The window rolled down and a man craned his neck out.
‘Where to?’ thundered Arun Samuel, the diminutive star journalist of the channel. ‘Varadharajapuram,’ shouted back Krishna. ‘Near Mudichur,’ he added.
‘Volunteering?’ he asked running his dark, beady eyes over them.
‘No,’ shouted Meenakshi this time. ‘We … we are missing a friend.’
‘I am heading to the Tambaram air force station. Can drop you guys off at Camp Junction.’
Krishna and Meenakshi considered the offer. Camp Junction was at least 10 km from Varadharajapuram. It would take them an hour to cover the distance under present conditions.
‘I checked before leaving. Buses are plying in the area,’ remarked Samuel helpfully.
The duo raised a thumbs up and squeezed in.
‘Sorry,’ said Samuel. ‘It’s usually just the driver and engineer in the van but I had them pick me up cause I didn’t want to use my car.’
After ten minutes of silence and non stop texting by Samuel, Meenakshi couldn’t help but ask, ‘How come you have charge? Our batteries are about to die.’
‘There is a mechanic garage near my house love,’ he said looking up from his phone. ‘I charged it on a car battery.’
‘Why are you heading to the air force base?’ asked Krishna next.
‘To get on a chopper and get some aerial shots.’
‘Of what?’
‘You ask a lot of questions for a grown man,’ growled Samuel.
‘He always does,’ Meenakshi mumbled.
‘Look who is talking,’ scowled back Krishna. Then turning back to Samuel he asked, ‘Are you trying to film a rescue operation?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Then why are you hiring a chopper?’ he badgered on.
‘Hiring?’ Samuel laughed.
‘We have no money to hire another reporter, son. Where are we going to find the money to hire a chopper?’
‘Seriously?’ asked Meenakshi looking up from her father’s not so smart phone that she was trying to figure out using.
Samuel nodded. ‘English news channels have been in a bind since the recession. In Chennai, we are just a one man bureau. Of course there is a trainee to help me and, my colleagues from Bengaluru and Hyderabad have been flown in to help cover the rains but otherwise it’s just me.’
‘Must be very exhausting,’ remarked Meenakshi who with a full fledged team to help get out two business pages still found her day hectic.
‘Look at it this way’ insisted Krishna. ‘You can gauge the actual extent of damage from up above. It’ll help you get a good perspective!’
‘Perspective?’ asked Samuel looking a bit amused. ‘It’s all about the visuals, son,’ he remarked.
‘You can’t deny a video or picture conveys much more than a report,’ said Meenakshi.
‘Of course it does!’ said Samuel, his voice rising. ‘But am I to risk my life in getting that one visual?’ he demanded running his hand through his hair. ‘The newsroom would love it if I did an exclusive from mid-air, hanging on to the landing skids of a chopper. But hello, I trained to be a journalist not Akshay Kumar.’
The brother–sister duo burst out laughing. So did the driver and engineer. It helped ease the tension in the van.
For the rest of the journey, all five people rode in silence, past inundated roads and by lanes, submerged cars and army trucks and inflatables evacuating people out of their homes.
‘Doesn’t Appa have data on his phone?’ Meenakshi asked her brother.
‘Nope’ he replied.
‘Want to know the latest update? asked Samuel looking up from his phone, his mouth twitching at the corners. ‘Someone sitting in Mumbai has learnt that Abhishek Bakshi and his football team are driving down to Tirupati from Chennai on a Volvo bus.’
The brother-sister duo waited for the reporter to go on but the man began to shake with laughter.
‘They want me to flag the bus down for a possible interview,’ he said clutching his tummy. ‘And do you know what is the best part?’ he asked wiping a tear from the corner of his eyes. ‘They think all roads lead to Tirupati. Ha ha ha!’
Later, in a quiet voice Krishna asked, ‘Are the demands usually this ridiculous?’
‘Always,’ assured his sister.
At The Daily Times’s Editorial, Shahroukh Mistry was busy and happy breathing down everyone’s necks.
