Chapter 22: Reyansh

# Chapter 22: Reyansh

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Two weeks in the camp. Fourteen days since Janhavi and I walked through the cantonment gate. Fourteen days since I found Shlok. Fourteen days since the road ended and the camp began.

The camp has changed in two weeks. The changed: growth. The growth that the radio broadcast produces. The broadcast that All India Radio's emergency frequency carries across Maharashtra, the frequency that transistor radios receive and that the receiving produces: arrivals. New arrivals every day — two, three, five people walking through the cantonment gate with the same exhaustion that Janhavi and I carried: the exhaustion of walking, of surviving, of finding.

200 has become 260. The 260 that was: still small. Still impossibly small against the 12 crore that Maharashtra had. But: growing. The growing, which was the hope, the hope that the radio provides: *come. We are here. The here, the camp.

Colonel Tawde has organized the camp into sectors. The sectors, the military's response to growth: when the population increases, organize. The organizing — the control that the military provides and that the military cannot relinquish because the relinquishing would be the chaos and the chaos would be the end.

Sector A: Housing. The tents. Now eight rows instead of six: the two new rows added from the cantonment's stores, the stores that the Southern Command maintained for field operations and that the field operations are now: this. This camp. This refugee operation that is not a field operation but is the closest thing.

Sector B: Services. The mess tent, the medical tent, the water point. The services that the camp's survival requires.

Sector C: Operations. The radio tent, the generator area, the supply storage. The operations that Colonel Tawde's team manages.

And: Sector D. The new sector. The sector that Colonel Tawde announced three days ago. The announcement: made in the mess tent at dinner, the dinner (forum that the camp uses for announcement s) because the dinner is when all 260 people are present.

"Sector D: Agriculture," the Colonel said. "Hum ab kheti shuru karenge. Cantonment ke andar zameen hai; parade ground, officers' gardens, the open areas. Yeh sab ab khet honge. Ganga: tamatar, aaloo, pyaaz, palak, methi. Rabi crop ke liye waqt hai. March mein boya toh May mein milega."

Sector D: Agriculture. We're starting farming now. There's land inside the cantonment. The parade ground, officers' gardens, the open areas. These will all become fields now. Wheat. Tomatoes, potatoes, onions, spinach, fenugreek. There's time for rabi crop. Plant in March, harvest in May.

Agriculture. The word that changes the camp from a temporary shelter to a permanent settlement — the permanent that the Colonel's announcement implies: *we are not waiting for rescue. We are not waiting for the government. We are not waiting for the virus to end. We are building.

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Janhavi is assigned to agriculture. The assignment: the Colonel's choice, the choice that the Colonel makes based on the assessments that the Colonel conducts (the Colonel assessing each person's skills, the skills, the data that theColonel uses to assign work: you were a nurse? Medical tent. You were a teacher? Children's education. You were a farmer? Agriculture.).

Janhavi is not a farmer. Janhavi has never farmed, the never-farming, which was city-girl's identity, the city-girl who grew up in foster homes in Amravati and Nagpur and who the growing-up did not include: agriculture.

But: Janhavi is assigned to agriculture because Janhavi volunteers. The volunteering, which was the choice that Janhavi makes: the choice that surprises me.

"Tujhe kheti mein interest hai?" I ask. You're interested in farming?

"Nahi. Lekin. Lekin kuch banana chahti hoon. Kuch grow karna chahti hoon. Truthful-hard. No pretence of softness.

No. But, I want to make something. Grow something. Understand?

I understand. The understanding: the understanding of a person who has been walking for eight days and peeling potatoes for two weeks and who the walking-and-peeling has been the consumption, the consumption of resources (food, water, energy) without the production. The consumption, the survival. But the survival requiring: production. The production that farming provides. The production that says I am not only consuming. I am producing. The producing, which was the contribution that justifies the consuming.

And: the understanding of a foster-care girl who has never had anything grow. Not a plant. Not a relationship. Not a home. Everything in Janhavi's life has been: given and taken. The foster families given and taken. The schools given and taken. The cities given and taken. Nothing has grown.

Until now. Until the camp. Until the agriculture.

