Chapter 1: Veer

# Chapter 1: Veer

## The House on Baner Road

The model flat's tiles were cold and smooth under his bare feet.

It is once we are outside again that it truly hits me.

Pallavi says nothing. She follows my footsteps as I walk over to the concrete bench in Harsh's front garden, the bench that Harsh's mother had installed two years ago because she believed that a garden without a bench was a garden without purpose and that a bench in a garden was the invitation that the world needed to sit and that sitting was the thing that humans did not do enough of because humans were always moving, always going, always the next thing, and a bench said stop. Sit. Be.

I throw myself upon the bench. Lower my head into my hands. Cover my face with my palms. Block out the street, block out the afternoon, block out the exact quality of March light in Pune that falls on everything with the democratic brightness of a city that does not know it is empty.

Then I try to contend with the knowledge that my best friend is dead.

There is no doubt. I saw him lying there in the bedroom on the second floor of the flat in Baner: the flat that his parents had purchased in 2019 for ₹78 lakhs, the ₹78 lakhs being the Kulkarni family's investment in their son's future, the future: a two-bedroom flat in a gated society with a swimming pool that nobody swam in and a gym that nobody used and a security guard who was now, like the Kulkarnis, dead. Harsh was on the bed. His parents were on the floor beside the bed — his mother on the left, his father on the right, as if they had collapsed while trying to reach their son. Their skin was the colour of old newspaper, the yellowish grey that the A-Virus produced in its final stage, the final stage, which was stage after the coughing and after the fever and after the bleeding and after the stillness, the stillness, death and the yellowish grey being death's colour, the colour that I had now seen on fourteen faces in seven days and that I would see on every face I encountered for the rest of however long this lasted.

The smell. The smell that I had become familiar with in seven days of walking through a dead city: the sweet, thick, wrong smell that the body produced when the body was no longer a body but was becoming something else, the something else being: decomposition. The word that biology textbooks used and that the textbooks made clinical and that the reality made unbearable, the reality —: Harsh's flat smelled like Harsh's flat should never smell. Harsh's flat should smell like Harsh's mother's poha and Harsh's father's Old Spice and the Odonil air freshener that hung in the bathroom and the stubborn smell of a Pune flat in March: warm concrete, mogra from the balcony plant, the distant diesel of PMPML buses. Kiaan's weight pressed into my chest. His small body was warm, his breathing a rhythm I felt more than heard.

Instead, the flat smelled like the end.

Was it not just two weeks ago that Harsh and I had played BGMI on his phone until 2 AM? Was it not just ten days ago that we had talked about getting a flat together after his TCS posting came through, the posting; Hyderabad, the Hyderabad, the plan: Harsh in TCS Hyderabad, me in Infosys Hyderabad, the two of us in a 2BHK in Madhapur, splitting the rent, splitting the groceries, splitting the life that twenty-three-year-old engineering graduates split when they moved to a new city for their first job?

But now that dream is dead. Just like him. Just like everyone else I ever cared about.

The first sob comes. It comes in a wrench, a physical thing, a twist in the gut that the gut did not consent to, the twist — the body's response to the mind's knowledge: he is dead. You walked from Kothrud to Baner; twelve kilometres: to find him, and he is dead, and the twelve kilometres were for nothing, and the nothing is the thing that the world has become.

Pallavi stands there. Pallavi with Kiaan strapped to her chest in the baby carrier: bright orange carrier that we had found in the D-Mart, the baby carrier from the D-Mart on Karve Road three days ago, the finding, looting that was not looting because looting required a society to loot from and the society was gone and the gone meant that everything in D-Mart was ours because nobody was left to say it wasn't. Kiaan is six weeks old. Kiaan is not Pallavi's son. Kiaan is the son of a woman we found dead in a Maruti Ertiga on the Katraj-Dehu Road bypass, the woman: dead and the son, alive and the alive: miracle that we carried with us— the miracle that cried for formula every four hours and that slept between the cries and that had no idea that the world into which he had been born was the world that had ended. The model flat's tiles were cold and smooth under my feet.

