Ace mountaineer Malli Mastan Babu has gone missing. Can Modi help get him back?

Dr Malli Dorasanamma struggles to keep her tears in check. With news that her younger brother, ace mountaineer Malli Mastan Babu, has been missing in Argentina-Chile in South America for a week, she is worried. As a doctor practising in Tirupati, she has seen a lot of pain, but this time, she admits she has gone numb. "I am hallucinating,'' she says. "My brain is not working. Is he alive, dead or injured, I wonder.''

Mastan Babu is India's best known mountaineer, having achieved the feat of becoming the "fastest seven summiteer" in the world (172 days in 2006, during which he climbed seven summits on seven days of the week in each calendar month). Not just that, he is first Indian to summit Mt Vinson Massif, the tallest peak in Antarctica and the first person from Andhra Pradesh to conquer the Everest. An IIT Kharagpur and IIM Kolkata alumnus, Babu has literally aimed high in his life, and is used to having the world at his feet. Now the same world is praying for this "child of the mountains". Coming from a poor background, Babu's father was a farmer who passed away in 2003. Babu is the youngest in the family and the most well-educated. One brother is a farmer, another a school teacher in Telangana. Dorasanamma is a doctor while Babu's other sister is an attender in a school. Babu showed great grit, determination and will power to do well in life.

He left home in Nellore in Andhra Pradesh for this trip, on December 16. Dorasanamma says he usually does not call home too frequently and the only time they heard from him was in the first week of January. Babu stays in touch over Facebook so that his family knows his whereabouts. But when Dorasanamma received a call on March 26 from Chile, saying that Mastan Babu had been missing for two days, she feared the worst.

"That is because he will stick to his plan and won't take silly risks. He is a very experienced mountaineer. In the past, he has turned back after seeing bad weather,'' says Babu's sister. The feeling is that he must be hiding somewhere, perhaps injured and not in a position to move - which is why the urgency in locating him at the earliest.

The weather turned truant just after Babu set out on his trek up the Andes mountains. Though the weather has cleared up in the last couple of days, aerial sorties and other rescue efforts by foot have not yielded any results. Mastan Babu's well-wishers have pooled in money to fund the rescue effort, which costs Rs 50 lakh per sortie.

Meanwhile, time is running out, and with it hope. Dr Dorasanamma hopes Prime Minister Narendra Modi, known for his encouragement and support to men who dare to conquer the unknown, will take personal interest in getting India's hero out safe.