She had given the Class 9 students — four of them, Vikram and three others — the task of monitoring: water level, road above, any approaching sound. She had given the Class 8 students the task of checking on the Class 6 students every ten minutes, a check-in that required them to move through the bus and count and report back to her. She had given the Class 7 students the task of managing the tiffin boxes — opening all of them, taking a total inventory of all food and water, dividing it into portions. She had given the Class 6 students the task of holding the thermal blanket — the foil kind, which they held across the windows on the gorge side to prevent anyone from getting too close to the gorge-side glass.
None of these tasks were essential to survival in the most direct sense. All of them were essential to survival in the actual sense — the sense in which thirty-two terrified children in a confined space for an unknown number of hours was a problem that had to be managed as much as the water did.
The Class 7 inventory team — three twelve-year-olds who had taken the task with the focused energy of people who needed something specific to do — had reported back at eight-fifteen. Fifteen tiffin boxes, because some students had already eaten parts of their morning snacks before the flood and several boxes had been lost or damaged in the impact. Fifteen boxes containing: eleven portions of rice and vegetables, four portions of parathas, approximately three kilos of food total. Water: eight bottles, three litres total, plus the partial litres in personal bottles. Snacks: various. One Class 8 student named Preethi had, for reasons she did not explain, an entire packet of glucose biscuits in her bag, which Priya noted as the most useful single item she had encountered today.
"Good work," she told the inventory team. "That food is for everyone equally. Nobody eats their own tiffin box as a private matter — all of it is shared, all of it is rationed. You three are the rationing team. Can you do that?"
