Chapter 15: Ishan

# Chapter 15: Ishan

## Pangri

Day 58 of the virus. Day 5 of the return.

Pangri looks different in the return.

When we passed through the first time, thirty days ago, Pangri was a question mark on the map, a village name written in Meera's handwriting with a star beside it meaning safe. We stayed one night, ate Dagadu and Laxmi's food, slept on their veranda, and left at dawn. Village was a waypoint, a brief kindness in a long walk.

Now it is a node.

Difference between a waypoint and a node is the difference between passing through and staying connected. A waypoint is a place you visit once and leave behind, like a petrol pump on a highway. A node is a place that remains part of your network, that sends and receives, that exists in relation to other places, that matters not only for what it is but for what it connects.

Dagadu sees us from the field. He is harvesting bajra, the pearl millet stalks brown and dry, the grain heads heavy and nodding. His sickle pauses mid-swing. He straightens. Recognition crosses his face in stages: confusion (who is walking toward his village from the south road?), then squinting (the figures are familiar), then certainty (the tall one and the small one, the man and the boy, the pair who ate his wife's bhakri and slept on his veranda a month ago).

"Arre! Ishan!" He drops the sickle. Bajra can wait. Guests cannot.

Laxmi emerges from the house before we reach the gate. She has heard Dagadu's shout, and she is already moving, her pallu tucked into her waist, her hands dusted with flour from the chakki, the stone hand-mill that she uses to grind the jowar into the coarse flour that makes the best bhakri in the Solapur district. This is not my assessment. This is Dagadu's assessment, delivered with the unshakeable conviction of a man who has eaten his wife's bhakri every day for thirty-one years and who considers it the fixed point around which the rest of the universe rotates.

"Basa, basa. Jeva karun ghe aadhi." Sit, sit. Eat first.

This is the grammar of rural Maharashtra. You do not ask travellers why they have come. You do not ask where they are going. You feed them first. Questions come after the food, because a hungry person gives incomplete answers and a fed person gives honest ones.

We eat. Bhakri is hot from the tawa, the jowar flour smoky and nutty, the surface cracked in the pattern that indicates hand-pressed (machine-pressed bhakri is smooth; hand-pressed bhakri has the fingerprints of the woman who shaped it, and Laxmi's fingerprints are as much a part of the flavour as the jowar itself). Thecha beside it is fresh, the green chillies pounded with garlic and groundnuts, the heat building slowly on the tongue, the garlic arriving second, the groundnut arriving last with its earthy, oily sweetness.

Omkar eats four bhakris. Laxmi watches him with the satisfaction of a woman who measures love in consumption. She makes a fifth. He eats that too.

"Ha porga punha aalay." This boy has come again, she says to Dagadu. Her tone is complaint. Her eyes are warmth.

After the meal, I explain the network. Dagadu listens, his hand resting on the wooden handle of his sickle (he brought it inside; a farmer does not leave his tools in the field during conversation, because conversation ends but rust does not). Laxmi listens from the kitchen doorway, her arms crossed, her head tilted at the angle that indicates serious consideration.

"Mhanje, amhi Vairag la message pathvaychay?" So, we send a message to Vairag?

"And they send one back. Weekly. Who is alive, what you need, what you have."

"Aamhala kay aahe?" What do we have?

"Bajra. Jowar. Laxmi's thecha."

Laxmi does not smile. But her chin lifts a fraction. Pride, the specific pride of a woman whose thecha has been identified as a tradeable resource, a valuable commodity in the post-apocalyptic economy.

We reach Pangri on the afternoon of the fifth day. The village appears the way it appeared the first time, a cluster of houses in the middle of farmland, the temple spire rising above the rooflines, the hand pump's blue metal visible from the road. But the appearance has changed. The jowar fields around the village are being harvested, the stalks cut, the sheaves stacked, the work of hands that were idle five weeks ago and that are now engaged in the oldest human activity.

Dagadu Kaka is in the field. He sees us before we reach the village boundary — the old farmer's eyes are sharp, accustomed to scanning distances for weather and wildlife and now, in the post-virus world, for strangers.

"Arey! Ishan! Aala re!" he calls, straightening from his crouch, the sickle in his hand catching the sunlight. "Aani he kon? Chota saheb?" And who is this? The little gentleman?

