The Missing Girl Read online

  He was tall and thin, very fair, with a mop of untidy silver-grey hair, and shining bright eyes. The eyes and a hawk-like nose dominated his thin face. Dressed in a red shirt and blue trousers with suspenders, and a purple silk scarf draped around his neck, he looked like a wizard in a storybook Sneha had read. She couldn’t help staring at him.

  The man was smiling. In the midst of all the mess, he looked blissfully happy. Bits of plaster, probably brought down from the ceiling by the explosion, lay on his hair and clothes. His attention was not on her or the old man. He was smiling to himself, happily engrossed in the smear of red on his hand.

  Sneha’s companion touched the man’s arm. "Sahib, this girl was outside. She’d fallen down. The explosion must have scared her."

  "Aha!" exclaimed the man, fixing his brilliant eyes on Sneha’s face. "A little girl! Little girl, come closer. Come and see this. What's this on my hand? Tell me."

  Sneha stared at the smear of red on his hand. It must have come from that bubbling cauldron of blood. She turned her face away.

  "Sahib, the girl..."the old started to speak.

  "The girl will stay here.”

  The old man tried again. “Her parents will be worried. You don’t need her here. She must return home.”

  “I need her here,” the strange man said, smiling brightly at Sneha as she stared at his hand, smeared with red and coming closer.

  ***

  Inspector Singh contacted the suburban police stations.

  "Any complaint about an explosion?" he asked.

  There was none.

  “Very strange but we shouldn’t give up hope There are many suburbs around the city. The explosion is a definite clue. I suspect the hand of a clever gang behind this. Five other kidnappings have taken place in six months. The gang operates between states. It has managed to elude the police so far. But not this time. An explosion attracts attention. Someone will complain and we’ll flush them out,” the inspector told Mr. Roy.

  Mr. Roy nodded though he was not really listening. He was worried about Sneha. Was she injured in the explosion?

  CHAPTER 7: GENIUS

  Sneha stared at the hand smeared in…paint? It was dry and seeing it this closely, Sneha realized that the red liquid was not blood. "This is paint," she said.

  The strange man beamed. "It’s made out of weeds and clay. Come, I'll show you."

  The old man interrupted. "The child needs to have her cut attended to. I can’t find the first aid box. I gave it to you yesterday. And the girl, where did she come from? We should contact her parents."

  "Bholu, one problem at a time. The first aid box. Where did you give it to me?"

  "In this room."

  "If it hasn't gone up in the explosion, you'll find it here. Next?"

  “The girl.”

  “The girl is not a problem. The cut is. Do something about it. We must have band-aid somewhere. So, little girl, what's your favorite subject in school?"

  "Science, and math."

  "Good. Mathematics is like truth; only one answer. And science, what do you know about science?"

  "Sir," said Sneha, now totally at ease with the strange man, "until last year we studied general science. Now I'm in the seventh standard and I 'm learning about chemistry, physics, and life sciences."

  "Oh no!" exclaimed the man, throwing up his hands in horror. "Child, don't make that mistake. Science is science. Don't put it into compartments. And even if you have to put it into compartments, don't choose between the compartments. Come, I'll show you my lab."

  "Sahib," intervened Bholu, "I've found the first aid box."

  While attending to Sneha’s cuts and bruises, Bholu asked, “How did you come here?"

  When Sneha told her tale, the strange man laughed. "I was working on a problem. Sometimes, my thoughts are clearer after a long drive. I took the car after lunch and drove around aimlessly for a few hours. When I saw the solution to the problem, I stopped the car to make notes. I must have stopped for ten or fifteen minutes during which time you slipped into the car. I didn't know you were in there."

  Bholu looked at Sneha's puzzled face and smiled. "Sahib is a scientist. He's always finding problems and solving them."

  The scientist laughed and clapped Bholu on the back. "That's an excellent definition of a scientist."

  Sneha wanted to let her parents know she was all right. The explosion had made her forget. “Sir, may I use the telephone?” she asked.

  "The explosion killed the telephone,” Bholu informed her.