‘Arjun where are the updates on HML?’ he barked.
‘Why bawa?’ asked the desk head lazily. ‘There is a schedule printed every day.’
Mistry fixed him with one of his bone boring stares.
‘I—I, I didn’t think the readers would be interested in a detailed report for every match played.’
‘And since when did you start taking editorial decisions?’ he demanded in his silkiest voice.
Just then the entertainment desk head strode up to both men. ‘Yes, what is it?, Mistry asked shifting his gaze to Pinky.
‘Bakshi is in Chennai, rescuing his team,’ she said looking from Rathore to Mistry. ‘Okay … not really rescuing but since the Chennai airport is shut down, he’s riding with his team to Tirupati on a bus. They’ll be taking a chartered flight from there to Mumbai and then head to Pune for their match on the fifth.’
When neither of the men responded, she asked a little hesitantly, ‘Sorry, do you already have it covered?’
Her question was met with more silence. Mistry then turned to Rathore and asked, ‘Did you or did you not know of this?’
Rathore turned a blood clotting shade of red in reply.
‘Zoze, please take over. Rathore saab needs to do some soul searching.’
The associate editor waited until the sports desk head packed his bag and scooted.
25
In the first floor of a house Rakesh lay asleep, his legs spilling over the footrest of a double bed. Three rather worn out diaries and a couple of black and white photographs with sepia rounding up its edges lay in disarray around him. The fan had stopped whirring an hour back and tiny beads of sweat had sprung up on his forehead. With a frown Rakesh woke up, wiped the sweat with the back of his palm and squinched at the mess around him. For a moment none of it made sense – he was butt naked at a stranger’s house. A few seconds later though, last evening’s events flooded his mind.
Even as the low pressure system south of the Bay of Bengal had charged into Chennai the previous morning, he and a bunch of volunteers had driven to Varadharajapuram late afternoon to deliver relief materials. Enroute they had realised that the intensity of the showers was something else that day but there was no looking back. They had been on the grind long enough to know that on a day like this, every pair of hand would count.
When they had finally pulled into the Manimangalam Road Junction after a two-hour drive, chaos had met their eyes in every direction. While trucks carrying out bound machine boats and kayaks lay parked to one side of the road, hordes of people evacuated from neighbouring streets flanked the other side. Rescue personnel were lowering boats from trucks even as others brought back boatfuls of evacuees. At one end of the road, relatives and friends stood with torches and flashlights, alongside stranded cattle and strays waiting for their loved ones to emerge through the crowds. Seeing that there was much to do and few hands to do it, Krishna and Rakesh got off the Jeep and made their way through the crowds to where a lean lithe man stood in a black body suit shouting instructions to a crew dressed in blue shorts and tee. The duo waved as they neared him. The additional director general of police (ADGP) of coastal security nodded, recognising the two familiar looking volunteers.
As they inched nearer carrying bags of food and water, they heard his cellphone buzz continuously. The ADGP didn’t take the call immediately. But when he did, he listened patiently before cutting in and stating calmly, ‘No, sir, I cannot divert my boys. Not right now at least. We haven’t finished evacuating residents in the area.’
‘Yenna aachu sir?
’ Krishna enquired when he cut the call.
‘Some IAS officer wants me to send a team to where his family is stranded. How can I when my boys are working in this area?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘As it is, I keep getting distress calls from the US about parents stranded in the Tambaram- Mudichur area.’
‘They shouldn’t have left behind their parents in the first place then,’ said Krishna with a scowl.
The ADGP shrugged in reply.
‘Trouble is before we are done with one street, we get diverted to another. We end up doing multiple trips to evacuate just one street.’
‘Isn’t that a drain on the fuel?’ enquired Rakesh who had been listening in.
The ADGP nodded grimly. ‘To add to the confusion, false alarms are doing the rounds of social media. This,’ he said with a deep sigh, ‘is turning out to be a logistics nightmare.’