There is nothing Pallavi can say or do. Nothing that will take this pain from me. Nothing that will undo the twelve kilometres of walking through empty Pune streets, empty streets that should have had traffic and noise and the exact chaos of Pune at 3 PM: the two-wheelers weaving between the buses, the auto-rickshaws honking, the college students on their Activas, the IT professionals in their Swifts and Crettas, the grandmothers crossing the road with the fearlessness that only Indian grandmothers possessed. The streets should have had all of this. The streets had none of it. The streets had: silence. Parked vehicles. Stray dogs that were no longer stray because there were no humans to distinguish stray from owned. Crows. The crows, the only creatures that had not died, the crows having inherited the city the way the poor inherited the earth: by surviving.

Another heaving sob. Tears on my cheeks, the cheeks that had not been shaved in eight days because shaving required a mirror and a mirror required a bathroom and a bathroom required a home and the home — my home, the flat in Kothrud where my parents had lived and where I had grown up and where my mother had died on the third day and my father had died on the fourth day, the home was the place I could not return to because returning meant seeing the beds where I had placed them and the sheets that I had pulled over their faces and the quiet emptiness of a flat where two people had been alive and were now not alive.

A hand on my shoulder. Pallavi's hand. Small, firm, the hand of a woman who had killed two men with a khurpi — a gardening tool, the gardening tool (the weapon that) Pallavi had used to defend us from Jagdish and Sachin, the two men who had found us in a dhaba on Sinhagad Road and who had decided that a woman and a baby and a man were resources to be controlled and who had discovered, in the forty seconds that it took Pallavi to reach the dhaba's kitchen and return with the khurpi, that the woman was not a resource but a force.

"Theek hai. Ro le. Sab nikal de."

It's okay. Cry. Let it all out.

She squeezes my shoulder. The squeeze, the comfort that did not fix and did not heal but that said: I am here. You are not alone. The alone is the thing that the virus did to the world and the not-alone is the thing that we do to each other. The hammer's handle was rough, the wood swollen from rain, the grip uncertain.

I lower my hands. I look up. Her eyes are red: the red of a woman who has been crying too, the crying, the shared grief, the shared grief being: she was as invested in this journey as I was. We had walked twelve kilometres, twelve kilometres through dead Pune — because I had believed, against all evidence and all probability, that Harsh Kulkarni was alive. That when I knocked on the door of Flat 402, Aishwarya Residency, Baner Road, Harsh's face would appear. The face that I had known since Class 6, the face of the boy who had shared my bench at Abhinav Vidyalaya and who had shared my tiffin when his mother forgot to pack his and who had shared my grief when my dog Raja died and who had shared my celebration when I got into COEP and who had shared everything that a best friend shared in twelve years of being best friends.

The face did not appear. The face was on the bed. The face was yellowish grey. The face was dead.

"Chalo," I say. Let's go. My voice cracking: the cracking, which was the pressure of a throat that had been crying and that was dry and that needed water and that would not get water until we found water because the municipal supply had stopped five days ago and the stopped, which was the end of the infrastructure, the infrastructure, which was invisible system that had madePune work: water, electricity, internet, buses, garbage collection, the system that nobody noticed until the system stopped and the stopping revealed the system's importance the way death revealed life's importance.

I stand from the bench. I leave Harsh behind. I leave the flat and the society and the swimming pool and the gym and the security guard's empty booth and the mogra plant on the balcony: the mogra that would continue to bloom because mogra did not need humans, mogra needed sun and water and the March heat, and the March heat was here and the sun was here and the water — the water from the last rains that the soil held, the water was here. The mogra would bloom. The mogra would bloom for nobody. The mogra would bloom in a dead city and the blooming would be the most beautiful and the most terrible thing: life continuing in the absence of the living. Pallavi's hand was dry and calloused from the khurpi.

The day is still beautiful. Pune's March afternoon. The afternoon that was warm but not hot, the warm, which was the Vasant warmth, the spring warmth that preceded the furnace of April and May. The sun continuing to shine. The sky the stubborn blue of the Deccan plateau: the blue that was deeper than Mumbai's coastal blue and cleaner than Delhi's smoggy blue and that was Pune's blue, the blue of a city at 560 metres above sea level, the altitude giving the sky its depth.

