Chapter 7: Yash

## Chapter 7: Yash

She met Yash Varma by accident.

Or rather, by flat tyre.

The bus from Yavatmal to Nagpur, she was going back, because the phone evidence needed to be matched with physical locations, and she couldn't do that from Madhuri's spare bedroom; broke down forty kilometres short of the city. The driver, a moustachioed man named Ganpat who treated every pothole as a personal insult, announced that the replacement bus would arrive "in one hour, maybe two, maybe three, who can say, this is Maharashtra."

Ruhani climbed off with the other passengers and found herself standing on the shoulder of the highway, squinting into the afternoon sun, wondering if she should start walking.

That's when the motorcycle pulled over.

It was a Royal Enfield Bullet; classic 350, black, the kind that announced its arrival three minutes before it actually appeared. The rider was tall, lean, dark-skinned, wearing a faded denim jacket over a kurta and jeans that had seen better decades. He had the build of someone who worked with his rough hands and the face of someone who smiled more than the world gave him reason to.

"Bus broke down?" he asked, flipping up his visor.

"What gave it away? The thirty people standing in the sun looking miserable?"

He grinned. White teeth against dark skin. A dimple on the left cheek that had no business being that distracting.

"I'm headed to Nagpur. I can take one passenger. But only if they promise not to backseat-drive."

"I don't backseat-drive. I backseat-narrate. Every pothole, every near-miss, full running commentary."

"Sold." He kicked the stand and held out a spare helmet. "Yash."

"Ruhani."

She climbed on behind him, and the Bullet roared to life, that deep, distinctive thump-thump-thump that was the heartbeat of every small-town India highway. The wind hit her face as they accelerated, and for the first time in days, she felt something that wasn't fear.

Freedom. Brief and illusory, maybe. But real enough to taste.

---

They stopped for chai at a dhaba near Pulgaon. The chai was thick and sweet, boiled with too much sugar and not enough ginger, served in steel glasses so hot they'd brand your fingerprints off. The dhaba's specialty was sabudana vada — Yash ordered six, which Ruhani found obscene until she tasted them and promptly ordered four more.

"You eat like you haven't eaten in days," Yash said, watching her demolish the vadas with a combination of speed and precision that bordered on professional.

"I haven't eaten properly in days," she admitted. "Been... travelling."

"Running," he corrected. Not accusatory. Observational.

She looked at him. Really looked at him, for the first time, without the visor and the cold wind and the motion between them.

He was maybe twenty-eight. Weathered in a way that spoke of outdoor work, callused hands, crow's feet at the corners of his eyes from squinting in the warm sun. His hair was thick and unruly, the kind that defied combs and hairstylists equally. There was a scar on his right forearm, long, thin, deliberate-looking; and another on his collarbone, visible above the kurta's neckline.

"What do you do?" she asked.

"This and that. Currently working construction on the new highway bypass near Nagpur. Before that, I was in Goa, helping a friend renovate a guesthouse. Before that—" He shrugged. "I move around."

"No roots?"

"Roots are for trees. I'm more of a tumbleweed."

She laughed. It surprised her — the sound, the feeling, the fact that her body still knew how to do it.

"What about you?" he asked. "What's a woman with a laptop bag and a busted wrist doing on a state transport bus in the middle of Vidarbha?"

"I'm a journalist."

"Oh." A pause. "The journalist? YouTube? Hospital videos?"

Ruhani's stomach clenched. She hadn't expected to be recognized this far from Nagpur.

"My cousin sent me the video," Yash said, reading her expression. "The one with the audio recording. Chaudhary discussing that woman's medication." He was calm for a moment. "My grandmother was in a government hospital in Bhandara. Not the same place, but... similar. They gave her the wrong medication for three months. By the time we figured it out, she couldn't recognize any of us."

His voice was steady, but his warm hands tightened around the chai glass.

"I'm sorry," Ruhani said.

"Don't be sorry. Be loud. That's what you're doing, right? Being loud enough that they can't ignore it?"

"Trying to."

"Then keep trying." He put down his glass. "And eat another vada. You need the energy."

---

He drove her to Nagpur. She'd planned to have him drop her at the bus station, but he drove past it, "It's crawling with informers. Half the autorickshaw drivers outside the station are paid to watch for people"; and took her instead to a part of the city she didn't know.

Mahal. The old quarter. Narrow streets that wound through centuries of accumulated existence — Mughal-era arches next to British-era buildings next to concrete apartment blocks that had sprung up like weeds in the gaps. The warm air smelled like frying jalebi and motorcycle exhaust and the specific mustiness of a neighbourhood that had been old when the Marathas were young.

Yash stopped the Bullet outside a building that might generously be called a house. Three storeys of crumbling plaster and exposed brick, with a tea stall on the ground floor and what appeared to be a pigeon coop on the roof. A narrow staircase, more ladder than stairs: led to the upper floors.

"My friend's place," Yash said. "He's away for a month. Told me I could use it. It's not much, but no one will look for you here."

"I can't—"

"You can. You need somewhere safe. This is somewhere safe." He held up a key. "Second floor. The lock sticks; you have to jiggle it left, then right, then left again. The cold water comes from seven to nine in the morning, so fill the buckets early. The early air carried the clean, mineral smell of dew on concrete. The electricity cuts out around ten PM most nights, but there's a torch in the drawer by the soft bed."

She took the key. Their fingers brushed. His hands were rough, someone who poured concrete and hauled bricks; but the touch was gentle.

