Chapter 19: Janhavi

# Chapter 19: Janhavi

## The Camp

The camp is a universe.

A small universe; 200 people in military tents on an army cantonment in a dead city, but a universe nonetheless. A universe with its own rules, its own rhythms, its own geography.

The geography being: six rows of tents, the rows arranged in the military's grid pattern, the grid that the army uses for everything: tent rows, parade formations, the orderly mind that military training produces). Each row having ten tents. Each tent housing four to six people. The housing: basic. A canvas roof, a canvas floor, four cots (the military cots (the foldable metal-frame cots that the Indian Army issues, the cots, hard and narrow and that the hard-and-narrow is the military's philosophy: comfort is not the objective. Survival is the objective.).

I am assigned Tent 47. Row 5, seventh tent from the left. My tent-mates being: three women. Devyani Patil (42, from Satara, a schoolteacher who survived because she was in the mountains when the virus hit and the mountains: isolation that saved her). Roshni Shaikh (28, from Solapur, a nurse who survived because she was already in a hospital ICU's sealed unit when the virus hit and the sealed-unit being the barrier that saved her). Madhuri Jadhav (55, from Pune itself, a retired bank clerk who survived because. Because she does not know why she survived and common answer, the not-knowing: I don't know. I woke up. Everyone around me was dead. I was not.). Military canvas, coarse-woven.

Reyansh is in Tent 22. Row 3. With Shlok and two other boys. The two others being: Yash Bhosale (17, from Nashik) and Omprakash Rathod (15, from Latur). The boys' tent. The tent that Shlok has been in for four days, the four days that Shlok has been in the camp, the four days that Shlok arrived before us.

Registration took thirty minutes. The thirty minutes being the military's intake process: name (Janhavi — just Janhavi, no surname, the no-surname; foster-care identity: I was not given a surname that stuck. Every foster family's surname was temporary. I am just Janhavi.), age (17), city of origin (Amravati — the city that I claim as origin because the claiming requires a city and Amravati is the city that I remember most vividly, the vividly, pain's contribution to memory), health status (checked by a military doctor — a Captain in the Army Medical Corps who checked my pulse, my temperature, my eyes, my throat, and declared: "Dehydrated. Malnourished. No virus symptoms. Clear.").

Dehydrated. Malnourished. The words that the military doctor uses for: you have been walking for eight days on Maggi and Parle-G and the walking-on-Maggi-and-Parle-G has reduced your body to the minimum.

---

Her feet ached. The arches burned from standing.

The first meal in the camp is the meal that changes my understanding of food.

The mess tent, the tent where the camp's meals are served, the tent: largest tent in the camp, the large enough to seat fifty people at a time on folding tables and folding chairs. The mess tent operating on a schedule: breakfast at 7 AM, lunch at 1 PM, dinner at 7 PM. The schedule: the military's imposition of order on chaos: *the world has ended.

Dinner. 7 PM. Janhavi and Reyansh and Shlok and the two boys from Tent 22; all of us at a folding table. The table: metal, foldable, the military-issue table that folds for transport and unfolds for use.

The food that was: dal, rice, sabzi (aloo-gobi), roti (two per person: the two (ration), the ration that the camp's supplies dictate), and aachar (mango pickle, the aachar that the camp's supplies include because aachar lasts: indefinitely. Aachar does not spoil. Aachar is the immortal condiment.).

I eat. The eating being. I eat and the eating is the revelation. The revelation that was: this food is not good. This food is institutional food: the food that military cooks produce in bulk for 200 people, the food that is neither flavourful nor flavourless but is the middle: adequate. Nutritionally correct. Filling.

But: the eating is the revelation because the eating is at a table. With people. With noise: the noise of 200 people eating simultaneously, the noise that is the clatter of steel thalis and the murmur of conversation and the occasional laugh and the laugh, which was the sound that I have not felt in nine days: collective human laughter. Reyansh's laugh I knew. The quiet, private sound of one person finding humour in the ruins. Shlok's laugh I had heard for two hours. But this was different. This was the laugh of a group, the group that is humanity and the humanity that is alive.

I eat. I eat the dal that is not as good as the dal I made at Hotel Panchavati and I eat the rice that is better than the rice Reyansh made at the dhaba and I eat the roti that is the military roti (thick, slightly burnt at the edges, the edges that the tawa produces when the tawa is too hot and the roti is left too long) and I eat the aachar that is the mass-produced aachar that the military canteen supplies. And the eating is: good. Not the food. The eating. The act. The act of sitting at a table with people and eating food that someone else cooked and care, the someone-else: someone cooked for me. Not me. Not Reyansh. Someone else. The someone-else is the community. The community that the camp provides.

"Kaisa hai khaana?" Shlok asks me. He asks me, me, Janhavi, the girl he met two hours ago, the girl who walked with his best friend from Nagpur. He asks with the genuine interest that his personality produces: the Shlok-interest that Reyansh described on the highway, the interest that is warm and harmless and that the warm-and-harmless is Shlok's identity.

"Achha hai," I say.

"Sachchi mein?"

"Nahi. Lekin maine isse bura bhi khaya hai."

No. But I've eaten worse.