"Toh ab kya karein?" Pallavi asks. So what do we do now?

Her warm hand is pressed into mine. We both need comfort after what we have just been through.

My eyes still watery and sore, I scratch the back of my head, the head that needed a haircut eight days ago and that now needed a haircut more, the needing — irrelevant because haircuts required barbers and barbers required customers and customers required a society and the society was the thing that the A-Virus had ended in eleven days.

"Nahi pata," I say. I don't know.

The honest answer. The answer of a twenty-three-year-old COEP mechanical engineering graduate who had received his Infosys offer letter on March 3rd and who had been scheduled to join on April 15th and who had watched his mother die on March 10th and his father on March 11th and who had met Pallavi on March 14th and Kiaan on March 15th and who had walked twelve kilometres on March 17th to find his best friend dead and who now stood on a bench in Baner with a woman he had known for three days and a baby he had known for two days and no plan and no purpose and no reason to walk in any direction except that walking was the alternative to standing still and standing still was the alternative to lying down and lying down was the alternative to dying and dying was the thing that he was not ready to do because Pallavi was holding his hand and Kiaan was sleeping against her chest and the hand and the sleeping were the two reasons that remained. The cot canvas was stretched too tight. It pressed against my spine at every vertebra.

"Kuch nahi pata," I repeat. Nothing.

"Koi jagah dhundein?" she says. Should we find a place?

"Jagah?"

"Rehne ke liye. Aise ghoomte rahenge toh: toh Kiaan ke liye achha nahi hai. Aur, aur main thak gayi hoon, Veer. Bahut thak gayi hoon."

To stay. If we keep wandering like this. It's not good for Kiaan. And, I'm tired, Veer. Very tired.

Tired. The word containing more than fatigue: the word containing the seven days of walking and the dead parents and the dead city and the khurpi and Jagdish and Sachin and the formula runs and the sleeping in dhabas and the March nights that were not cold but that were cold enough when you slept on a dhaba's floor with a baby and a stranger and the distinctive cold of grief, the cold that the body produced when the body was grieving, the cold that no blanket addressed because the cold was not temperature but absence.

I look down the street. Baner Road stretching ahead. The road that was Pune's IT corridor, the corridor that had produced a thousand societies with names like Aishwarya and Pristine and Nyati and Blue Ridge and Godrej and Kolte Patil, developers' brands: the names, the brands, the promises: live here, live well, live the Pune dream. The Pune dream being: a flat, a car, a job in IT, a weekend at Lavasa or Lonavala, a misal pav at Bedekar or Katakir, a walk on FC Road, a movie at E-Square. The dream that two million people had been dreaming until eleven days ago when the dreaming stopped. The Godrej padlock was cold in my hand, the metal heavier than it looked.

"Wahan dekh," I say, pointing. Look there.

What I see is the entrance to a new road, a road that curves off Baner Road into a new development. When I had last visited Harsh, the development was under construction. The board at the entrance reads: Sai Srushti Phase 2. Premium 2BHK & 3BHK Residences: Possession: December 2024. The board showing the artist's rendering: a glass-and-concrete tower, a garden with palm trees, a family of four (husband, wife, son, daughter, the Indian real estate family, the family that every developer used, the family that existed only on hoardings and brochures and that was the aspiration that the ₹80 lakhs purchased).

Past the board: the development. Half-built. The tower incomplete. Twelve floors erected, the thirteenth a skeleton of rebar and concrete. Around the tower: the landscaping begun but not finished; paths of red soil where gardens were planned, a swimming pool that was a concrete pit without water, a clubhouse that was a structure without a roof.

But at the front of the development: at the very entrance, a flat. A ground-floor flat. A model flat, the flat that developers furnished and decorated and opened to prospective buyers so that the buyers could see what their ₹80 lakhs would look like in three dimensions: the flat that had furniture and curtains and a kitchen and the particular staged beauty of a model flat, the beauty being: everything perfect, everything new, everything the life you imagined and that the developer sold you.

