news of a new find, the morale of the civilians had just gone up by several notches. Nazima’s mother had tears in her eyes as she told her husband that her hopes that Nazima was alive and well were now at an all-time high.

“Inshallah!” said Mr. Iftekhar Shaikh, Nazima’s father.

The SAR now had a definite destination and a game-plan to reach, and it began to move with a greater speed than before.

***

Inspector Dubey and his three constables, including Hawaldar Jitendra Pandey, took a jeep and started travelling down the road that paralleled the river. They were confident that they would meet up with the students within the next three or four hours; the road only went in thirteen and a half kilometres. After that, there was no motorable road and they would have to travel on foot. They were all armed with guns; Dubey carried a modern-day rifle with a mounted telescopic sight for accurate targeting and shooting. They were aware that the tiger couple was not too far from where they were, and hence they had to go prepared for the worst.

Dubey was keeping his eye out for any signs of human movement. Bent grass, trodden soil and so on were sure-fire signs that humans had passed by some time ago. Nothing. So far, he had seen nothing.

At the end of the motorable road, the driver came to a halt and the four of them got out. At the very moment they got out, it began to rain again. The rain was slow to start with, but within just ten minutes, it intensified. The men had brought raincoats with them and they took them out of their jeeps and put them on. With guns in one hand and torches in the other, they set off to find the boys and girls lost in the forest.

***

Rising Water and his mate began to move at about day-break. They were hungry now and while the tigress was not particularly picky about which animal’s flesh to eat, the tiger preferred human meat over everything else. When a chance came to attack a group of sambar, the magnificent antlered deer, it was the tigress alone who went on the hunt. She gave off a growl of victory when she killed the fawn that she had hunted. The tiger was clearly uninterested, and at the same time, unimpressed with the kill that the tigress dragged over to him. He sniffed the deer and snorted once to indicate that she could enjoy her catch while he would wait for a better species of meat, namely, human.

The tigress spent nearly three hours stripping the flesh off the deer and eating it. Impatient, the tiger moved off to hunt for its own prey. By the time the helicopters were overhead, the tigress and the tiger had separated and were almost three to four kilometres away from each other. The tiger growled again, hunger and anger mixing together to give the growl a more sharp and dangerous character. He moved on, searching for a juicy human to eat.