Chapter 21: Janhavi

# Chapter 21: Janhavi

## The Wall

I find my wall on the third day in the camp.

Every camp has a wall and every wall has a girl who sits on it: or so I tell myself, because the telling is the justification for the sitting and the sitting is the need that has not changed since Butibori: the need to sit above. To watch. To see without being part of what I see.

The wall is the cantonment's eastern wall, the wall that faces the city, the wall that the camp's residents do not approach because the approaching means facing the dead city and the facing is the thing that the camp's residents avoid. The camp is the inside. The city is the outside. The inside is safety. The outside is death.

But I approach. I approach because I am the girl who sits on walls and the sitting requires a wall and this wall is the wall that is available.

The wall is three metres tall. Brick. Old brick, the brick that the British laid in the 1800s, the brick that has survived 200 years of Pune's weather and that the surviving has made the brick: strong. Weathered. The surface rough, the rough that provides grip, the grip that climbing requires. Truthful-hard. No pretence of softness.

I climb. The climbing —: easy. Easier than Butibori's factory wall. The brick providing handholds that the factory's concrete did not — the mortar between the bricks having eroded, the erosion creating gaps, the gaps, which was footholds. I climb. I reach the top.

I sit.

The sitting producing: the view. The view that walls provide: the view that is the reason I sit on walls: the seeing. The seeing from above.

Below me, on the camp side: the tents. The six rows. The mess tent. The medical tent. The generator humming. The people, the 200 people who are the camp, moving through the camp's morning rhythm: water queue, breakfast queue, work assignments. The people that was: small, from up here. The small of perspective, the perspective that three metres of height provides: you are small. All of you. From up here, you are small and the small is the truth that the ground does not reveal.

Below me, on the city side: Pune. Dead Pune. The Pune that stretches east and south and west — the Pune of 35 lakh people who are not here, the Pune of empty streets and empty buildings and the unmistakable emptiness that a city produces when the city has lost its people: the emptiness that is not absence but is presence-in-reverse. The buildings are present. The streets are present. The signs are present — Café Goodluck, Vaishali Restaurant, Kayani Bakery. The names visible on the signs, the signs advertising to no one.

I sit. I watch.

I come back the next morning. And the morning after that. And the morning after that.

The wall becomes my place. The place that every person in the camp has. Devyani-tai's place is the medical tent (where she volunteers), Roshni's place is her cot (where she reads Mrityunjay), Madhuri-kaku's place is the water point (where she sits and stares and the staring is the grief). Reyansh's place is the kitchen. Shlok's place is the radio tent.

My place is the wall.

---

On the fifth morning of wall-sitting, Reyansh finds me.

He finds me because Reyansh has the quality that Reyansh has always had, the quality that the road revealed: *he notices. He notices when I am not at breakfast. He notices when I am not in the tent. Dry. Past its freshness.

"Yahan hai tu," he says. Not a question. A statement.

"Yahan."

"Har din aati hai?"

Do you come every day?

"Haan."

He considers the wall. Considers me on the wall. The considering: the assessment that Reyansh makes before every decision, the assessment that is careful, deliberate, the opposite of Shlok's impulsive and the opposite of my reckless.

"Main aa sakta hoon?" he asks. Can I come up?

The question. The question that no one has asked me. Not in Butibori, not on the road, not in the camp. No one has asked to join me on the wall because the wall is my territory and the territory is the solitude that I protect.

But: Reyansh. Reyansh who walked 700 kilometres beside me. Reyansh who lanced my words the way I lanced his blister: carefully, necessarily, with the result: better than the process.

"Aa ja," I say. Come up.

He climbs. The climbing: clumsy. Reyansh does not climb walls: Reyansh walks roads and peels potatoes and makes overcooked rice. The climbing producing the scramble that the unskilled produce: hands searching for holds, feet slipping on brick, the body's centre of gravity shifting dangerously before the body compensates. I shielded it with my palm.

He reaches the top. Sits beside me. The sitting: cautious. The cautious of a person sitting on a three-metre wall for the first time and the first-time producing the awareness of height that the experienced wall-sitter does not feel.

"Upar se alag dikhta hai," he says. It looks different from up here.

"Haan."

"Kya dekhti hai? Har subah?"

What do you watch? Every morning?

I think about the question. The question that deserves an honest answer, the honest that the wall demands, the wall (place where the armor is thinnest because) the wall is my territory and the territory is where I am most myself.

"Sab kuch. Camp bhi. Sheher bhi. Log bhi. Aur; aur khali jagah bhi. Woh jagahein jahan log nahi hain. Woh jagahein jahan log hone chahiye the: par nahi hain."

Everything. The camp too. The city too. People too. And. The empty places. The places where people aren't. The places where people should have been. But aren't.

"Kyun?"

Why?

"Kyunki; kyunki mujhe dekhna zaroori hai. Samajhna zaroori hai. Main, main aise hi hoon. Deewaar pe baithke dekhti hoon. Hamesha se. Jab main chhoti thi. Pehli foster family, Amravati mein; main unke compound ki deewaar pe baithti thi. Bahar dekhti thi. Gali dekhti thi. Log dekhti thi. Kyunki; kyunki ghar ke andar main unki thi. Unki rules. Unka khaana. Unka time. Lekin deewaar pe — deewaar pe main apni thi."

