Chapter 1: Reyansh

# Chapter 1: Reyansh

## The Road

The Wildcraft backpack straps dug into his shoulders, the weight of everything he owned.

My phone shows 94% battery when I decide to leave.

94% being the number that means: enough. Enough charge to run Google Maps for the walk. Enough charge to send texts if the network flickers back. Enough charge to call Shlok, Shlok who texted me yesterday, the text that arrived at 2:17 AM like a grenade through the emptiness of my uncle's flat in Nagpur, the text that said three words:

Bhai, zinda hoon.

Bro, I'm alive.

Shlok Khanvilkar. My best friend since Class 6 at Abhinav Vidyalaya in Pune, the Abhinav that was the school on Karve Road, the school that produced engineers and doctors and a brand of Maharashtrian middle-class ambition that Pune specialised in. Shlok who I had not felt from in nine days. Shlok who I had assumed was dead because everyone was dead: everyone meaning: Mummy, Baba, the neighbours in Shivaji Housing Society, the kaka at the chai stall on Dharampeth, the auto-rickshaw drivers, the vegetable vendors, the students at Hislop College where I was supposed to be attending my first year of B.Sc. But where I was instead locked in my uncle's flat watching the world end on television until the television stopped broadcasting and the electricity died and the world ended not on a screen but in reality.

Shlok is in Pune. Shlok is alive in Pune.

And I am in Nagpur: Nagpur being 700 kilometres from Pune, the 700 kilometres that the NH44 covers in approximately ten hours by car and that the Rajdhani Express covers in seven hours by train and that Google Maps says can be walked in 142 hours, the 142 hours being approximately six days of walking if I walk twenty-four hours a day (which I cannot) or twelve days if I walk twelve hours a day (which I might be able to) or some number in between that depends on how fast I walk and how often I rest and how many obstacles the dead world places in my path. The asphalt burned through my chappal soles. I could feel every crack, every pebble.

I tried calling him. The call did not connect; state of all calls in the new world: the not-connecting, the state that the telecom towers produced when the telecom towers had no one maintaining them and the no-one-maintaining meant that the towers were dying the slow death of unmaintained machines: some still broadcasting, some flickering, some dead. The text had arrived through whatever flicker remained. My reply — Main bhi zinda hoon. Nagpur mein hoon. Aa raha hoon. I'm alive too. I'm in Nagpur. I'm coming. — may or may not have been delivered. The may or may not being the condition of all communication in the new world: uncertain. Unreliable. The quantum state of messages: simultaneously sent and unsent until observed.

But the text from Shlok is real. The text is on my phone. The text says: Bhai, zinda hoon. And the text means: Shlok is alive. In Pune. Waiting.

And I am going to walk 700 kilometres to find him.

---

The weight of the backpack pulled at his shoulders.

Nagpur in March is the furnace that Maharashtra pretends does not exist.

Pune has its pleasant weather. Mumbai has its sea breeze. Nashik has its grape-country coolness. But Nagpur, Nagpur is the city that Maharashtra built in the exact centre of the Vidarbha plains, the plains that the sun treats as a personal challenge: how hot can I make this? 42 degrees? 44? Let us try 46 and see if the humans surrender. The humans did not surrender. The humans built Nagpur anyway, built it with the stubbornness that Vidarbha people carried in their DNA, the stubbornness that said the sun is hot but we are hotter, the hotter. Metaphorical hotter, the hotter of will, the will that builds cities in furnaces.

I step out of Mausaji's flat: Mausaji being my mother's brother, the brother who lived in Civil Lines, the Civil Lines that was Nagpur's old-money neighbourhood, the neighbourhood that the British had built for themselves and that the Indian middle class had inherited and that was now, like everything else, empty. Mausaji's flat is on the second floor of a building called Saraswati Niwas. The Saraswati, which was the goddess of knowledge and the Niwas, which was the home and the Saraswati Niwas being the quiet Indian apartment building name that said we are educated people who live here, the educated, the Brahmin professionals who named their buildings after goddesses of knowledge rather than goddesses of wealth because the naming was the aspiration. Janhavi's grip on my arm was light. The lightness of someone who had learned not to hold tight.