  “What?”

  “The phone is dead so you can’t ask your father to come and take you home. Sahib will have to take you back. Before he does that, eat something. You must be very hungry.”

  Sneha turned to the scientist but once again he was engrossed in the paint. "Hmm, the paint is fine. The weed, the so called useless weed and fine clay and glue, all ground together, filtered and boiled, that's this red paint. Much cheaper than the paints in the market. This will help the common man. Fine, fine until here. Yet, some time back it was brown. When did it turn red ? Before, during, or after the explosion ? That's the vital point."

  "Sir," said Sneha, slowly understanding.

  "Yes, you've got the point. Good."

  "The paint," gulped Sneha, "I was standing by the window before the explosion and the mixture was red then."

  "Good," said the scientist, approving, his eyes sparkling more brightly, "Good observation! Come now, let's calculate the heat and study what steps we should take so that the paint is not lost in an explosion."

  He energetically propelled Sneha into another room that was crowded with books. The divan was covered with a mass of paper out of which the scientist accurately picked up a sheaf.

  "Now listen child," he said as he jotted down, "we want to make a liter of paint. How much?"

  "One liter, sir."

  "How will we do that ? Come on, come on, you’re doing excellently. What do we need. Come on!"

  "I …don't know!" Sneha stammered.

  "Then ask, child, ask. Always ask. That's the key to knowledge. We need the weed, 200gms. Have you started on botanical names ?"

  "No."

  "Fine, we'll call it a smelly green weed. That's what the botanical name means in Latin."

  "How can a green weed give red paint?"

  "Why not? Does not the green betel leaf, the green henna leaf give red color?"

  Sneha watched mesmerized as the scientist quickly listed out different substances, some of them she'd never heard of before.

  "So what is our problem, child? Tell me."

  The brilliant eyes probed into Sneha, and without knowing how she did it, she said, "Explosion."

  "Right, we have to eliminate the explosion. We've nothing against explosion, do we?"

  Sneha shook her head and he continued, "They're nice things. They keep us alert and shake us out of complacency. But in this case they also splatter paint and we don't want that. What should we change? Should we change the apparatus or the temperature or the ingredients?"

  "The temperature," said Sneha, hoping she was right.

  "Yes, we'll do that."

  He went back to his calculations. He seemed to have forgotten Sneha and Sneha forgot how late it was. She looked around the room. There was disorder everywhere except in one corner where a number of books were neatly arranged. Sneha read the titles: `Medicinal Value of the Castor Seed-Applications', `Uses of Peanut in Industry', ‘Natural Resins-Applications', `Magnets for Health'. The books were on astronomy, electromagnetism, and hybrid seeds.

  Bholu came in. "All those books are written by sahib," he announced proudly.

  Sneha read the name of the author. It was Prof. Satyendra Naik.

  CHAPTER 8: WONDERS

  "So he is Prof. Satyendra Naik," thought Sneha. She had a lesson by him in her English book. The title was ‘Science in the Vedas'.

  Prof. Naik finished his calculation and set up the experiment again. He took some g
reen thorny leaves in a cauldron and added some other substances to it. After placing the vessel on an electric stove and adjusting the temperature, he told Sneha, “Come, I’ll show you my lab.”

  The house was actually a mansion. Half the rooms in the ground floor and all the rooms in the top storey were the professor’s lab. He used them for experiments and to display scientific models. Walking through the house was like having a tour of a museum-cum-lab.

  Prof. Naik repeated what he had told Sneha earlier. “Because science is so vast, it has been divided into branches. This is done for the convenience of learning. The branches are like the different chapters of a book; the book of science. If you are studying physics, you must try to understand it with relation to other branches like chemistry or biology. They are all connected. Our body is an example. To understand how it works, one needs to use physics, chemistry, biology. I have labs for all the branches of science here. Sometimes they overlap.”

  Prof. Naik guided Sneha through the many rooms. He encouraged her to ask questions and he answered all of them. Everything was new to Sneha. New and amazing. Instruments of various sizes and shapes were set up on worktables.

