Chapter 10: Veer

# Chapter 10: Veer

## The New Routine

The padlock broke with a jolt that ran up through the hammer handle into his wrist.

Gauri moves in on the third day after the meeting.

She does not bring much. She cannot bring much, the much: what do you bring from a dead aunt's flat when the flat contains the aunt's life and the aunt's life is not yours? She brings a backpack, the backpack containing: three kurtas, two jeans, underwear, a hairbrush, a toothbrush, a Nokia phone (dead, the dead — the universal state of phones now, the universal —: every phone in every pocket in every flat in Pune is dead because every phone needs charging and charging needs electricity and electricity is the thing that died on Day 12 and will not return), and a photograph.

The photograph is in a frame: a small wooden frame, the frame that was kind thatIndian families kept on bedside tables and on puja shelves and on the tops of wardrobes: the frame that held the face that mattered. Gauri's photograph is of her mausi, her aunt, the aunt who lived in the Baner flat, the aunt who is dead.

The photograph shows a woman in her forties, the forties that Indian women entered with the quiet combination of grey hair that they refused to acknowledge and wrinkles that they acknowledged but blamed on the weather or the cooking or the stress, the stress: the Indian woman's permanent companion. The woman in the photograph is smiling: the smile of a woman at a family gathering, the gathering — a haldi-kunku or a birthday or a Diwali faral exchange, the gathering that produced the photographs that ended up in the frames that ended up on the bedside tables.

Gauri places the photograph on the shelf in the second bedroom, the bedroom that has become hers, the second bedroom of the model flat, the bedroom with the single bed and the window that faces the unfinished swimming pool and the view of the construction site that will never be completed.

"Mausi ka naam Sunanda tha," she says. "Sunanda Gokhale."

My aunt's name was Sunanda. Sunanda Gokhale.

Gokhale. The Chitpavan Brahmin surname. The surname that Pune's history carried in its DNA: Gokhale as in Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the freedom fighter whose statue stood at Deccan Gymkhana. The Gokhale surname being the Pune surname, the surname that said this family is from here. This family has always been from here. This family's roots are in the red soil of Pune's hills.

"Sunanda Mausi, Sunanda Mausi school teacher thi. Nagpur mein pehle. Phir Pune mein. Kendriya Vidyalaya. Hindi padhati thi."

Sunanda Mausi was a school teacher. First in Nagpur. Then in Pune. Kendriya Vidyalaya. She taught Hindi.

Hindi teacher at a Kendriya Vidyalaya. The KV, which was the central government school, the school that existed in every Indian city and that served the children of central government employees and that was, by virtue of serving all regions and all communities, the most Indian school: the school where the Tamil kid sat next to the Punjabi kid sat next to the Maharashtrian kid, the sitting-together being the KV's gift to the nation: diversity by proximity.

I nod. I do not say more. I do not ask more. The not-asking being the respect that grief requires — the respect that says you have told me her name. You have told me her profession. You have told me enough. The rest. The rest you will tell me when you are ready, and the ready may be tomorrow or next month or never, and the never is also acceptable because the never is the grief's prerogative: to keep some things forever.

---

The new routine establishes itself within days. The routine: wake, chai, breakfast, explore, lunch, rest, evening walk, dinner, sleep. The routine, the same routine as before but with Gauri added — the Gauri-addition being the variable that changes the equation from two adults, one baby, one dog to three adults, one baby, one dog, the change: change that changes everything because three is not two-plus-one but is a different number altogether: three is a team. Two is a pair. Three is a society.

The labour divides. The division, natural. Not negotiated, not assigned, but emerging from the abilities and the preferences and the precise skills that each person brings:

I am the explorer. I am the D-Mart runner, the hardware store scavenger, the neighbourhood mapper. I ride the Hero Sprint through Baner's streets. I know which flats have been entered (by us or by the rats) and which flats are untouched. I know which shops have supplies and which shops are empty. I know the geography of survival. The geography that says water bottles in the Reliance Fresh on Lane 3, batteries in the electronics store on Lane 7, candles in the general store on the main road.

Pallavi is the home-maker. Pallavi cooks. Pallavi cleans. Pallavi manages the model flat the way a housewife manages a household, the housewife: the role that Pallavi has adopted not because she chose it but because the new world's labour division mirrors the old world's gender roles: the man goes out, the woman stays in. The mirroring, unconscious and troubling and something that I am aware of but that the urgency of survival prevents me from addressing because addressing requires leisure and leisure is the thing that survival does not provide.

Gauri is the engineer. Gauri: the VNIT Computer Science final-year student. Is the person who solves problems. Gauri is the one who looks at the model flat's non-functioning water system and says "agar hum chhatt pe ek tank rakhein aur D-Mart se Bisleri ke bade drums le aayein toh gravity se paani aayega", if we put a tank on the roof and bring big Bisleri drums from D-Mart, gravity will give us water. Gauri is the one who rigs the solar-powered garden lights (found at the hardware store) to provide low-level illumination in the evenings. Gauri is the one who connects the car battery (from one of the four cars in the D-Mart parking lot) to a power inverter (from the electronics store) and produces — produces electricity. Not much. Enough to charge a phone. Enough to power a small fan. Enough to be the difference between the dark ages and the barely-lit ages.

"VNIT ka faayda," she says when the inverter works and the small table fan begins to rotate and the rotation produces the first artificial breeze that the model flat has felt in six weeks. VNIT's benefit.

The first joke. The first joke that Gauri has made. The joke — the sign, the sign that says recovery: in progress. The sign that says the wall is cracking. The human behind the wall is emerging. The emergence is slow but it is happening.

