He filed the report. He picked up the tea. Outside his window, the rain was easing — not stopping, because it was August in Uttarakhand and it was not going to stop, but easing to the ordinary monsoon rain from the extraordinary monsoon rain. The gorge roads would be assessed and reopened when they were safe. The schools would reopen when the weather allowed. The bus — still on the limestone shelf, tilted and incongruous above the gorge — would be recovered when the flood level dropped, which the forecasters said would be by tomorrow morning.
The valley was the valley. It was this kind of place, had always been this kind of place — extraordinary beauty and extraordinary danger in the same mountain, the same gorge, the same road. The people who lived here and worked here and taught school here and drove the school bus here had always understood both things simultaneously. Now a teacher from Kerala had understood it too, in the particular way that understanding came when you were in the middle of it and there was no time for anything except the next right thing.
He drank his tea. He started on the next report. Outside, in the waiting room he could no longer see from his desk, thirty-two children were telling their parents everything that had happened, in the overlapping, correcting, enthusiastic, specific way that children told stories — and the parents were listening with the full, grateful, humbled attention of people who had been afraid and were now simply glad.