  “This is a powerful microscope. Look through it and tell me what you see,” Prof. Naik told Sneha.

  Sneha placed her eye to the lens, just like the professor showed her. She kept looking through it while he changed the slides.

  “What pretty flowers! Did you paint them?” she asked when he stopped.

  Prof. Naik laughed with delight. “Aren’t they beautiful! They are cells from the animal and the plant kingdom. The last one you saw are cells from the retina of a human eye.”

  “Are they? They looked like white grass!”

  Prof. Naik changed the slide. “Tell me what this is.”

  “I see green and purple. It looks like a garden patch. What is it?”

  “Lung tissue. And this?”

  “This looks like a flower petal resting on something.”

  “It’s a single red blood cell balanced on the tip of a needle.”

  Sneha wanted to see more slides but Prof. Naik led her to the next room. A shelf with colorful objects caught Sneha’s eye. She picked up a small fish made of something hard.

  “This room has kits for children. A friend uses my ideas to make fun toys and games. The fish you are holding is polymer-based. Do you know what a polymer is?”

  Sneha shook her head.

  “Do you know what a molecule is?”

  “A molecule is made of atoms,” answered Sneha.

  “Right. A polymer is made up of molecules. Different molecules are combined in a lab to create a polymer. Unlike materials that exist in nature, polymers are designed in labs.”

  Sneha nodded. “Why did you use a polymer to make the fish?”

  “This polymer swells in water. If you drop this fish into water, it will swell after a few hours.”

  He pointed to another shelf. “Those tubes have a polymer mix in a liquid state. When you squeeze the liquid into water, it turns into jelly and looks like wiggly worms.”

  Prof. Naik showed Sneha some more items. Then he picked up a small wooden frame with five steel balls. “This was my favorite when I was your age.”

  “What is it?” Sneha asked.

  “Newton’s Cradle. Do you know who Newton was?”

  “He once sat under a tree and observed an apple falling to the ground. He discovered …” Sneha stopped. She knew it was something to do with earth but couldn’t explain what it was.

  Prof. Naik gave her a quick pat and smiled. “The apple story makes it easy to remember Newton, doesn’t it?”

  Bholu came in just then. He overheard the last bit. “Apple? Shall I bring an apple for the child? She must be hungry. She didn’t have dinner. Neither did you. You went into the lab immediately after you came in. But I am not worried about you; you are used to feeding on your ideas. The child is looking pale and tired and no surprise about that. It’s four in the morning. She hasn’t eaten anything for hours. She hasn’t slept either.”

  Sneha was shocked. Four in the morning! Her parents would be out of their mind with worry! She should have asked the professor to drive her back a long time ago.

  “Sir, I want to go home.”

  Prof. Nair looked at her intently. “Bholu is right. You do look pale. We’ll have a quick bite and I’ll take you home.”

  Without waiting for her answer, he strode into the dining room and checked what was in the covered dishes. He made a face. “Lentils, eggplant curry, rice, and chapatti. This is boring. We must have something to celebrate the success of making a new kind of paint. Do you like chocolate and popcorn? Oranges?”

  Sneha smiled happily. She liked it that Prof. Naik asked her opinion as if she was grownup. Also, all the adults she knew were always telling kids to eat healthy stuff. The professor was the first grownup who wanted chocolate!

  “Can we have only chocolate and popcorn?” she asked.

  “Of course we can. We’ll sit outside. Some stars are the brightest at this hour. I’ll point them out to you. Do you know physics is a branch of astronomy?”

  CHAPTER 9: NOT AN END

  Inspector Singh stopped the jeep in front of a police station and went in. He asked the officer on duty, "Has any explosion been reported to you ?"

  "No. What's the matter?"

  Inspector Singh told him about the missing girl, the black car and the explosion.

  The officer grew thoughtful. "Can it be our professor? He drives that type of car and is in the habit of making explosions."

  "But you haven't had any complaints."

  "Oh, he has no nearby neighbors. The house is in the midst of a vast property. He inherited it. But he wouldn't kidnap a child. Anyway, you can meet him. Here is his address."

