Pinto Has An Idea

by Rajeev Saxena

  En route to Kanpur, a fellow at the Kannauj bus station stopped them with the words, ‘May I tell you something?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘It must be really tough for you. I understand the grief of losing a loved one.’

  Sympathy was free but was very important for both of them right then. Pinto, well versed as he was in the ways of the world, was delighted to hear some kind words from a semi-educated stranger. And those nice words were, ‘You’ll find him.’

  The man didn’t know any of the circumstances, but those words sounded so selfless and encouraging to Pinto, he was unusually touched.

  The man continued, ‘Sir, why are you giving a reward to the finder?’

  ‘Just to motivate people.’

  ‘It’s very bad. Finding a loved one cannot be valued in rupees.’

  ‘I agree. But what else we can do?’

  ‘Sir, if I find him, could you please arrange some “enjoyment” for me?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Some English liquor and tandoori chicken.’

  Sad as they were, Pinto and Saurabh burst into laughter.

  Saurabh was really amused, ‘People invest money in stocks and hope for good returns, but even in that structured market they are not successful. But look at this guy’s confidence: he’d put in effort to find our grandfather, almost an impossible task, and then he’d settle for a little “enjoyment”.’

  Pinto didn’t like Saurabh using the word ‘impossible’. ‘You should not lose confidence,’ he reproved him.

  ‘I think I have lost confidence but not the hope. It’s almost like looking for a needle in a haystack. But we love him. God cannot be so unkind.’

  After driving a little further, Pinto got a call that proved to be a turning point in their search, ‘My name is Jaipal. I might have seen Arun Srivastava. I read a poster on one of the buses, saw the photograph and called you.’

  ‘Where do you live? Can we meet you now?’ Pinto didn’t see any harm in meeting with him though he was thinking it could be another hoax.

  ‘I’m travelling to Delhi in a shared taxi, around 30 km from Kannauj, close to Gursahaiganj,’ Jaipal told them. ‘We have stopped at the eatery called Kake Da Dhaba on the GT highway. You will easily spot us.’

  ‘We’ll be there in half an hour,’ said Pinto, panting with relief. ‘Please convince your fellow passengers to wait. Thanks a lot.’

  Pinto and Saurabh caught up with them in Kake Da Dhaba. Jaipal was a genuine caller. He told them, ‘Sri Arun Srivastava was sitting on a bench on the railway station in Noida and asking people when the next train to Kanpur would come.’ Jaipal’s description of Pinto’s grandfather, his clothing, and his style of talking matched pretty well. It convinced Saurabh and Pinto that Dadu had indeed gone to Kanpur. One possibility was that he might have taken a wrong train. But they decided to concentrate their search in Kanpur, anyway.

  They checked for him there on railway platforms and in bus stations. Saurabh suggested they make a public announcement near Kidwai Nagar, where they used to live in Kanpur. Saurabh wrote the script on a piece of paper. The announcer practised in front of them and after a couple of sessions, the guy was ready to go with his cycle rickshaw, mic and battery.

  Within an hour of the announcement, they got a phone call, ‘I have a cart selling chow mein at Kidwai Nagar crossing. I saw Arun sa’ab. He ordered chow mein, finished it, and then asked for one more plate.’

  The guy seemed a little too smart. He described Pinto’s grandfather pretty much exactly as what was written on the poster.

  Saurabh said, ‘He would not have had chow mein, he never liked any food other than traditional Indian. Even if he’d had one plate because he was hungry, it was unlikely he’d demand another one.’ After telling the story, the cart guy started asking for money, ‘Sir, you have promised to award so much, you should offer me a little for providing you some information.’ Pinto smiled and said he’d get his money at the police station. The food vendor took fright and was not seen with his cart the next day.

  Pinto and Saurabh decided to go to some free night shelters called Rain Basera run by the government. It was tragic to see the filthy condition of those places used by rickshaw-pullers and smalltime labourers. They did not find him there either.

  The people who stayed in those shelters barely had any belongings—a water bottle, a small bucket, a change of clothes and a steel plate were their entire worlds. Bedsheets and towels were luxuries to them. They’d make a fire and try to keep themselves warm in the cold weather. Men and women were living together in these dirty conditions. Obviously, there were no toilets. Even if there were, they were so dirty and clogged up, people preferred to go in the open early in the morning.

  Four extremely cold days passed without any information on the old man’s whereabouts. Pinto’s family was prepared to hear bad news. They came back to Delhi and contacted the missing people unit in Noida. This was the only so-called organized and dedicated initiative run by police for missing people.

  As a pleasant surprise, the staff there were very nice and cooperative, ‘Here are the names and descriptions of all the people we have found over the last few days. Please go through this register and see if any description matches with your grandfather’s.’ Pinto searched through the list thoroughly but found nothing helpful.

  The policeman sitting at the desk suggested, ‘Please go through this register as well.’

  Pinto asked, ‘What is in it?’

  The policeman’s response was eerie, ‘It’s the list of the unclaimed dead bodies recently found.’ It was an indescribable moment, a moment of coming to face with the ugliest possibility.