"Omkar," I say. "Aamchya barobar aahe." He is with us.

"Ya ya. Laxmi! Pahune aale!" Come, come. Laxmi! Guests have arrived!

Laxmi emerges from the house. She is wearing the same faded saree, the same silver anklets. But her face has changed. The grief that shadowed it when we first met has not disappeared, but it has been joined by something else: purpose. look of a woman who has work to do and who is doing it.

She sees Omkar. The grandmother instinct activates — the same instinct that made her take Reyansh into her arms five weeks ago, the instinct that sees a child and immediately calculates the child's needs (food, water, shade, love) and begins fulfilling them.

"Bhuk laagla ka, beta?" Are you hungry, child?

"Ho, aaji," says Omkar, who has learned in five weeks of survival that the correct answer to this question is always yes. "Bhakri aahe ka?"

"Bhakri? Bhakri banavte! Aani thecha. Aani taak. Basa." Bhakri? I will make bhakri! And thecha. And buttermilk. Sit.

---

The news from Pangri is good. The six survivors have become eight. Two women from a neighbouring village, both in their forties, both farmers' wives, arrived ten days ago. They had been living alone in their village for three weeks before deciding that solitude was worse than the walk. Dagadu welcomed them. Laxmi gave them bhakri. The community expanded.

That jowar harvest is underway. Dagadu has been working the fields alone. The two new arrivals help, but they are accustomed to different crops (bajra, cotton) and the jowar technique is different. harvest is slow. But it is happening.

"Kithi jowar nighnar?" I ask. How much jowar will you get?

"Teen-chaar quintal. Purna varsha purus." Three or four quintals. Enough for the full year.

Three or four quintals, 300 to 400 kilos of jowar. For eight people, that is a year's supply of bhakri. arithmetic of survival: simple, reliable, the arithmetic that Indian farmers have been doing for three thousand years.

I write in the notebook: Pangri. Population: 8 (up from 6). Resources: jowar (3-4 quintals estimated harvest), 1 cow (milk production), hand pump (functional). Leadership: Dagadu Gaikwad (informal). Needs: medical supplies, tools (one additional sickle, whetstone), seeds (vegetable; onion, tomato, chilli). Communication: no radio. Willing to participate in network: YES.

"Network?" says Dagadu, when I explain. He is sitting on the stone step outside his house, the bhakri in his hand, the thecha burning on his tongue. "Gaon-gaon madhye connection? Amchya veli hota te, haftawari bazaar, Karmala madhye. Dor shanivar. Lokh yayche, vikaychhe, ghyayche, bolayche. Mag ghari jayche. Pusna aathavda." Between villages? In our time, we had that, the weekly market, in Karmala. Every Saturday. People would come, sell, buy, talk. Then go home. Next week again.

"Tasa ch. Pan aata Karmala nahi, amhi aahe." Like that. But now there is no Karmala, there is us.

"Amhi mhanje?" Us meaning?

"Amhi. Pangri. Vairag. Bhose. Akluj. Solapur. Pune. Sagle connected. Sagle ek line var." Us. Pangri. Vairag. Bhose. Akluj. Solapur. Pune. All connected. All on one line.

Dagadu chews his bhakri. He considers. The consideration of a farmer; slow, thorough, the consideration of a man who does not make decisions hastily because hasty decisions in farming lead to ruined crops and empty bellies.

"Kon chalnar?" Who will walk?

"Lokh. Pratyek gaon madhun ek manus. Relay. Pangri cha manus Vairag la jato. Vairag cha manus pudhe jato." People. One person from each village. A relay. Pangri's person goes to Vairag. Vairag's person goes onward.

"Mi jaato," says Ramu — the shopkeeper, a thin, quiet man who has been sitting in the corner of Dagadu's veranda, listening. "Mi Vairag la jato. Dor aathavda. Rasta mahiti aahe." I will go. I will go to Vairag. Every week. I know the road.

Dagadu looks at Ramu. Ramu meets his gaze. A exchange is brief. The exchange of men who have known each other their entire lives and who can communicate agreement in a glance.

"Theek aahe," says Dagadu. Okay. "Ramu jaanar. Aani Vairag hun kon yenar?" Ramu will go. And who will come from Vairag?