  ***

  Sneha was sitting on the porch steps and eating the wonderful meal. She asked, "Sir, what will you invent next?"

  "You tell me. I don't remember having invented anything especially for children. What will make life better for you?"

  Sneha couldn’t think of anything. “May I take some time?”

  “You can tell me when we meet again.”

  Sneha was thrilled. She would be coming again. She would explore that room of toys. There was a box of colorful spinning discs and solar powered balls. “May I also bring my friends and my brother?” she asked.

  “Why not? Have you finished? We’ll take you home.”

  Just then, they heard a vehicle, followed by loud voices and the ringing of a bell.

  "We have visitors,” Prof. Naik said and took out a remote control from his pocket. He pressed a button. The gates swung open.

  “Why are the police here?” Bholu asked, coming out to see who had come.

  “That’s my father with them! Daddy!" Sneha cried and rushed into his arms.

  Mr. Roy held her in a tight embrace and then looked at her. “Are you all right? What’s this plaster on your forehead? How did you hurt yourself?”

  “I had such a wonderful time!” Sneha gushed, and described her ‘big adventure’.

  Mr. Roy’s relief at finding her was so great he did not lecture her about hiding in the car or staying on in the house. He would talk to her later about the dangers she could have got into. For now he let her introduce the professor to them, and happily chatter about his lab.

  For Sneha was happy and excited. She couldn’t wait to tell Sameer and Minnie about her experience. She also had a precious gift: Newton’s Cradle. Prof. Naik had given it to her and explained how it demonstrated Newton’s laws. She would show it to her friends and also read about it.

  There was another instrument she liked very much. Its name rhymed with microscope. The thing had a wheel and spun in any direction. Gyroscope! She would read about it too.

  She would start on other sciences. They were nothing but different chapters of one book: the Book of Science.

  BONUS STORY : ADI -THE VIRUS

  “Ad
itya, don’t talk!”

  “Aditya, don’t talk in class!”

  “ADITYA! STOP TALKING!! ”

  Adi jumped up six inches in his seat. Banerjee ma’am looked furious. She usually didn’t raise her voice; there was no need to. Everyone was scared of her.

  Now there was pin drop silence in the class. Even though Adi was aware that the whole class was looking at him, Ms Banerjee’s frequent order, ‘Children, I want pin drop silence in my class’, came to his mind and he smiled.

  “Aditya, stand up. Please share the joke with the class.”

  Adi stood up, bowed his head and stared at his desk. Someone had drawn a funny cartoon on it. He wanted to laugh. Maybe he did laugh a little because Banerjee ma’am ordered, “Pick up your things and move to the front of the class. Nidhi, go and sit in Aditya’s place. Aditya, you will sit in Nidhi’s place, next to Bhuvan.”

  Adi shuffled to the front row and sat down beside Bhuvan. He looked up to see Banerjee ma’am staring at him. “See me during recess,” she told him sternly.

  As soon as the recess bell sounded and ma’am left, Ashutosh, Sunny, Vikram, Rohan, Swapna, Chitra, Pinky, and Sunil rushed to Adi. They were from the third, fourth and fifth rows of the centre column, and with Adi in the fourth row, they all had great fun in class.

  “It’s not fair. You were not talking that much. Why should ma’am change your place?” Rohan demanded.

  “Yes. She’s always picking on me.”

  “Adi, ma’am told you to stop talking. She repeated twice but you did not listen. Now see what has happened! You have to sit in the corner seat of the first bench. Bhuvan will not talk and you have no one else on the other side. If you turn back, ma’am will catch you.” his friends told him.

  Adi’s usually smiling face had disappeared. He asked, “When did ma’am tell me to keep quiet?”

  “Thrice. Aditya, don’t talk! Aditya, don’t talk in class! ADITYA! STOP TALKING!” Pinky spoke just like ma’am and the others laughed but Adi shook his head. He said, “I told ma’am to call me Adi. She said Aditya so I thought she was calling someone else.”

  “There’s no other Aditya in class!”