The model flat had a door. The door was closed. The door had a lock. And the lock meant: keys. And the keys meant: somewhere in the developer's office, the office that was in the incomplete tower — somewhere in the office, there would be keys. My feet were raw from walking. The Bata chappals' straps had rubbed a blister between my toes.

"Wahan," I say. "Model flat. Furnished hoga. Kitchen hoga. Rehne layak hoga."

There. Model flat. It'll be furnished. Kitchen. Liveable.

"Sach mein?"

Really?

"Haan. Jab mere parents ne Kothrud mein flat kharida tha, humne bhi aise hi ek model flat dekha tha. Poora sajaya hua tha. Furniture, kitchen, sab. Developers aise karte hain: buyers ko dikhane ke liye ki flat kaisa dikhega."

Yes. When my parents bought our Kothrud flat, we looked at a model flat like this too. Fully decorated. Furniture, kitchen, everything. Developers do this — to show buyers what the flat will look like.

Pallavi looks at the development. Looks at the model flat's closed door. Looks at the incomplete tower. Looks at the red-soil paths and the empty swimming pool and the roofless clubhouse.

"Theek hai," she says. "Dekhte hain."

Okay. Let's check it out.

We walk toward the development. The development's gate is open: the gate. Boom-barrier type that gated societies used, the barrier raised permanently because the last person to raise it had raised it and then died and the dying had left the barrier in the raised position and the raised position was the position that welcomed us into a home that was never ours and that was now. Because ownership required a society and the society was gone, ours by default. By survival. By the simple fact that we were alive and the developers and the buyers and the security guards were not. The backpack's straps cut into my shoulders. I shifted the weight. The cutting shifted too.

The developer's office is on the ground floor of the incomplete tower. The office door is locked, locked with a padlock, the padlock — the Indian developer's security: a ₹200 Godrej padlock that a ₹50 hammer could break. I find a hammer in the construction area. The construction area — ground around the tower, the ground littered with the tools that the construction workers had left: hammers, trowels, saria (rebar) cutters, the tools that the workers had been using when the virus came and the virus did not distinguish between the developer in his Audi and the worker in his chappal, the virus, the great equalizer that India's caste system and class system and economic system had never achieved.

I break the padlock. I enter the office. The office being: a desk, two chairs, a laptop (dead, the power, out), marketing brochures stacked on a shelf, a water cooler (empty), and on the wall, on the wall, a key board. A board with hooks. On the hooks: keys. Keys labelled with Post-it notes in Marathi; "Sample Flat", "Site Office", "Pump Room", "Generator Room".

I take the key labelled "Sample Flat."

"Mil gayi," I say. Found it.

We walk to the model flat. The flat: ground floor, the ground floor being the developer's choice for the model flat because ground floor was accessible and accessible meant more visitors and more visitors meant more sales and more sales meant more profit and the profit was the thing that the developer had been optimizing for until the optimization stopped.

I insert the key. Turn the lock. Push the door.

The door opens into. The door opens into a flat that looks like it was designed by someone who had studied the word aspirational and decided to build it in three dimensions. Her forehead was damp when I touched it. Fever sweat, different from effort sweat.

The hall is wide. Vitrified tiles: the off-white tiles that Pune developers favoured, the off-white being the colour of cleanliness and the cleanliness — the colour of aspiration. A shoe rack at the entrance — a wooden shoe rack that was empty because no shoes had ever been placed in it because no feet had ever lived here. The shoe rack being the model flat's decoration, the decoration that said this is a home even though this had never been a home.

We step inside. Pallavi closes the door behind us. The closing. The closing (sound of safety). The sound that said: inside. Locked. Protected. The sound that we had not heard in seven days of dhabas and benches and open roads and the recognisable vulnerability of being alive in a dead world.

The living room. A sofa. An L-shaped sofa in grey fabric, the grey, which was the model flat's palette: grey, white, beige, the palette of the aspirational Pune flat, the palette that said modern, clean, tasteful. A television on the wall, a television that was decoration, not functional, the television, connected to nothing because the model flat's electricity was for lights and fans, not for entertainment. But the television's presence said: you will have a television. You will watch television. You will have a normal life.