I watch Janhavi in the fields, the fields that were the parade ground and that the parade ground is now being turned into: farmland. The turning requiring: digging. The digging that the camp's 260 people perform with the tools that the cantonment's stores provide: shovels, hoes, the implements that the military keeps for field-engineering and that the field-engineering now serves: farming.

Janhavi digs. The digging —: physical. The physical that Janhavi's body knows, the body that walked 700 kilometres and that the walking built: endurance. The endurance that digging requires and that the walking provides.

She digs with Devyani-tai and Roshni and the other women who are assigned to agriculture. The women digging the parade ground: the parade ground that was flat and hard and that the flat-and-hard is being broken by the shovels and the hoes and the women's arms.

The parade ground becoming: furrows. Rows. The geometry of agriculture — the geometry that the women create: straight lines of turned earth, the turned earth being dark (darker than the surface, the surface; sun-baked and the sub-surface being moist and the moist, the potential: I am soil. I will grow what you plant. Plant me.).

Janhavi plants seeds. The planting: precise. The precise that the agricultural officer teaches (the agricultural officer being a retired farmer from Satara who survived and who the surviving makes him the camp's expert: "Ek-ek beej ka gap do inch rakhna. Do inch. Zyada nahi, kam nahi." — Keep two-inch gaps between seeds. Two inches. Not more, not less.).

Janhavi plants with the precision that she used for other things, the precision that she used to hotwire cars (the car-hotwiring requiring the same precision: the right wire, the right connection, the exact touch). The precision that the gang's activities developed and that the gang's activities are now: the gang's activities are now transferred to: farming. The hotwiring of cars becoming the planting of seeds. The precision of crime becoming the precision of agriculture. Dry. Past its freshness.

The irony. The irony that the dead world produces: the skills that got Janhavi arrested are the skills that make Janhavi a good farmer.

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I visit the wall in the evenings. The wall that Janhavi sits on every morning, the wall that has become our place. The place that the camp knows: the eastern wall is where Reyansh and Janhavi sit. The sitting, which was their thing.

This evening, I sit alone. Janhavi is still in the fields, the fields that the evening light paints gold, the gold that March's sunset produces on turned earth, the gold that makes the parade-ground-turned-farmland look like: a painting. The painting that the dead world creates when the dead world's sunset illuminates the living world's agriculture.

I sit on the wall and I think.

I think about: the journey. The 700 kilometres. The eight days. Nagpur to Pune. NH44 to NH6 to NH60 to the cantonment gate. The kilometres that my Bata canvas shoes walked, the shoes that are worn now, the soles thin, the canvas stained with the dust of three regions (Vidarbha's brown dust, Marathwada's red dust, the Ghats' green-tinged earth). I shielded it with my palm.

I think about: the people we met. Parth. The ten-year-old boy on the dhaba wall. The boy who died beside his mother on a charpai. The boy who was the first death that the journey showed us: the first of how many? How many died on the road between Nagpur and Pune? How many bodies lie in the houses and the dhabas and the hotels that we passed through and that the passing-through did not reveal? The number: unknowable. The unknowable, the dead world's final cruelty: you will never know how many died. The dying was too vast to count.

I think about: Aai and Baba. The mounds on Mausaji's balcony. The mounds that my nightmare showed me in Wardha — the mounds that are real, the mounds that are in Nagpur, the mounds that I will have to visit someday. The someday: the future that the camp makes possible, the future that includes: grief. The grief that the road did not allow because the road demanded: walking. The walking: the activity that replaced the grieving. But now; now the walking has stopped. Now the camp provides: time. And the time provides: the grief that the body has been holding.

The grief coming. The grief that arrives at 7 PM on a wall in Pune's cantonment: the grief that is not a wave but is a tide: slow, rising, the rising that takes hours and that the hours are the evening hours on the wall, the wall that holds me while the grief rises.

Aai. The Aai who made poha every morning and who called me bala, the Marathi endearment that mothers use for sons) and who corrected my Marathi homework with the red pen that she kept in the kitchen drawer and who the kitchen-drawer was the intersection of her two roles: mother and teacher (she was a teacher (a primary school teacher at a Marathi-medium school in Kothrud, the school where she taught Class 3 and where Class 3 adored her because Class 3 adores all teachers who are kind and Aai was kind).