Mausaji is dead. Mausaji died on Day 4, the Day 4 being the day that the virus peaked in Nagpur, the day that the hospitals overflowed and the cremation grounds overflowed and the cremation grounds' overflow meant that the dead were left in their beds and the left-in-their-beds was the new world's funeral: no antim sanskar, no thirteen days of mourning, no shraddha, no priest chanting the Garuda Purana. Just: the bed. The body. The closed door.

I closed Mausaji's door on Day 5. I have not opened it since.

The street outside Saraswati Niwas is empty. The empty that Nagpur's streets have been for nine days, the nine days that have transformed Nagpur from a city of 2.5 million to a city of silence, the stillness: the sound of: no auto-rickshaws honking, no PMPML buses grinding, no vendors calling "tamatar, pyaaz, aloo!", no children screaming in the park opposite, no Hislop College students arguing about Ambedkar and Marx on the footpath, no sound at all except the crows and the wind and a certain hum that a dead city produces when the dead city's machines are still running on autopilot — the water pump in the basement that has not yet stopped, the inverter battery that is still draining, the UPS that beeps its dying beep.

I carry a backpack. The backpack — my college backpack, the Wildcraft backpack that Baba had bought me for ₹2,800 at the Dharampeth D-Mart before I left Pune for Nagpur, the buying, which was one of Baba's final acts of fatherhood: equipping the son for the journey. The backpack containing: three T-shirts, two jeans (one wearing, one packed), underwear, a towel, a toothbrush, Mausaji's diabetes medicine (the medicine; useless to me but being the thing I carry because the carrying is the memorial: I carry your medicine, Mausaji, because I cannot carry you), a water bottle (1 litre, Bisleri), four packets of Parle-G biscuits, two packets of Maggi, a lighter (Mausaji's, the lighter that Mausaji used for his evening beedi, the beedi that Mausi disapproved of and that Mausaji smoked anyway because the smoking was the rebellion and the rebellion was the only rebellion that a middle-class Nagpur government servant permitted himself), a Swiss knife (Mausaji's, found in the drawer, the drawer that contained the things that Indian men kept in drawers: a Swiss knife, a torch, batteries, rubber bands, old receipts, and a photograph of the family at Ramtek Fort), the torch, and the batteries.

And my phone. Samsung Galaxy M34. 94% battery. Google Maps loaded. Destination: Pune. Route: NH44 south to Wardha, then NH361 west to Amravati, then NH53 southwest to Aurangabad, then NH60 south to Pune. The Wildcraft straps dug into my shoulders. The canvas was rough against my sweat-soaked T-shirt.

700 kilometres. Twelve days. Maybe more.

I lock Mausaji's flat. The locking — the habit, the habit of an Indian boy who has been taught: ghar se niklo toh taala lagao. When you leave the house, lock it. The habit surviving the apocalypse because habits are the things that survive everything: the virus kills the people but not the habits, the habits continuing in the bodies that remain, the bodies that lock doors and brush teeth and say namaste to no one because the no one is the new world's population.

I walk. Down the stairs of Saraswati Niwas. Through the gate. Onto the road. The road that will lead me to NH44. The NH44 that will lead me to Pune. Pune that holds Shlok.

Shlok who is alive.

Bhai, zinda hoon.

The three words that are pulling me 700 kilometres south.

The three words that are the reason I am walking.

---

The metal handle was cold against his palm.

Google Maps takes me through Civil Lines, past the old British-era bungalows with their wide verandahs and their gulmohar trees and their particular air of colonial elegance that Nagpur's Civil Lines had preserved for a hundred years and that the virus had not touched because the virus touched bodies, not buildings, and the buildings remained: elegant, empty, the elegance of the abandoned.

Past the Maharaj Baug, the zoo that was Nagpur's pride, the zoo where I had gone as a child with Mausaji and Mausi and where the tiger had roared and the roaring had made me cry and the crying had made Mausaji laugh and the laughing was the memory that I carry: Mausaji laughing at my tears. The Maharaj Baug that is silent now — silent of human voices but not silent of animal voices, the animal voices being: the peacocks that call from inside the zoo, the peacocks whose calls carry over the walls and across the empty road, the calls that sound like help, help, help. The peacocks asking the question that the new world has no one to answer: who will feed us? Who will open the cages? Who will bring the water? The water was cold against my cupped hands. River water, still carrying the Ghat's chill.

