MISSING PERSON SQUAD

I have led a fairly  unremarkable life so far. I was never hyperactively  frisky to go missing from fairs or houses  nor courageous enough to leave either my parents or spouse. But I have had a few brushes with the pandemonium that sets in when children go missing.Two of those  involved my youngest brother Bunty, the third  Tanuj, my son.The durations were  shorter -  not for as long as three hours, the period for which siblings  go missing in Hindi cinemas before the reunion which is  usually facilitated  by  either a tattoo or a scar or birthmark  or even an old housemaid's story of a  Macbethian  night of thunder, lightning  and rain. 

Even though those three incidents  had  caused much anxiety for sometime , my abiding memory has been  the spousal tumults they  had triggered.  A celebrated columnist with the Jordan Times had once lamented that whenever offsprings commit a mistake (like they are deemed to have  when they go missing), the mother is held responsible whereas sparks of brilliance in children are arrogated to  the genes they inherit from the male parent . With her characteristic perspicacity, she had proceeded to pepper her article with types of women's reactions which range from Silent Treatment to the more robust Municipality Water Tap aggression .

It was in 1969. Not finding his mother in our ancestral home 'Savitri Sadan' in Patna, Bunty, a confident boy of a little over four, asked a cousin about her whereabouts. 

"She has gone to Chachi's house," the cousin told him, disastrously forgetting to prefix  Chachi with a name.

Now there would not have been less than five Category I chachis and over a score of Category II chachis in the Sahay extended family in Patna those days. But Bunty, with his linear reasoning and quick thinking,  never for a moment  thought it could mean anyone other than Sarla Chachi.  He stepped out, climbed the gate, opened the hatch bolt, swung himself out on the gate in a quarter circle and jumped down to start a journey  of over a mile of busy road from Kadamkuan to Fraser Road Chowraha where Sarla Chachi's house was located.

After a little while,  my mother returned from the house of another Chachi  which was  just two houses away.  And then began the search. Initially it was in hushed tones, then a bit louder, and when it reached the ears of  Dada, my  paternal grandfather,  it was laden with anxiety and despair. Dada was a jolly man, fond of food and beverages, his parties were a rage in the small town of Patna. But he would be seized with  bouts of neurotic anxiety when someone  fell unwell in his huge joint family, or in situations like this. Shit hit the fan when he heard that his youngest grandchild,  the lad barely out of his days of a whistle-prod to piddle, had gone missing.

Those were the  days when fathers-in law  did not mince words while scolding  their daughters- in -law. My Dada tore into my mother for being a 'careless girl' . He also shouted that the boy was an idiot, just like his father. The servants  fled away, not wanting be within  his eyesight  or  earshot .  Of course frantic searches  were launched and a number of enquiries made to other relatives from 22523, the number of our  telephone which lay in a wooden cradle.But it was not a search that located Bunty. Tara, the daughter of the maid Jamuniawali, had gone out on a different errand when she spotted  the imp trudging alone towards his destination near the local petrol pump. She brought him back to the house . 

Bunty  returned to see quite a few of us standing in the front with anxious looks. He ran towards my mother in excitement but my grandfather cut him short. Dada was so incensed that he, otherwise an affable and affectionate old man who never said anything harsher than 'Ullu kahin ka" to his grandchildren , ordered the poor boy to be tied to a black pillar in the verandah. Bunty was more puzzled than terrified. My mother wept quietly, not having the guts to question, forget roll back, Dada's  diktat. This went on for over twenty  minutes when my grandmother returned from Charkha Samiti. She saw the tamasha, rained down  rebukes at my grandfather, untied the boy, and rewarded the servant girl with a princely chavvani  she took out from the knot of her white khadi sari.

" Lemonchoos  kha liha, " she purred and patted.

 Dada retreated with a whimper in the face of the Matriarch's flared nostrils and glaring eyeballs.