Because, because I need to watch. I need to understand. I'm, I'm like this. Sit on walls and watch. Always have. When I was small, first foster family, in Amravati — I used to sit on their compound wall. Watch outside. Watch the street. Watch people. Because — because inside the house I was theirs. Their rules. Their food. Their schedule. But on the wall: on the wall I was mine.

The sentence. The sentence that I have not said to anyone: the sentence that the wall provides because the wall is the place where the sentences come: the sentences that the ground does not produce, the sentences that require the height, the height that was permission: up here, you can say the thing. Up here, the armor is thinner.

Reyansh listens. The listening that Reyansh does, the listening that is not passive but is active: the eyes focused, the body still, the body's stillness being the attention that the words deserve. Military canvas, coarse-woven.

"Toh. Deewaar tera ghar hai," he says. So. The wall is your home.

"Haan. Shayad. Ya; ya deewaar meri jagah hai. Ghar nahi; ghar kabhi nahi tha. Lekin jagah. Haan."

Yeah. Maybe. Or. The wall is my place. Not home. It was never home. But a place: yes.

"Ab, ab yeh tera ghar hai. Camp. Pune. Yahan."

Now, now this is your home. The camp. Pune. Here.

I look at him. The looking, the look, the look that has been building since Butibori, the look that the road deepened and the Ghats intensified and the temple ota broke open: the look that is longer than a glance and shorter than a stare and that contains the thing that I have been learning to name.

The thing: trust. The trust that the road built — the trust that walking 700 kilometres with someone builds, the trust that is not given but is earned, the earning being: eight days. Eight days of walking and cooking and eating and sleeping and talking and not-talking and the not-talking, which was trust that silence provides when the emptiness is not absence but is presence: *I am here. I am silent.

"Haan," I say. "Shayad."

Maybe.

---

His shirt was stiff with dried sweat.

We sit on the wall together. The sitting —: the activity. The activity that becomes the ritual, the ritual that Reyansh and I establish in the camp: morning, after breakfast, the wall. The wall, our place.

From the wall, we see: the camp waking. The camp that has become our world, the 200 people who are the world's remnant (or a remnant of the remnant. There may be other camps, other safe zones, other radio broadcasts on frequencies we have not found). The 200 people who eat and work and sleep and queue for water and queue for food and the queuing, the civilization that the camp sustains.

From the wall, we see: Pune. Dead Pune. The Pune that was Reyansh's home and that the home-ness means: Reyansh can narrate. "Woh Sassoon Hospital hai," he says, pointing southwest. "Woh Deccan ka area hai — wahan Shlok ka ghar tha." Pointing west: "Woh hills: woh Sinhagad hai. Shivaji Maharaj ka fort. Aur woh. Woh Khadakwasla Dam hai. Pune ka paani wahan se aata tha."

There's Sassoon Hospital. That's the Deccan area. Shlok's house was there. Those hills, that's Sinhagad. Shivaji Maharaj's fort. And that. That's Khadakwasla Dam. Pune's water came from there.

He narrates Pune to me from the wall. The narration: the guide. The guide that says: this is my city. Let me show you. The showing, the gift, the gift that I give you because you have nothing and the nothing is the condition that I want to change: I will give you my city. Not the physical city. The physical city is dead. But the story of the city. The story: alive.

I listen. I listen to Reyansh narrate Pune: the Pune that had Irani cafés and poha joints and cycle rides to Sinhagad and school trips to Aga Khan Palace and the Peshwa legacy and the university campus and Fergusson College and the December weather that was cold enough for sweaters but not cold enough for jackets and the not-cold-enough being the Pune temperature: moderate. Always moderate. The city of moderation.

I listen. And the listening builds the thing that the wall provides: the picture. The picture of a city that was alive. The picture that the wall frames, frame and the city, the picture and; the wallthe picture: beautiful. Even dead: especially dead, the city is beautiful from the wall.

"Ek din, ek din main tujhe Pune dikhaaungi," Reyansh says. The sentence: the future tense: the future that the camp makes possible, the future that the road did not have (the road having only: the present. I could feel every crack, every pebble.

One day. One day I'll show you Pune. When things are okay. Then.

"Jab sab theek hoga," I repeat. When things are okay.

The sentence, the hope. The hope that the wall provides. The wall that shows us the dead city and the dead city showing us: the loss. But the wall also showing us: the camp. The 200 people. The generators. The radio. The mess tent. The living. The living that the dead city surrounds and the surrounding, the context: we are alive in the middle of death. The alive, the miracle. The miracle: us.

I sit on the wall. Reyansh sits beside me. The sitting: the thing.

The thing that the wall provides and the road built and the virus made necessary and the making-necessary that was paradox: the worst thing that happened to the world is the thing that brought me here. To this wall. To this boy. To this city that I have never been to but that I am learning from a wall.

Deewaar ki ladki. The girl on the wall. Shlok's name for me, the name that is now my name in the camp, the name that the 200 people use: woh deewaar ki ladki — the girl who sits on the eastern wall every morning. The one who came from Nagpur with the Gokhale boy. The one with the denim jacket.

Deewaar ki ladki.

That's me.