I do not go into the zoo. I cannot help the animals. I cannot help anyone. I can only walk.

Past Sitabuldi, the neighbourhood that was Nagpur's commercial heart, the heart that is now the body without a heartbeat: shuttered shops, locked kirana stores, the mannequins in the clothing shops standing in their positions like sentries guarding nothing. The Haldiram's at the corner: the Haldiram's that Mausaji took me to on my first night in Nagpur, the Haldiram's where I ate kachori and jalebi and where Mausaji said: "Nagpur ka khaana Pune se achha hai. Accept karo." Nagpur's food is better than Pune's. Accept it. The sentence, the Nagpur claim. The claim that every Nagpuri made to every Punekar and that every Punekar rejected and that the rejection was the inter-city rivalry that Maharashtra sustained: Pune versus Nagpur, the eternal argument, the argument that was really about: my city is my identity and my identity is the thing I will defend until death.

Until death. The phrase that was metaphorical in the old world and that is literal in the new world.

I walk through Sitabuldi. Through the Sitabuldi Fort area, the fort that the British and the Marathas had fought over in 1817 and that was now fought over by no one because no one was alive to fight. Through the railway overpass, the overpass that looked down on Nagpur Junction, the junction that was one of India's busiest railway stations and that is now the quietest: no trains, no announcements, no chai vendors, no coolies, no the-particular-chaos that Indian railway stations produced, the chaos that was not chaos but was a system, the system being: everyone knows their role, everyone moves, the movement is the system, and the system works because India's railway system has always worked, the always-working — miracle that1.4 billion people performed daily on 13,000 trains. The military cot was hard. Truthful-hard. No pretence of softness.

No trains today. No trains tomorrow. No trains ever again — or at least, not until someone restarts the system, and the restarting requires: engineers, electricity, coal, diesel, signals, stations, people. The people — the thing that the virus has taken.

I reach NH44. The highway, the highway that connects Nagpur to the south, the highway that runs through Wardha and Yavatmal and Amravati and eventually, through a series of connections, reaches Pune. The highway: India's spine. The longest highway in the country, the highway that connects Kashmir to Kanyakumari, the highway that is now empty.

Empty except for the cars.

The cars. The cars that sit on the highway like stones in a river, the stones that the river flows around and that the river cannot move and that remain where they were placed by the current that placed them. The cars: Maruti Swifts and Hyundai i20s and Tata Nexons and Mahindra Scorpios and the occasional truck; heavy vehicles that — the trucksIndian highways carried, the trucks that said HORN OK PLEASE on their rear and USE DIPPER AT NIGHT on their cabin and that were painted in the colours of the Indian highway: green and yellow and red, the colours that truck painters had chosen for reasons that no one understood but that everyone accepted because the accepting was the Indian highway's aesthetic.

Some cars are empty. Some cars are not empty.

I do not look at the cars that are not empty.

I walk. I walk along the shoulder of NH44, the shoulder that was strip of road between the carriageway and the ditch, the strip that pedestrians used and that cyclists used and that, in the old world, was the most dangerous place on an Indian highway because the trucks did not respect the shoulder and the not-respecting meant that pedestrians died. But the trucks are not moving now. The trucks are stationary. The trucks are as dead as their drivers. Her hand was rough from the walk. Nine days of sun and wind and highway dust.

I walk south. Toward Wardha. Toward Amravati. Toward Aurangabad. Toward Pune.

Toward Shlok.

Bhai, zinda hoon.

The GPS on my phone says: 698 kilometres remaining. Estimated walking time: 139 hours.

I put one foot in front of the other. The foot landing on the asphalt — the asphalt that is hot, the March-hot that Nagpur's roads absorbed and radiated, the radiation that I feel through my Sparx chappals, the Sparx, the ₹499 chappals that were India's walking footwear, the footwear that was not designed for 700-kilometre walks but that was the footwear I had and that would have to serve because the serving was the new world's requirement: use what you have. What you have is what you have.

698 kilometres.

I begin.