"If you move a ball tied to a thread (by holding the thread tightly in your hands) in a circular motion, a centrifugal force will act on the ball and that will tend to throw the ball away from you," elaborated Mr. Bharali, the science teacher who was famous for explaining concepts by drawing exquisite diagrams on the black board.
Rizwan and Prince who were seated on the third row laughed as they pretended to attack each other using a pencil tied to a kerchief. Later that evening, Prince tied his favourite sky blue ping pong ball with a long thread and tested their science teacher's theory in the clubhouse playground. It was a quiet autumn evening in the oil town of Amola. To his utter shock and despair, the ping bong ball broke off the thread, crossed Mr Mukherjee's (a neighbour) terrace and vanished into thin air. To this day, Prince swears he never saw the ball fall. Despite multiple searches, he couldn't find the ball either in the garden or the backyard of Mr. Mukherjee. It was also nowhere in the adjacent compound of the now abandoned Oil International Company.
The next day, Rizwan and Prince made a joint effort to climb upto the inaccessible terrace of Mr. Mukherjee's old house. Except for dried-up leaves, rotting wood and discarded toys they found nothing significant. Gradually, both the boys forgot about the incident and got busy with annual examination preparations.
The following year around February, Prince and Jennifer were walking alongside a water treatment plant on a deserted street of the town just before sunset. They were discussing a new website called Orkut where one could connect with friends virtually. Prince was describing the 'Poke' feature, which he found funny and with which he had poked his science teacher a few times. Amidst the laughter, Jennifer stopped abruptly. She had spotted two masked men in yellow suits coming out from the admin building of the plant. Both were walking towards the aeration tank when Prince gestured to Jennifer to crouch low behind the bushes. After following suit, he peeked through the fencing into the tank. The tank had a dark blue cladding and only one person (at a time) could enter it.
The sun set right then and Prince and Jennifer headed back home with a slew of questions. Prince typed the words 'Aeration tank' on Google and read the schematics of a simple water treatment plant. He realised that something was fishy as aeration tanks are open to the sky but the one near his home was closed with the blue cladding. "Something strange is going on inside the plant" Prince SMSed Jennifer. She replied, "I felt so". Both the friends decided to dig into the mystery. The next morning, armed with binoculars, running shoes, a foldable knife and a Cybershot camera Prince reached the site at 5.30. Jennifer who was fifteen minutes late had a scarf covering her face. They looked for an entry to the plant without irking the guard at the main gate. After a stroll around the campus, they figured this out.
The boundary wall behind the local shopping complex was the common boundary of the plant. It was easy to access and soon they had jumped the wall into the compound of the water treatment plant. The giant inlet pipes and valves translated to a 'perfect cover up' to the rear window of the admin building. Jennifer caught sight of computers, files, and beer bottles inside the admin building; nothing worth investigating. They moved to the aeration tank but it was locked with a numeric code. A strange odour and a few dark oily spots near the door of the tank confused Prince. Thanks to their science teacher's painstaking experiments, they knew the smell of chlorine, which is used in water treatment plants. This smell however was not of chlorine. Jennifer took a picture of the dark oily spots near the door and the blue cladding. Prince found the smell very familiar but was unable to identify it. Suddenly there was sound of footsteps. The duo traced back their route through the shopping complex. They had three leads: the smell, the oily spots, and the blue cladding.
Jennifer didn't want to continue the investigation as it was not leading anywhere. She went back and told her mother that the plant was fishy. Her mother, a trustee of the school, told the science teacher that he had perhaps been a tad too inspirational for the children and consequently they are starting to ask too many questions.
The next day, Prince kept thinking about the smell as he waltzed into the garage to search for his badminton racket. Suddenly the calling bell rang. There was a visitor for his mother. It was Mr. Mukherjee who had come to invite Prince and his family to a farewell dinner for the Chief Manager who was retiring the next day.
To be continued next week…
By: Snehal Deb
Guwahati
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