Just then a large blue fisherman’s boat entered the street with men, women and babies spilling out of it. Krishna and Rakesh stood where they were, not wanting to add to the confusion but when an old man stood rooted behind the gunwale of the boat, letting everyone file past him, the latter rushed to his side.
‘Sir, do you need help?’ he asked gently.
‘Sir?’ Rakesh pressed again a little louder. The man who barely came to his waist looked up finally, his chin quivering.
Rakesh froze.
Even by the dim light of the evening, he could see that the old man looked uncannily like colonel uncle – the man who had taken his widowed mother and him into his large home in Mumbai all those years back; the man who had dropped little Rakesh to school every morning, picked him up from swimming classes alternate evenings and taken him for lime n sodas and later a beer at the Matunga Gymkhana where he had insisted upon introducing the now dashing Rakesh as his own grandson.
Feeling a little dazed, Rakesh offered his hand to the old man and asked, ‘Do you have a place to go sir?’
The man shivered, seemingly from the effort to talk.
‘Gayatri … I left her behind,’ he said feebly.
‘What?’ asked Rakesh, horrified by images of an old woman drowning. He made a motion to inform the head oarsman when the old man brought down his soft, wrinkly wrist on him.
‘No, Gayatri’s diaries have been left behind. They contain her every thought, every dream,’ he said.
‘Uncle, people have lost more,’ said Krishna who had by now reached Rakesh’s side.
‘I know but that is all that I owned,’ the man said looking up.
Seeing that the two men didn’t argue back, he spoke again. ‘Have you ever loved someone so much that it hurts? Now imagine that someone was taken from you. You go numb isn’t it? That’s what happened to me when she died. I went numb – I went without food, sleep or a thought for days. And then I found her diaries! The memories of a lifetime rushed back to me and with it the ache of remembering but I was grateful for it, you know? Now I fear I’ll go numb again.’
The three men stood affixed. One inside the boat. Two outside it.
Krishna tapped Rakesh on the shoulder. ‘We really must be going. We have two more drop offs.’
Rakesh dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
‘At this rate, we won’t return home before dark and you know how hard it gets after that,’ Krishna warned.
‘We at least we have a home to get back to,’ he replied his mouth in a thin line.
Turning back to the old man, he asked where the diaries were kept.
‘On the bedside table like I mentioned. In the first floor.’
‘And your house sir?’
‘On fifth Main. End of the road,’ he replied hope lifting the corners of his mouth. ‘It’s the only yellow coloured house in the street.’
‘Do you have a cell phone, sir?’
‘I do,’ the man said pressing his palm to the pocket on his shirt.
‘I’ll get in touch once I pick up the diaries,’ Rakesh assured him.
The older man muttered his thanks and placed his leg over the gunwale finally. The two younger men stared after him as the crowd carried him away.
‘How are you going to reach his house?’
‘You heard the ADGP. Every boat is making multiple trips; I’ll get on one and return on another.’
‘It’s not going to be that easy,’ Krishna replied shaking his head from side to side.
‘True, but it’s only a few streets away. It’s worth a try,’ he said tapping hard on the boat and signalling the crew to depart, wondering why they hadn’t already. That’s when he noticed the crew crowding around one of their own. Both Rakesh and Krishna had to crane their necks to have a look. One of the rescue personnel was drenched to the bone, waves of shivers hitting him one after the other.
Within seconds, the ADGP arrived with blankets in hand. ‘Dont know how much longer my boys can keep at it,’ he said even as the man was wrapped in one and carried up a truck.
A thought struck Rakesh. He realised that it was the only way he could unite the old man to his wife. He turned to the ADGP and casually asked, ‘Can I help?’
‘Neenga doctor aa?’ he asked searching for some mark of identification.
‘No … I meant can I take his place on the boat?’
The senior IPS officer considered the offer carefully. Taking a civilian on board was rife with complications. But they were already one man down and fast running out of diesel. His team had even taken to paddling and this was exhausting them sooner than expected. Anyone could see that all hands and more were required on board.
‘Do you know to swim?’ he asked Rakesh, sizing up his shoulders.