  Emotions came and went. A scene from a typical Hindi movie suddenly appeared to be so realistic; a hero or heroine goes to the post mortem chamber in a hospital and identifies the body of one of their relatives. Pinto had always laughed at those scenes no matter how hard the film director had worked to make it realistic and evocative. Could he laugh now? With shaking hands, he finally searched through the second register.

  The policeman was turning over the pages and with every page, Pinto was praying to God his grandfather was not listed there. He vaguely acknowledged that all the people listed were somebody else’s husband, wife, son, or daughter, but Pinto was thinking of his own grandfather—that he should not be in there, never.

  And he was soon relieved that he was not. Pinto and Saurabh came out of the missing person’s unit with mixed feelings. It was another unsuccessful day for them, but at least they hadn’t found their grandfather in the book of the dead.

  It was the fifth day of the disappearance. Tanvi was carrying the guilt of letting the old man have access to the apartment keys. ‘Everybody close to him says they would have been sorry but at peace if he had died in front of them. But not to know whether he’s dead, or alive, and if so, in what condition. This endless waiting and not knowing is unbearable!’

  Pinto also didn’t know what he wished for. ‘In the Western world, when somebody dies, they “celebrate” his life. Now, I nearly wish I had found his name in the list of dead bodies. At least, we could have had a ceremony to ease our hearts.’

  In Pune, Lavanya was as worried about Pinto’s grandfather as she was anxious for Pinto’s return. It was not as if he took over any of the household’s running himself. It was just that his presence at home gave her comfort.

  On his part, Pinto was thinking of Lavanya, especially the difficulties she would face if she wanted to visit Harsha, now that their daughter was back in school. Lavanya was taking care of Pinto’s emails and other official stuff pretty well so that he could fully concentrate on the search operation.

  Men and women in general do not have all that much of attachment to their in-laws. It’s only natural that one’s ties with one’s own family are the closest. And it’s not that everyone hates every one of their in-laws. There are a few favourites one shares a bond with. For Lavanya, Pinto’s grandfather was one o
f those in-laws. She felt a lot of affection for him even though she’d met him only a few times.

  It was the seventh day now and all of his relatives considered him dead. Pinto was about to take a flight back to Pune with a heavy heart. That was when one of his relatives from Kanpur called him and gave him the big news, ‘We have found Dadu.’ Pinto jumped out of his chair, nearly dropping the receiver in his relief and pure exhilaration. He felt that if he had owned the whole world and all the surrounding planets, he would have easily traded them in just to hear Dadu had been found at last.

  Pinto and Saurabh took the next flight to Lucknow and drove down to Kanpur. Their reunion with their beloved grandfather was emotionally charged. The strange thing was that Dadu kept asking, ‘Who are you? Have you come a long way? Now that you are here, please do not go without having dinner.’

  Arun Srivastava didn’t even know what an ordeal his family had undergone during the last seven days. He was not in great shape, however, he looked tired and dehydrated, and had a few injuries on his face and knees.

  Mystifyingly, Pinto’s grandfather didn’t have the jacket on he was last seen wearing when he left home. Either he’d forgotten it somewhere or somebody had taken it. More interesting was the sight of a thin blanket some stranger must have wrapped around his thin shoulders. Otherwise, he’d definitely not have survived in the freezing cold. The good part was he hadn’t experienced the full impact of the episode. He was more or less relaxed, eating and chatting easily with the others, although he thought them to be outsiders. The bad part was that his loving family would never know what had ensued over the days he went missing.

  Pinto and Saurabh were curious and asked their relative, Dinesh. ‘How did you find him?’

  ‘It was by a miracle. I asked my sons to check all the beggars on railway platforms as those were the only people we had not looked at.’ Dinesh was a bit hesitant to go into more detail though he and his two sons were clearly heroes.

  ‘That must have been difficult.’

  ‘To some extent it was,’ said Dinesh modestly. ‘They cover their faces to protect themselves from the winter cold. Most of them were extremely dirty and stinking. It was like torturing them to forcefully uncover their faces in the biting wind. The beggars would abuse my sons and accuse them of planning to loot their belongings. Sometimes, a scene was created and nearby people joined in to ask my sons what their intentions were. Another part of the frustration was that the result was not guaranteed. It was a shot in the dark.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how grateful we are.’

  ‘You don’t have to be. Dadu means something to us as well.’

  ‘Your sons came to our help like angels. Did they actually find him among those beggars?’ Pinto was eager to know more.

  ‘Yes, he was so dirty that my sons couldn’t recognize him, so they called me. Seeing him, I wept.’

  ‘God bless your devotion.’

  ‘We told him to come with us, but he did not move. “Why are these young men taking me away and where?” he appealed to his neighbours. “Haven’t I had enough to bear already?” He was really scared.’

  ‘Poor Dadu.’

  ‘And a smalltime goon came asking for money, saying you cannot take him from us just like that. Give me five hundred rupees first,’ said the younger boy gleefully recounting their adventure.

  ‘I know these leaders,’ Pinto said. ‘When I was in IIT, a rickshaw-puller was hit by a truck. The goon ignored the injured rickshaw-puller and demanded money from the truck-driver.’

