Paakhi

S I X T E E N

Shantanu rushed to his desk, clumsily setting aside all the clutter and pulled the desktop screen closer to his line of sight. Minimizing the various official websites running at the back, he opened an incognito window and searched for a logo with an 'eagle in a circle'.

Various logos popped up on the feed, most of which didn't make sense and was nowhere near what he was looking for.

So, he then typed- eagle in a circle school logo

He scrolled and scrolled, but apparently, there were many schools that had an eagle or a similar bird in a circle in its logo. He pressed his eyes shut, forcing his brain to focus and think harder.

Biting his lip, he gave it another shot- eagle in a circle school logo, dark grey trousers, white shirt, Mumbai

Well, apparently 'Mumbai' had been the keyword. His search zeroed in on St. John Gringham's Cathedral Sr. Secondary School for Boys. A little bit of a detailed and focussed search of the school website allowed him to be sure of his hunch, for all the tiny details he could get himself to recall seemed to add up with this school.

The uniform for one, matched the uniform he had seen the boy who would meet Vandana wear. He also recalled seeing a bunch of boys wearing the same uniform get up on the same bus that he would take home every day. But he had never seen any girl with the same uniform. So, it indeed was a boys' school he was looking for. And then, the school was located in Churchgate. Their school had been located in Walkeshwar. And the boy would always wait for Vandana right in front of the Churchgate station.

Well, great. He'd zeroed in on the school.

Absently, he pulled out his phone from the pocket of his trousers and logged into his Facebook account. And then he scrolled through Vandana's profile mindlessly. From there, he went to Mohit's profile and scrolled through all his pictures. Apparently, the man had gotten rather inactive over the past four to five years. But that didn't affect what Shaan was looking for, and actually made his scrolling easier.

A few minutes of mindless scrolling later, he found exactly what he had been looking for. A picture of Mohit Saransh Gupta from his school days.

Sports Captain, nice.

He was in the same school uniform he remembered. When he zoomed into the hazy group picture definitely taken in one of the older Nokia phones with not the best cameras, he was almost a ninety nine percent sure that Mohit was the same boy he had seen at the Churchgate station waiting for Vandana countless times.

But there was that one percent possibility that he was wrong. The chances were feeble, he knew it both with his brain and his gut. But this was Vandana they were talking about, he needed to be absolutely certain.

Deep in thought, Shaan stretched on his chair and gazed outside the door to his working space. There was the usual hustle and bustle of a police station, some people walking in with requests for filing FIRs, some with requests for missing persons' reports, a few petty arrests and then some bails. Today, a young and nervous lawyer lurked around too.

He didn't know what that was all about, and frankly, he didn't really care. He already had enough on his plate.

Wearily, he straightened in his seat again and rose to his feet, walking outside to the common office space in the police station. Here, all police officials from sub-inspectors to constables had their desks. Connected to the main space, separated by a glass door was their Technical Wing. Since they weren't particularly well funded, Shantanu had chosen to have few, but skilled members on the team instead of the requisite number of positions with a salary that was even embarrassing to offer.