‘Very well, sir,’ he answered.
‘You look like a strong man. Go on then,’ he said.
As the boat cast off, he called out to Rakesh and said ‘Don’t try anything I won’t’ with a wry smile that knocked years off his lined face. Rakesh turned around and gave Krishna and the ADGP a thumbs up that belied the knot he felt in the pit of his stomach.
As the boat slowly made its way through the murky waters, fallen lampposts and rooftops of cars, a bright yellow house loomed into view. It was a two-storeyed house at the end of the street. Rakesh knew he had to get off the boat now if he truly intended to get hold of those diaries. He rose to his full height in the boat and announced his intention to get off.
‘What?’ exclaimed the men in the boat.
‘I need to get hold of something from that house,’ he said calmly.
‘Have you lost your mind?’ asked one of the divers among the rescue personnel. ‘The current is very strong and there are snakes in the water. Didn’t you see one back there? Sorry, you can’t get off the boat,’ he said as if talking to a child.
‘I need to. Listen, it’s this house, right here,’ he said. ‘I swear, I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise.’
‘What are we supposed to do while you are gone?’ the head oarsman asked. ‘Wait for the sun to come out?’
‘No, you guys go ahead. I’ll collect my stuff and wait out in the terrace. You’ll be going back this way, right?’
The crew nodded.
‘So I’ll shout out when I spot you from the terrace.’
The crew still looked at him uncertainly, convinced that he was a madman. But at the back of their mind they also knew that it was these reckless and selfless acts such as these that had made the difference between life and death. These past few weeks, ordinary people had emerged heroes by the simple act of turning empathetic. The crew on board weren’t inclined to stop him.
‘We’ll wait till you get inside,’ said the diver.
‘That’s settled then,’ Rakesh said cheerfully, stripping out of his shoes before anybody else could object.
‘Thanks anna,’ he said before slipping into the water and swimming towards the boundary wall of the house with strong strokes. The light from the boat had helped Rakesh spot spikes on the gate and he had quickly decided this was the best way in. Circling the house were all kinds of ru
bbish including bottles, mugs and two plastic chairs.
The front door laid open by the rescue team to evacuate the old man was thankfully still open and Rakesh swam past it to enter the house. Taking care not to swallow any of the water, he tried to discern through the darkness the stairway leading upstairs. He heaved himself onto it by clinging onto the railing and covered the remainder of stairs in no time. Upon entering the bedroom upstairs, he scanned for the door that opened out to the terrace. Prising the latch open, he ran to the edge of the terrace to wave at the men waiting below in the boat. To his surprise, they whooped and cheered.
Only when the boat slid of sight, did Rakesh feel the blood slam against his chest and temples. He took a few deep breaths, trying to shake off the adrenaline. His shoulders finally relaxed. A bit.
26
Back in the room, his eyes fell on the bedside table atop which two slim brown diaries rested. A third lay open on the bed. He walked towards it to take a look when he realised he better not. He was dripping like an otter and had no intention of ruining the very things he had come for. So he unzipped out of his hoodie and hung it on a chair nearby. He did the same with his tracks and tee since the swim from the boat to the house albeit brief had drenched him to the bone. Next followed his boxers and vest.
When he finally sat down on the chill, dry sheets of the bed, his limbs struggled to fight the exhaustion of the past few days. But he knew he couldn’t rest. He still had to hand over the diaries and find his way back to 56, Olcott Road or the relative’s house where his mother was staying. And God only knew how much longer that would take.
A long weary shudder passed through him. This time last month, he would have never thought he would be in such a situation. But when he and his mother had got caught in the city’s rains, the need to reach out had been instinctive and even inexplicable, he realised since this was the very city his mother had fled from all those years back.
He gazed at his watch for the time. It had taken a little over 20 minutes to reach 5 Main by boat. It would be more than an hour before the boat returned from 7 Main where it was headed to evacuate more residents. Not willing to take any chances, he decided to be ready and waiting in the terrace in the next forty-five minutes.
After the Storm Page 16