Baba. The Baba who worked for BSNL (the telecom company — the government telecom company that no one used anymore because the no-one-using was the private companies' victory: Jio and Airtel winning, BSNL losing, the losing, which was slow death that government enterprises die in India) and who the BSNL job transferred him from Pune to Nagpur and the transfer, the reason thatI am sitting on this wall instead of in our flat in Kothrud.

Aai. Baba. The two words. The two people. The two mounds.

I cry. On the wall. In the evening. The crying —: quiet. The quiet crying that the wall permits, the wall, the place where the crying is private, the private that the camp does not provide (the camp having no private spaces, the tents are shared, the mess is communal, the water point is public). The wall is the only private space. The wall is where I can cry.

The crying lasting: ten minutes. The ten minutes being the time that the grief takes to rise and crest and recede, the receding — not the end of the grief but the grief's temporary retreat: I will come back. I am the tide. I rise and recede and rise again. The rising is the processing. The processing is the healing.

I wipe my face. Sit up. Look at the view, the Pune view that the wall provides: the dead city, the living camp, the sunset, the gold. Military canvas, coarse-woven.

And I hear: footsteps. The footsteps of someone climbing the wall — the someone who I know by the weight of the climbing, the climbing, clumsy and determined and the clumsy-and-determined being: Janhavi.

She reaches the top. Sits beside me. Her hands dark with earth: the earth of the parade ground, the earth that the farming has put on her hands and that the hands carry as evidence: I have been farming. I have been growing. The growing is the thing.

"Tu roya," she says. Not a question.

"Haan."

She does not ask why. She knows why. She knows because she carries the same why, the why that every person in this camp carries, the 260 people who have all lost everyone and who the everyone-lost is the common why.

She sits beside me. Shoulder to shoulder, the shoulder-to-shoulder that the wall's width requires, the width, which was enough for two people if the two people sit close and the close (proximity that eight days of walking prod u)ced and that two weeks of camp have sustained.

She does not speak. I do not speak. The not-speaking being the conversation: the conversation that the wall provides when the wall is the place and the people are the people who do not need words because the words have already been said: on the highway, in the dhaba, on the temple ota, under the stars.

We sit. On the wall. In the evening. In Pune.

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The camp goes quiet at 9 PM. Generators off. Lights out. The darkness that the camp produces. The darkness that 260 people accept because the accepting is the routine: 9 PM. Sleep. Tomorrow we wake. Tomorrow we work. Tomorrow the seeds grow.

I lie on my cot in Tent 22. Shlok on the cot beside me, Shlok who is already asleep, the sleep coming easily to Shlok because the easy-sleeping is Shlok's gift: the gift of a person who can sleep anywhere, in any situation, the sleeping that was trust that the body shows the world: I trust you. I close my eyes. You will be here when I open them.

I lie awake. The awake that the camp's quiet produces, the quiet that is not the highway's silence (the silence of absence) but is the camp's quiet (the quiet of 260 people breathing, the breathing, proof: we are alive. All of us. The breathing is the evidence.).

I think about tomorrow. Tomorrow being: a day. A day in the camp. A day of kitchen work and wall-sitting and Shlok's jokes and Janhavi's farming and the routine that the camp has established.

And I think: this is it. This is the new world. This is what remains; 260 people in a cantonment in Pune, growing tomatoes on a parade ground, drinking water from a tanker truck, listening to a radio broadcast on All India Radio.

And I think: this is enough. This is enough because: Shlok is alive. Janhavi is here. The camp is here. The seeds are in the ground. The growing will happen.

I could feel every crack, every pebble.

I walked 700 kilometres. I found my friend. I found a girl on a wall. I found a camp. I found a wall of my own.

The wall is not a barrier. The wall is a lookout. The wall shows me the dead city and the living camp. The wall shows me: what was lost and what remains. The remains: enough. The enough: us.

Bhai, zinda hoon.

Haan, Shlok. Main bhi zinda hoon.

Hum sab zinda hain.

We are all alive.

Sleep.

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End