Our son, all of fifteen years, wanted to watch a
cricket match live, at the Eden Gardens Stadium, Kolkata. He said all of his
friends had been there at least once, while he was yet to start. We initially
said no, but had to give in to his persuasion. He organised the ticket, a
couple of his friends, and decided to go. He wanted to carry a cell-phone, to
which we said “no” again, and he relented, thinking it was the lesser of the
battles. The other two boys who went with him were perhaps, a couple of years
older, and both had cell-phones.
About an hour after he left home that Saturday
afternoon, the skies darkened and let loose a violent rain-and-thunder squall.
We were worried that he would reach Eden
Gardens
We kept watching the match on TV in the fervent hope
that we would be able to see our son during one of the many camera sweeps of
the crowd, but that was not to be. Around the middle of second innings, the
rain came down with renewed vigour causing the match to be abandoned altogether
and forcing a decision based on the now famous Duckworth-Lewis rule….
We could see the crowd slowly making its way towards
the exits, when suddenly the channel switched over to the other match in
Mumbai, which was just starting. That was when my wife called up one of the
friends who were with our son. He said, “Auntie, we are now on our way out of the
stadium, but I cannot find him, we got separated in the crowd.” I could hear my
wife’s voice rising hysterically as she asked for clarifications – when did
they get separated, where were they now, how did this happen, et al…. I guess
she got disconnected shortly thereafter because the conversation ended
abruptly.
I tried to pacify her, asked to give them some more
time to come out of the stadium and try to re-group. She bit her lip and sat
dumb-founded. Our daughter tried to ring up someone she knew who was a regular
visitor to Eden Gardens
We called up his friends again after about twenty
minutes – they said they were waiting for him at one of the gates and it was
still raining heavily. Some relief there. Some twenty minutes later the fellow
called up to say that our son had still not joined them and that they would be
leaving for home as their parents would now start getting worried.
I always had faith that at fifteen, our son would be
able to find his way around, although we had come to know that he had already
spent whatever money we had given him on cold drinks and snacks and was left
with only ten rupees. It was the lack of money that worried me. And it was the
lack of information that made his mother almost sick.
She suddenly remembered an acquaintance who was a big
shot in the management of the Eden Gardens Stadium. She called him up. He said
that the stadium was empty now except for the players, and then said not to
worry, he would inform the police. He called back a few minutes later to say
that the police control room had been informed and they had spread the message
across to all the policemen on duty to identify a fifteen year-old boy wearing
the jersey of one of the teams, if he was found wandering and lost…
The rain had stopped. I was contemplating my next
course of action, when the phone rang. It was from the Maidan Control Room of
Kolkata Police. They took the full details and description of my son and said
that they would be on the lookout.
The phone rang again. It was my son’s friends
enquiring if we had heard anything. We said no, and they said they were on a
bus returning home, and there was a possibility that he too had taken a bus. Then
the gentleman who had informed the police, called up. He said that if our son
did not return home within the next half-hour or so, we should lodge a formal
diary with the police. We agreed, but deep in our hearts, there was that
sinking feeling.
It is at times like these that one tends to think of
the most ludicrous possibilities, and when sanity returns, think of some
logical steps, only to go back to worrying about absurd things once more. For
the better part of the following hour, we swung like a pendulum between a deep,
gnawing regret at not having given him that cell-phone and a fervent hope that
he would be intelligent enough to find his way home..
I was sitting out on the balcony, observing the
rain-washed streets and the people who were passing by, thinking about the next
steps, while his mother paced up and down, her cell phone clutched tightly in
her hands.
The three street dogs who live in front of our house
suddenly jumped up and rushed forward, and I heard my son’s voice talking to
them. “He’s home”, I screamed.
He walked up the stairs and into the arms of his
mother…. “I have realised today that one does not need a cell phone to
survive,” was his first comment.
He then explained how, after being separated from his
friends, he waited at the spot outside the stadium gates where they had planned
to meet, and then, when his friends did not show up, walked up to the Esplanade
Metro station, asking all the policemen on duty there, the way. At the station
he asked a senior police officer for a detailed step-by-step direction to take
the Metro, get off at Tollygunge station, and find his way home. The police
officer was more than helpful, and thus he came home.
We called up the Maidan Control Room to inform them
that the wait was over and our son was home. They said, “OK, thank you.”
I looked at the watch – we had gone through roughly
seventy-five minutes of ordeal – not knowing where he was, how would he come
home since he did not have enough money on him, what would he do if he was
lost, since this was the first time he had gone out alone in the city, and what
would we do in case he was lost…. Our
son too, was shaken by the experience of trying to find his way home through
that crowd. We realised it would be some considerable amount of time before he
got over it, when he said that it was much better and more comfortable to watch
cricket matches in the comfort of a living room, on TV.
75 minutes. We would remember that for a very long
time indeed.
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