A bumpy ride across Yerawada found me at the gate outside a small bungalow, once again giving me a feel of home far away in the hills of Garhwal. An old man, sitting in the verandah, hastened to open the gate on my arrival. He had already been informed that I was from the all-powerful Press and the only hope of discovering the whereabouts of his youngest son, who had despite family opposition joined the Army in the all-too-familiar teenage `josh' of ``doing something for the country''.

Considering that there was precious littlethe ``country'', or the ministers who seem to represent it so poorly, were in turn willing to do for this young boy, I wondered why he had bothered in the first place. But then, I know only too well that you can't question the convictions of college graduates with the blood coursing through their veins faster than an Air Force plane cutting through the clouds.

I could understand the helplessness in the old man's eyes. I had seen it before. On my father's face. When, both proud and worried, he turned back after a phone call from another young boy, who had happily told him of a posting to the highest battlefield in the world.

He had been running from pillar to post for most of the time last year, trying to persuade the Army top brass and the Ministry of Defence to take up the disappearance of his son with the neighbouring country, but he was always turned away with empty assurances.

Then I was introduced to his wife, a grey-haired lady in a crushed cotton sari, who looked much older than her 50 years. Asthe three of us leafed through old family albums and traced the life of the toddler Sanjit to the smartly turned-out commissioned officer, who had bravely stayed back with a collapsed soldier while on a long ground exercise on the Bhuj border in April 1997, unmindful of his own safety and was never seen again, the tears of helplessness fell freely from the eyes of the disease-stricken mother.

Reporters don't cry on assignments, I firmly told myself. I asked her if I could take a picture of the young captain for my newspaper. It was handed over with hope. I went back and sat down on my PC to write about this brave young boy who, intercepted ISI messages hinted, was in Pakistan and whom the Army had given up as missing.

It was a story read locally and taken up by the other sections of the Press also. But unfortunately, it could not compete with the political machinations of Sonia Gandhi and others of her tribe or even the success of the Titanic, for a section of the front page of the national editionanywhere, where I felt it might have made a difference.

It came as a pleasant surprise when I discovered that Defence Minister George Fernandes was in Pune for the passing-out Parade of the National Defence Academy. The Bhatacharjees fixed up an appointment to meet the minister and even the media took up the issue in the following Press conference. ``We will do our best even internationally to find out what happened to the officer,'' was the public assurance received. But the best was apparently not good enough. The boy did not return.

Whether Captain Sanjit Bhattacharjee, 22, of the 7/8 Gorkha Rifles is still a prisoner in a Pakistani dungeon, or no more, no one knows.