Kiaan grows. Kiaan is now two-and-a-half months old: the two-and-a-half. Age at which babies begin to do things: smile, track objects with their eyes, make sounds that are not crying. Kiaan's sounds are: a gurgle, a coo, and a particular noise that Pallavi calls "the motor" because it sounds like a small engine idling. The motor-sound being Kiaan's contribution to the model flat's soundscape. The soundscape that previously consisted of: silence, chai-making sounds, Bholu's nails on the tiles, and the wind through the windows. Kiaan's motor adds a new frequency to the soundscape: the frequency of life. Of growth. Of the future.

Bholu is the family's clock. Bholu wakes at 6 AM. Always 6 AM, the 6 AM being the dog's internal timer, the timer that dogs possessed and that was more reliable than any alarm clock because the dog's timer was set by the sun and the sun was the clock that the new world ran on. Bholu's 6 AM wake-up is followed by: the morning pee (6:05), the morning walk demand (6:10, the demand: Bholu standing at the door and looking at me with the look that said open this door or I will bark and the barking will wake everyone), the morning walk (6:15-6:45), the morning feed (6:50), the morning nap (7:00-9:00). The schedule continuing through the day with military precision, the military precision, the dog's gift: regularity. The regularity that the model flat needs. The regularity that gives the day its shape.

We are. We are not happy. Happy is too strong a word. Happy is the word that the old world used and that the new world cannot use because the new world does not produce happiness. The new world produces: survival, routine, small comforts, the occasional laugh, the occasional cry, the daily grief that is less acute than yesterday's grief but that is still grief.

We are, we are managing. Managing is the word. The word that the new world uses instead of happy: we are managing. Managing meaning: we are eating. We are sleeping. We are not dying. We are caring for a baby and a dog. We are three adults who are choosing, every day, to continue choosing.

The choosing, which was the bravest thing.

---

Gauri and I begin exploring together. The exploring: the expansion of the map, the map that I have drawn in my head and that Gauri wants to expand because Gauri is the engineer and the engineer's instinct is: know the territory. Understand the system. Map the variables.

We ride bicycles: my Hero Sprint and a second bicycle that we find in a neighbouring society (a Lady Bird, the Lady Bird being the women's bicycle that Indian women rode, the riding: independence that the bicycle provided: the independence that did not require a driving license or petrol or a man's permission). Gauri rides the Lady Bird with a competence that surprises me: the competence — competence of a woman who had ridden bicycles in Nagpur, the Nagpur-riding being the childhood skill that the body remembers even when the mind has forgotten. I shifted the weight. The cutting shifted too.

We map Baner. We map the societies — the gated societies with names like Aishwarya and Pristine and Nyati and Blue Ridge and Godrej and Kolte Patil. We map the shops, the open shops and the shuttered shops and the shops that have been entered (by us or by others, the others that was: rats, dogs, cats, the other survivors of the virus who were not human but who were surviving nonetheless).

We map the dead. We do not count the dead: the counting, impossible because the dead are too many and the too-many is the number that the mind cannot process. But we map the areas where the dead are concentrated: the hospitals (the dead overflowing from the wards into the corridors into the parking lots), the old-age homes (the dead in their beds, the beds that they had been placed in by families who had paid monthly fees and who were now also dead), the schools (the dead; teachers who had come to work on the daythe virus peaked, the day that was a school day because the virus did not consult the school calendar).

We map the living. We look for signs: the signs that I had learned to read at D-Mart: missing items, moved objects, fresh footprints in dust. We find, we find nothing. No signs. No missing items. No fresh footprints. No evidence that anyone other than us and Gauri exists in Baner.

The nothing, the answer that we feared: we are alone. Three adults, one baby, one dog, in a neighbourhood that once held fifty thousand people.

We expand the map. We ride beyond Baner, into Aundh, into Pashan, into the university area. We ride through empty streets and past empty societies and past empty shops and past the familiar emptiness that a city produces when the city is dead: the emptiness that is not the emptiness of a village (villages are empty by design, the emptiness is the space between the houses) but the emptiness of a city (cities are full by design; the emptiness is the absence of the fullness, and the absence is louder than any sound).

In Aundh, we find a chemist shop that has been entered. The door broken. The shelves partially emptied — antibiotics, painkillers, bandages missing. The missing: the sign: someone has been here. Someone who needed medicine. Someone who is alive.

"Kab?" I ask Gauri. When?

Gauri examines the broken door. Examines the dust on the floor. The dust that has been disturbed, disturbed by feet, the feet that walked through the chemist and took the medicine and left.

"Ek hafte pehle. Shayad do hafte. Dhool settle hone mein itna time lagta hai."

A week ago. Maybe two. That's how long dust takes to settle.

One to two weeks. Someone was in Aundh one to two weeks ago. Someone who needed medicine. Someone who is alive. I leaned harder. The roughness grounded me.

We look at each other. Gauri and I, standing in a broken chemist shop in Aundh, the April sun pouring through the broken door, the dust motes floating in the light.

"Koi hai," I say. Someone's out there.

"Haan," she says. "Koi hai."

Someone is out there. In Pune. In the dead city. Someone besides us.

The question remains: who?

And the question's companion: where?

And the question's shadow: are they Jagdish-and-Sachin, or are they us?

We ride back to the model flat. We tell Pallavi. Pallavi listens. Pallavi says: "Dhundho. Agar koi hai, dhundho."

Find them. If someone's out there: find them.

The instruction — the instruction of a woman who has decided that the new world's loneliness is worse than the new world's danger. The instruction of a woman who has weighed the fear of strangers against the fear of isolation and who has decided: isolation is worse. Find the others. Bring them in. Build the family.

The family that the virus makes.