"The water is running from left to right," Vikram said, looking at the road section. "You lean into it — left shoulder forward. If you slip, you grab the rope and it'll swing you to the downhill side, which is the road edge, which is not good. So don't slip." He paused. "But if you do slip, grab the rope and don't let go."
She looked at the road edge. The road ended and then there was ten metres of slope — the embankment — and then the rock shelf, and beyond the rock shelf the gorge. If someone went off the road edge, they might stop on the embankment. They might not.
"Don't let go of the rope," she said. "That is the one rule. You hold the rope the entire time you're in the water. You hold it on both sides — you take it in both hands and you don't let go. Understood?"
The Class 9 students — Vikram, and the others whose names she had learned in the last ninety minutes: Rajan, Suneel, and Kavya, who was the only Class 9 girl and who had been quietly competent throughout — understood. They crossed in sequence, one at a time, Vikram first. She watched him go — the specific way of a person who had been told the physics of it and was applying them, the left-shoulder-forward lean into the current, both hands on the rope, moving steadily. The water came to his knees. He did not slip. He reached the dry section on the other side and turned and gave her a thumbs up that was the most purely functional thumbs up she had ever received.
Rajan went. Suneel went. Kavya went — she hesitated at the edge of the water for one moment, which was the moment that Priya saw and recognized as the moment where the fear had gotten slightly ahead of the decision. She said, from where she was standing: "Kavya. Both hands. Lean left." And Kavya nodded and went, and got across, and they were all four on the other side.
Now the Class 8 students. Eight of them. Ages thirteen to fourteen. She sent them in pairs — one Class 8 student and one younger student per crossing, paired by size and weight so that the older could support the younger if needed. She had paired them herself, carefully, in the ten minutes while Vikram was rigging the rope, going through the list in her notebook and making the assignments with the care of someone who understood that this particular assignment had actual stakes.