Shlok laughs. The Shlok laugh, I hear it for the first time and I understand why Reyansh walked 700 kilometres: the laugh is the laugh of a person who finds joy easily and who the easy-finding is the gift, the gift that rare people carry: I can laugh. In any situation. The laughing is my contribution to the world.

"Tu mujhe achhi lagti hai," Shlok says. I like you.

"Obviously."

---

Sweat pooled in the hollow of her throat.

After dinner, Reyansh and Shlok take me on a tour. The tour: the camp's geography. I could feel every crack, every pebble.

The camp has: the six rows of tents (housing), the mess tent (food), the medical tent (health), the registration tent (administration), the water point (tanker truck, refilled daily by the army from the dam), the generator area (three diesel generators, running in rotation, providing electricity to the camp's essential services: the medical tent, the registration tent, the radio transmitter), and — the wall.

The wall. The wall that the cantonment provides. The cantonment wall that surrounds the military base, the wall: brick, three metres tall, topped with barbed wire. The wall that the British built to separate the cantonment from the civilian city and that the separating now serves a different purpose: the wall keeps the camp safe. The wall is the boundary. Inside the wall: 200 people, order, food, water, the military's protection. Outside the wall: the dead city.

"Yeh wall: yeh safe zone ki boundary hai," Shlok explains. "Andar safe. Bahar; bahar jaane ki zarurat nahi."

This wall, this is the safe zone's boundary. Inside is safe. Outside: no need to go outside.

"Kaun decide karta hai?" I ask. Who decides?

"Colonel Tawde. Woh in-charge hain. Southern Command ke officer. Unhone yeh sab set up kiya: tents, rations, medical, radio broadcast."

Colonel Tawde. He's in charge. Southern Command officer. He set up all this, tents, rations, medical, radio broadcast.

Colonel Tawde. The name that the camp's 200 people speak with the reverence that authority earns in crisis: Colonel Tawde saved us. Colonel Tawde organized us. Colonel Tawde is the reason we eat and drink and sleep under canvas instead of dying on the road.

"Achha insaan hai?" I ask. Good person?

Shlok hesitates. The hesitation. The hesitation that I notice because the hesitation is the tell, the tell that a person produces when the person is deciding between honesty and diplomacy and the deciding takes a fraction of a second but the fraction is visible to someone who watches for it.

"Haan. Achha hai. Strict hai. Army wala hai, toh strict hoga, lekin achha hai."

Yeah. He's good. Strict: he's army, so he'll be strict; but he's good.

I file the hesitation. The filing, which was the instinct: the instinct that foster care develops: when someone hesitates before praising a person in authority, the hesitation contains information. The information: the authority is not fully trusted. The not-fully-trusted being the data that I store for later use.

---

Night. Tent 47. My cot — the fourth cot, the cot nearest the tent flap. The cot that is assigned to me and that the assigned — the identity: this is your bed. This is your place. This is your home until. Until when? Until the world fixes itself? Until the virus ends? Until some other arrangement is made?

Devyani-tai is already asleep. The sleep of a 42-year-old woman who has been in the camp for six days and who the six days have established: routine. Sleep at 9:30 PM. Wake at 6 AM. Queue for water. Queue for breakfast. Help in the medical tent, Devyani-tai volunteers (the volunteering — the activity that keeps her sane: if I help, I am useful. If I am useful, I have purpose. If I have purpose, I survive.).

Roshni is reading — reading a book by torchlight. The book, which was: a paperback, the paperback that she brought from Solapur, the book (possession that she saved when she fled): not money. Not jewelry. A book. The book that was: Shivaji Sawant's Mrityunjay. The Marathi classic. The book that every Maharashtrian has read or should read.

Madhuri-kaku is sitting on her cot. Sitting and staring at the tent wall. The staring —: the activity that grief produces, the activity that is not activity but is the opposite: the stillness of a person who has lost everything and who the everything-lost is the weight that the body carries and the carrying produces: stillness. The stillness that looks like calm but is not calm. The stillness that is the body's response to trauma that the mind cannot process.

I lie on my cot. The cot being: hard. Military-hard. The hard that the metal frame and the canvas produce, the hard that is different from every surface I have slept on during the journey: the Wardha mattress, the dhaba charpai, the Hotel Panchavati bed, the Akola mat, the temple ota. The cot is: military. The military, the new standard.

I close my eyes. And I think: *I am here. In a camp. In Pune. With 200 people. With food. With water. Truthful-hard. No pretence of softness.

And I think: I have nowhere else to go. This is it. This is the place. The place that the road was leading to — not because I had a text message from a best friend but because the road was leading somewhere and the somewhere is here.

And I think: Reyansh said he would not leave me behind. Reyansh is in Tent 22. Shlok is in Tent 22. They are here. I am here. We are all here.

And I think, the thought that arrives last, the thought that I push away because the pushing is the defense: is this a home? Can a military camp be a home? Can 200 strangers be a family?

The thought that the foster-care girl asks because the foster-care girl has been asking this question her entire life: *is this a home?

I push the thought away. Close my eyes. Sleep.

The first night in the camp. The first night in Pune. The first night of whatever comes next.