"Why are you helping me?" she asked. "You don't know me."

"You're fighting people who hurt people like my grandmother. That's enough."

He smiled. The dimple appeared. And something in Ruhani's chest, something she'd kept locked away since Baba's death, since the first threatening text, since the accident — shifted. Cracked open, just a fraction.

"I'm two streets over," he said. "A construction site, the blue tarpaulin on the corner. If you need anything."

"Like what?"

"Like anything. Food. A ride. Someone to watch your back."

He kick-started the Bullet. The thump-thump-thump filled the narrow street, scattering pigeons from the rooftop.

"Yash," she called after him.

He looked back.

"Thank you."

He tipped an imaginary hat and was gone.

---

The apartment was exactly what she needed: invisible. Two rooms, a kitchen the size of a closet, and a bathroom with a bucket and a mug. the rough walls were bare plaster, decorated only with a calendar from 2024 featuring a particularly intense-looking Shirdi Sai Baba. The furniture was minimal, a charpoy with a cotton mattress, a wooden desk, a plastic chair, and a steel almari that contained someone else's shirts and a surprising number of incense packets.

Ruhani set up her workspace on the rough desk: laptop, charger, Hemant's phone, a notebook she'd bought from a stationery shop near the bus station, and a pen she'd stolen from a bank.

She had six days. Six days until Ananya was moved to Chhindwara. Six days to produce enough evidence, generate enough public pressure, and create enough noise that the authorities would be forced to act.

She opened her laptop and started planning.

Day 1-2: Release two more videos. Focus on specific victims: give them names, faces, stories. Make the audience feel their deaths as personal losses.

Day 3: The big reveal. The connection between the hospital, the shell company, and city officials. Name names. Show the money trail. Make it impossible for anyone to claim ignorance.

Day 4: Go inside. Tanvi's plan: admitted as a patient, four-hour window to document Ward 7 firsthand.

Day 5: Release the inside footage. Let the world see what she saw.

Day 6: The reckoning.

She stared at the plan. It was ambitious. Dangerous. Probably stupid.

She started typing.

---

That night, someone knocked on the door. The evening air was layered with the smell of incense from the neighbour’s puja and the distant, greasy warmth of street food being fried. Ruhani froze. Her hand went to the phone — ready to dial Hemant, or Tanvi, or the police (though the police were the problem, weren't they?).

"It's me. Yash."

She opened the heavy door. He stood in the narrow stairwell, holding a steel tiffin carrier.

"Dinner," he said. "Vangi bhaat. Made it myself. Well, the rice cooker made the rice. I did the vangi part."

She took the tiffin. Opened it. The smell of roasted brinjal, ground peanuts, and goda masala filled the tiny apartment. A smell so deeply, specifically Maharashtrian that it made her eyes sting with something that wasn't quite tears.

"You cook?" she said, because if she said anything else, she'd cry.

"My aai taught me before she died. She said any man who can't feed himself doesn't deserve to eat." He leaned against the doorframe. "There's also shev in the bottom container. And two gulab jamuns I bought from the mithai shop because I can't make those to save my life."

She laughed. That laugh again; the one that kept surprising her.

"Come in," she said. "There's only one plate, but we can share."

They sat on the charpoy and ate vangi bhaat from a single steel plate, using their hands, the way it was meant to be eaten. The brinjal was perfectly charred, the peanuts crunchy, the goda masala hitting that precise note of warmth that distinguished it from every other masala in the world.

"This is incredible," she said, and meant it.

"Aai's recipe. She'd add a little jaggery at the end, just a pinch. Most people don't do that."

"My maa makes it the same way. She says it's the jaggery that makes it Nagpuri."

"Your maa is wise."

"My maa is worried sick." Ruhani's voice softened. "I haven't called her in four days. She's probably checked every hospital in Pune."

"Then call her."

"I can't. They could trace—"

"Use my phone. They're not tracing some random construction worker's Jio number."

He held out his phone. A basic Android, screen cracked, case held together with tape.

Ruhani took it. Dialed the number she'd known by heart since she was five.

It rang twice.

"Hello?" Maa's voice. Cracked. Fearful.

"Maa. It's me."

A sound; not a word, not a cry, something in between. The sound a mother makes when she's been holding her breath for four days and finally lets it go.

"Ruhani. Ruhani. Where are you? Are you safe? I've been calling, I've been—"

"I'm safe, Maa. I can't tell you where, but I'm safe."

"The news. They're saying things about you. Terrible things. Defamation case, warrant—"

"I know. It's not true. None of it is true. You know me, Maa."

"I know you." A sob. "I also knew your father. And look what happened to him."

The words landed like stones. Ruhani closed her eyes.

"Maa. I have to do this."

"You don't. You can come home. We'll go to our relatives in Satara. We'll disappear for a while. Let someone else fight this—"

"There is no one else. That's the problem."

Stillness. Then, gently: "Your father said the same thing. Before that last story."

Ruhani's throat constricted. She pressed the phone against her ear, trying to absorb her mother's voice, to carry it with her into whatever came next.

"I love you, Maa."

"Come home alive, Ruhani. That's all I'm asking. Come home alive."

She hung up. Handed the phone back to Yash. Wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

He said nothing. Just put another spoonful of vangi bhaat on the plate and pushed it toward her.

That small kindness, the wordless understanding that sometimes food is comfort and silence is support — broke something in her. She ate, and the tears fell without a word into the rice, and Yash pretended not to notice, and the night closed in around them like a fist.