  ‘That’s all those so-called leaders are good before.’

  Pinto went back to Pune the next day. The whole ordeal encouraged him to do some work on missing people. He talked to Lavanya, ‘It is very difficult to find a missing person in a country where more than a billion people reside. At the same time, it is really shameful that in such a large country, there is no infrastructure in place to trace missing people. Should I start one more charity project?

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Lavanya enthusiastically. ‘This is the first time I feel you are not doing it for yourself alone. Before that, you worked on countless projects of use to the people at large, but I had this needling suspicion that you engaged in those because you needed the systems for yourself as well.’

  In the meantime, he got an invitation from the state government of Madhya Pradesh to participate in a conference in Bhopal for Non-Resident Indians. To his surprise, his request to meet one-on-one with the chief minister was accepted. He presented the chief minister with the idea to create a website for missing people supported by the state, and talked about a plan of execution.

  The chief minister liked the idea, called the chief secretary and instructed him to help Pinto. He also immediately connected Pinto to the director-general of police, the highest police authority in the state. The DGP assigned a senior police officer for this job. Pinto had witnessed how fast the government machinery could move with just one brief instruction from the top level which was, ‘Give all support to Mr Rajat Srivastava.’ Pinto was thrilled.

  Pinto decided to talk to some of his friends in the police. A superintendent of police advised, ‘An important point is that it is not a state-level issue alone. A person from Kashmir can be found in Kanyakumari if he is of unstable mind and has travelled aimlessly south. You should develop a modern functional website but execute it through the state machinery since they have the right muscle-power and infrastructure. Once it is implemented in one state, you could go to officials of other states to implement it.’

  Pinto got the website created and named it Gumshuda. Gumshuda literally means ‘lost’. It was a very simple site, with two sections, ‘missing’ and ‘found’. The police force had access to the system at every level starting from the police chief to a sub-inspector. When a person came to register a missing person complaint, the policeman would first search in the ‘found’ area and if a person matching the description could not be found, he would register the complaint. Appropriate alerts would be sent to officials in the area.

  Pinto visited several places before finalizing the design of his website. In one of the interactions with Kolhapur Police, he found that they displayed the belongings of unclaimed dead bodies every year in a sort of exhibition. There had been some visitors coming there every year for the past five years in the hope that they would find some relic of a friend or member of their family. That motivated Pinto to add one section in his website to include the possessions of dead people as well.

  Another police officer suggested, ‘In missing persons cases, time is of the essence. As police do not have the means to perform a thorough search, and because the time is very limited, it’s important to get help from the public.’ So Pinto launched a drive for police-public cooperation. Volunteers could register themselves around the country. Police could get help for searches from the volunteers in the particular area where the incident had happened.

  Saurabh had really struggled with those posters when he was searching for Dadu, so he suggested, ‘Add a feature to create posters for missing people from the website. Volunteers should be able to print posters for missing persons from the website and paste it in their area.’

  Unfortunately, six months passed but Gumshuda could not be implemented. Pinto was bitter about it.

  In their balcony Pinto and Lavanya were sipping tea. ‘I thought I’d cleared the major hurdle after meeting the chief minister,’ he mourned. ‘But I didn’t know private industry and the government worked in a very different fashion. Private industry is motivated by profit. Politicians are motivated by votes. Bureaucrats alone have no motivation at all.’

  ‘I expected you to say that,’ said Lavanya, unimpressed by his little diatribe.

  ‘Their approach is to let you do the work and then they’d “think” about implementing it. They were very active after the DGP’s order but the enthusiasm lasted only for a few months. They don’t even give me appointments easily any more. Think about it, if I went to a private com
pany and offered them a free software to help their customers, what would happen? They’d give me a red carpet welcome, that’s what!’

  ‘Talk to the chief minister once again. I’m pretty sure he’ll help you,’ said Lavanya reasonably.

  ‘I cannot fit into the system. I’d rather do something else. But I do have a slightly different impression of politicians now.’

  ‘What? They are the most selfish people going.’

  ‘Maybe, but I feel they are better than bureaucrats.’

  ‘Why do you think so?’

  ‘The chief minister did not have any direct gain in terms of elections from this website but he still took a lot of interest and quick action in his capacity. Bureaucrats created hindrances, although their job was to become partners in this enterprise.’

  Gumshuda never took off. Neither could Pinto handle government officials, nor did he find a sufficiently capable social activist. So he decided he’d put all his charity ideas on the backburner, till his retirement. Nobody knows what became of them.

  Pinto, unlike his old self, took time to recover from the failure of the Gumshuda project. He spent time idly watching TV between projects, before switching his attentions to his wife and daughter, acutely aware that he hadn’t spent time with them for a while. Lavanya was a bit tired of being left to her own devices. She had taken care of Pinto’s office work in his absence when he was in Kanpur to look for his grandfather, and afterwards, he had travelled pretty much continuously for the damp squib that the Gumshuda project turned out to be.

  Lavanya had secretly begun to wonder whether, as an educated professional, she should be imprisoned at home during Pinto’s never-ending projects. He came and went as he pleased, and Lavanya grew envious of Pinto’s freedom.