Much later I asked Mummy  the reasons for Dada's excessive  anger. She related a story told to her by her nanads . About thirty years ago, probably five years after the Bhookamp or the Great Bihar Earthquake, my Papa ,  then a lad of hardly three  whose speech  had not even been formed fully, silently slipped away to his mausi's  place in Jahaji Kothi . He had mistakenly  thought that she had stolen his Mai's  sari. During his unexplained  absence for  close to an hour, Dada had thrown a fit and had desperately ordered for a search to be caused  in the well in our courtyard.  When Papa  returned with a servant of his mausi  in toe and a  sari, he was soundly slapped till my Dadi threw herself in between. Age was to be respected only for the elders those days , none was too small  to be thrashed - no exception was made for Binoo. 

After 1969, it was 1972. Railway Ground, Dhanbad. The Indian Army's 'Weapons from 1971 War ' travelling exhibition had halted at the City of Black Diamond. We went, packed in two cars-  the mothers were not there, we kids, my father and Gupta Uncle. It was a fascinating spectacle as the lines of excited people, children and grown- ups alike, filed past different  sets of weapons   - the military orderliness  intermittently broken  by loud sighs of gawk and awe from the crowd. After that it was time for some air gun shoots, hoopla  and eats at  the various stalls set up  in a corner of the ground.  

And then Bunty went missing for a second time in under three years. For about fifteen , interminably long minutes he remained untraced. I, the eldest of the siblings, even though single digit in age, was quite concerned.  I had heard  too many stories of children being kidnapped , deformed  and forced to beg at railway platforms, temples and level crossings. I started the search, so did the other boys- but with instructions not to stray too far lest they also go missing. Finally we heard  an announcement over the mike.

No, it was not for the Missing child, it was for the Missing father!! Bunty, now a veteran of one search, had quietly  spotted a May I Help You  booth and had sought assistance to trace his father who, he informed much to the amusement of the people out there, had gone missing.  There was a sigh of relief, and Gupta Uncle even took a dig at my father.

" Yaar Sahay, learn from your son. Tum kya isko khojte, yehi tumko khoj liya."

We returned home, and went about  our ways- against the backdrop of an acrimonious exchange between Papa and Mummy on  responsibilities of bringing up a child. My mother firmly rebutted my father's accusation against her for  not having taught her children the art of not  going missing at fairs.

" Listen, I did not say anything against Papa the other day in Patna, but it doesn't mean that even his son can go on and on, " she jabbed at him,  and then twisted the knife by relating a thirty year old story. 

It was over thirty years  since 1972 that I had not been privy to children missing from  the house . But then it happened again. It was in May, 2005 when we went to England for a short holiday. That day we had gone to witness the change of guard at Birmingham Palace. The crowd was large,  my seven year old son sat on my shoulders to get a view of the proceedings . Very soon his fascination waned in the face of some competing interest . At his insistence, I put him down and started to take some pictures. 

And then Tanuj went missing. In a foreign country, without any Tara or a May I help You  booth. The boy was a bit frisky for sure. In 1998, when he was just over a year, he had freed himself from his nanny and walked under the side railing of the road near Loreto College in Darjeeling. But his very brief absence had been quickly discovered when there was a loud noise as he hit the asbestos roof of a house ten feet below and the piercing abuses by the owner of the house alerted my wife, Sarla Chachi ( yes, the same one to whose house Bunty had left for thirty years ago)  and Bina, the nanny. 

But this was different. In an alien land, where ensuring safe possession of the passport was more important than the wallet, the sudden missing of a child was like a bolt. A quick search with nervous energy had not helped to trace out the boy.

And then the ghost of conjugal conflict surfaced. The blame game started and the search was kept on hold for sometime.

" Where has he gone ?"

"How would I know?  He was on YOUR shoulders," the stress on 'your' was accompanied by an  index finger pointed at my shoulder.

"What do you mean,  I had put him down next to you," I countered weakly.

"I never thought you could be so irresponsible."

Even as Tanya looked at us wistfully, her eyes searching for her little brother, I heard a sharp hiss.

"Now will you stand here fighting or go and search for the boy?" the voice hissed between clenched teeth.

"And you. Didn't I tell you a thousand times to hold on to your brother's hand?" the hissing juggernaut did not even spare my poor daughter. 

" Your boy is out there, " a Good Samaritan shouted.

What a sigh of relief  it was even though it did not ease the marital tension for the rest of the sulking day - right across Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly down to the tube ride to Guddu Di's home.