The dining room. A table — a wooden table with six chairs, the six — the Indian family's dining number: mother, father, two children, and two guests, the two guests being the Indian social requirement: there must always be room for guests because Indian homes without room for guests were not Indian homes. The brick wall was rough against my back. I leaned harder. The roughness grounded me.

The kitchen. White cabinets. A granite countertop, black granite, the black granite that Pune kitchens favoured, aesthetic choice and the practical choice, the favouring: black granite hid stains, and hiding stains was the Indian kitchen's daily requirement because Indian kitchens produced stains the way Indian kitchens produced food: abundantly, colourfully, permanently.

I check the kitchen. I check the tap, the tap producing nothing, the nothing: municipal water supply's absence. I check the gas stove: the gas stove being a two-burner Prestige, the Prestige, which was the Indian kitchen's default brand the way Maruti was the Indian road's default brand. The stove is connected to nothing; no gas cylinder, the cylinder, the thing we would need to find.

But the flat is, the flat is clean. And furnished. And locked. And ours.

"Yeh. Yeh achha hai," Pallavi says, walking through the rooms, her hand on the walls, her feet on the tiles, Kiaan asleep on her chest. This: this is good.

Achha. Good. The word that was the understatement. The understatement: after seven days of dhabas and floors and fear, a flat with a sofa and a bed and a door that locked was not just good. A flat with a sofa and a bed and a door that locked was the first step back toward the thing that the virus had taken: shelter. The basic human need that preceded food and water and love, the need for a roof, a wall, a door between you and the world that wanted to kill you. The rattle was smooth plastic under my fingers. Kiaan's grip on it was surprisingly firm.

"Bahut achha hai," I say. Very good.

We tour the bedrooms. Two bedrooms: the model flat being a 2BHK, the 2BHK: the Pune standard: two bedrooms, one hall, one kitchen, the configuration that two million Punekars lived in, the configuration that was the city's residential unit the way the autorickshaw was the city's transport unit.

The master bedroom has a double bed. The bed: I sit on it. The mattress is firm, new, unused. The firmness, the mattress's virginity: no body had ever slept on this mattress, no weight had ever compressed these springs, no dream had ever been dreamed on this surface. The mattress was waiting. The mattress had been waiting since December 2024 when the developer had placed it here for the model flat's staging and the mattress had waited through January and February and the first week of March and the virus and the deaths and the stillness and was still waiting, still firm, still ready.

"Hum dono — hum dono ek room mein soyenge," Pallavi says. We'll both sleep in one room.

"Sure?"

"Haan. Akele — akele nahi so sakti ab. Pichle hafte ke baad, akele nahi so sakti." The inverter battery terminal was warm. The warmth of low current, residual charge.

Yes. Alone, I can't sleep alone anymore. After last week — I can't sleep alone.

The sentence: the admission that the week had produced: the admission of a woman who had been a stranger eight days ago and who was now the person who held my hand while I cried and who had killed two men to protect me and who could not sleep alone because sleeping alone was the vulnerability that the new world did not permit.

"Theek hai," I say. Okay. "Main yahan, tum wahan. Kiaan beech mein."

I'll be here, you there. Kiaan in the middle.

She nods. The nod, the agreement, the agreement of a family that was not a family and that was becoming a family because the world had destroyed all other families and the destroyed families had left behind three people who needed each other and the needing was the family's foundation, the foundation, not blood but survival.

I look at the flat. I look at the grey sofa and the wooden dining table and the black granite counter and the double bed and the vitrified tiles and the empty shoe rack.

If we really were a family, the family on the developer's hoarding, the husband and wife and son and daughter; if we were that family, about to enter our first home, this would be the moment. The moment of the new beginning. The moment of the keys and the door and the threshold.

But we are not that family. We are a twenty-three-year-old COEP graduate and a twenty-one-year-old Fergusson College dropout and a six-week-old baby who is not ours. We are not a family. We are the survivors.

And this is not our first home. This is the place where we will try not to die.

I walk to the door. I close it. I lock it. I pocket the key.

The lock clicks. The click: the sound of the beginning. The beginning of whatever comes next.

The beginning of staying alive.