Despite everyone’s efforts – the lists, the centres, the stations, the control room – there was more confusion than order. No one knew what to do with the lost women – mostly aged and infirm, penniless and hungry – until the Congress women’s committee, impatient with the indecisiveness of the authorities, took them in hand. Few knew where to take the lost or dead or injured in general, few knew where to find them. Unhappy people ran from one end of the hot sands to the other only to be told that the meeting place for pilgrims of their particular state was somewhere else. Injured or dead children were sometimes taken to the compound for lost children, sometimes to the first aid centres, sometimes to the police enclosure. The instructions on the loudspeaker appeared to change with the person who was temporarily manning it.
After a long night of assisting at the first aid centre, Kabir was staring blankly ahead of him when he saw Bhaskar being brought in.
He was carried in very tenderly by a fat, melancholy, middle-aged man. Bhaskar appeared to be asleep. Kabir frowned when he saw him and immediately got up. He recognized the boy as his father’s mathematical companion.
‘I found him on the sand just after the stampede,’ explained the man, setting the boy down on the ground where there was a little space. ‘He was lying not far from the ramp, so he’s lucky not to have got crushed. I took him to our camp, thinking he would wake up soon enough and I could take him home. I’m fond of children, you know. My wife and I don’t have any…’ He drifted off, then returned to the subject at hand. ‘Anyway, he woke up once, but didn’t respond to any of my questions. He doesn’t even know his name. And then he went off to sleep again, and hasn’t woken up since. I haven’t been able to feed him anything. I’ve shaken him, but he doesn’t react. He hasn’t drunk anything either, you know. But, through the grace of my guru, his pulse is still beating.’
‘It’s good you brought him here,’ said Kabir. ‘I think I can trace his parents.’
‘Well, you know, I was going to take him to a hospital, but then I happened to be paying attention to that horrible loudspeaker for a minute or two – and it said that those lost children who had been taken under protection by individuals should keep them in the Mela area, otherwise tracing them would be impossible. And so I brought him here.’
‘Good. Good,’ sighed Kabir.
‘Now if there is anything I can do – I am afraid I will be leaving tomorrow morning.’ The man passed his hand over Bhaskar’s forehead. ‘He doesn’t have any identification on him so I don’t really see how you’ll trace him. But stranger things have happened in my life. You are looking for a person, not even knowing who they are, and then you suddenly find them. Well, goodbye.’
‘Thank you,’ said Kabir, yawning. ‘You have done a great deal. Well, yes, you can do one thing more. Would you take this note to an address in the university area?’
‘Certainly.’
It had struck Kabir that he might not be able to get through to his father by phone, and that a note to him would be useful. He wrote a few lines – his handwriting was something of a scrawl because of his tiredness – folded it in four, wrote the address on top, and handed it over to the fat man. ‘The sooner the better,’ he said.
The man nodded and left, humming mournfully to himself. After he had done his rounds, Kabir picked up the telephone and asked the operator for Dr Durrani’s number. The lines were congested, and he was asked to try a little later. Ten minutes later he got through, and his father happened to be at home. Kabir informed him of the situation and asked him to ignore the note he would be getting.
‘I know he’s your friend, the mini-Gauss, and that his name’s Bhaskar. But where does he live?’
His father was at his absent-minded worst.
‘Oh, hmm, er –’ began Dr Durrani. ‘It’s very, er, difficult to say. Now what is his last, er, name?’
‘I thought that you might know,’ said Kabir. He could imagine his father scrunching up his eyes in concentration.
‘Now, er, I’m not exactly sure, you see, er, he comes and goes, various people, well, leave him here, and then we talk, and then, er, they come and pick him up. He was here last week –’
‘I know –’
‘And we were discussing Fermat’s conjecture about -’
‘Father –’
‘Oh, yes, and an, er, interesting variant of the Pergolesi Lemma. Something along the, er, lines of what my young colleague, er, I have an idea – why don’t we, er, er, ask him?’