"Appasaheb is arranging that. He has volunteers."

"Appasaheb. Ho. Tyala mahiti aahe kasa karaycha." Appasaheb. Yes. He knows how to get things done.

That node is connected. Pangri to Vairag. One link in the chain. One step in the web.

---

We stay in Pangri for one night. In the morning, Laxmi packs bhakri and thecha for the road. Enough for three days, wrapped in banana leaves, the wrapping tight and practised, the wrapping of a woman who has been sending men off with packed food for forty years and who knows that the quality of the wrapping determines the quality of the food at the other end.

She also gives Omkar a pair of kolhapuri chappals. Leather sandals, handmade, from a pair that belonged to one of her grandsons. The grandsons are dead. The chappals remain.

"Ghal," she says. Put them on. "Padyaani chalaycha nahi. Pair futtat." You should not walk barefoot. Your feet will crack.

Omkar puts on the chappals. They are slightly too big. His feet slide in them, the leather loose around his heels. But they are sandals. Real sandals. Not bare feet on hot asphalt, not calluses on gravel. Leather between skin and road.

He walks a few steps. Tests them. Walks back.

"Fit aahe, aaji," he says. They fit, grandmother.

Laxmi touches his head. The grandmother's benediction. The palm on the crown, the blessing that carries the weight of every generation that has blessed the generation below it.

"Ja. Dhyan thev. Aani parat ye." Go. Be careful. And come back.

"Yeto, aaji." I will come back, grandmother.

We leave Pangri. The village shrinks behind us, the houses, the temple, the hand pump. Ahead: the road north, toward the highway corridor, toward the villages between Baramati and Pune.

Omkar walks in his new chappals. The leather slaps against the road with each step — a new sound, a rhythmic sound, the sound of a boy who has been barefoot for six weeks and who now has footwear and who is deeply, personally invested in every step.

"Chappals," he says, looking down at his feet.

"Ho."

"Laxmi aaji chya naatu chya. Mele te." Laxmi aaji's grandson's. He died.

"Ho."

He walks in silence for a moment. Then: "Mi cha paayla deuya tyanchya. Changle jaguya, mhanjya tyaancha pan jagla." I will use their feet. Live well, so they also lived.

A statement is extraordinary. It is the statement of a twelve-year-old philosopher, a child who has taken dead children's sandals and has transformed the taking from theft into tribute. The dead boy's feet, walking in the living boy's chappals, covering the road that the dead boy will never walk.

I write nothing in the notebook. Some things are not data. Some things are just. Life.

---

Day 6 of the return. We reach the Karmala taluka.

The terrain is familiar, the dry Deccan plateau, the flat horizon, the jowar fields stretching to the edges of vision. We follow the village roads, avoiding the highway, moving north and west through the network of tracks and paths that connect the villages.

We pass through Bhose. Hirabai is there, with her six cats and her nephew Balasaheb. That population is still two. Balasaheb is tending a small vegetable garden behind the house. Tomatoes, mirchi, coriander.

I write: Bhose. Population: 2. Resources: vegetable garden (small), water (hand pump). Needs: companionship, tools, seeds. Not currently viable as network node, too small. Recommend connecting to Vairag community for support.

We pass through Nimgaon. Still empty. The school blackboard still displays the multiplication tables. But something has changed — the door of one house is open. Not forced open, unlocked. I enter cautiously. The house has been visited recently — footprints in the dust, a water bottle on the table, a bedroll on the floor.

"Someone is using this as a waypoint," I say to Omkar.

"Traveller. Aamchya sarkha." A traveller. Like us.

"Yes. Like us."

I write: Nimgaon. Population: 0 (permanent). Evidence of transient use. Water: hand pump, functional. Potential waypoint for network relay.

The notebook fills. Each village, each hand pump, each field, each person. A data point in the web, a node in the network, a piece of the puzzle that is slowly assembling itself into a picture of what Maharashtra looks like after the virus.

A picture is not beautiful. The picture is incomplete, fragmented, the picture of a country that has been shattered and whose pieces are lying on the ground, waiting to be picked up and reassembled. But the pieces are there. people are there. villages are there. A food is growing. water is flowing. This children are alive.

That road continues. The road always continues.

North and west. Toward Pune. Toward home.