Chapter 13: Veer

# Chapter 13: Veer

## The Radio

Pallavi shows us the safe room on a Thursday evening.

She shows us the way she does everything. With a quiet authority that does not announce itself but that is undeniable. She says: "Mere saath aao. Kuch dikhana hai." Come with me. I want to show you something. And Gauri and I follow her. Follow her through the kitchen, into the utility area, past the Bisleri drums that she has already moved, to the trapdoor that she opens with both hands.

Gauri's mouth drops. "Yeh, yeh yahan tha? Poore time?"

This. This was here? The whole time?

"Haan."

My mouth is also open. My mouth that should not be open because I am the explorer, the mapper, the man who knows the model flat's every corner: and I had missed this. I had missed the trapdoor. I had missed the floor plan. I had missed the safe room that was beneath my feet for seven weeks.

"Kaise. Kaise pata chala?"

How did you find out?

"Kitchen ki top shelf pe ek envelope tha. Developer ka. Floor plan tha andar.

There was an envelope on the kitchen's top shelf. Developer's. Had a floor plan inside. Showed the safe room.

The top shelf. The shelf that I had never reached for because I stored nothing on the top shelf and the nothing meant that the top shelf was invisible to me and the invisible meant that the envelope was invisible and the invisible meant that Pallavi — Pallavi who reached for the top shelf on inventory day, Pallavi who is five foot three and who stands on tiptoes to reach the things that the developer had placed for buyers who were taller, Pallavi found what I missed.

"Neeche chalo," she says. Let's go down.

We descend. The three of us: Pallavi first (the first: her right, the right of the discoverer), then Gauri, then me. Bholu stays at the trapdoor's edge, his head tilted down, his ears forward, his body language saying: I am not going down there. I am a dog. Dogs do not descend into basements.

At the bottom: the safe room. Pallavi's camping lantern illuminating the space. The 12-by-15-foot space with the concrete walls and the ventilation duct and the inventory.

Gauri's reaction is immediate. Gauri walks to the steel shelf: walks with the purposefulness of an engineer encountering a system for the first time, the encountering: assess, inventory, evaluate. She counts the cans. She checks the water drums. She opens the first-aid kit. Opens it and examines the contents with the thoroughness that VNIT's engineering labs had taught her: examine every component. Understand the system.

"Yeh, yeh bahut hai," she says. This is, this is a lot.

"Do sau litre paani. Pachaas kilo chawal. Tees cans. First-aid kit. Tools. Blankets."

Two hundred litres of water. Fifty kilos of rice. Thirty cans. First-aid kit. Tools. Blankets.

"Aur yeh," Pallavi says.

And this.

She picks up the box from the top shelf. The box that says Kaito KA500. She holds it out — holds it the way a priest holds a sacred object: with both hands, with reverence, with the knowledge that this object is not just an object but is a possibility.

Gauri takes the box. Opens it. Pulls out the radio. The hand-crank radio, black and angular, with a crank handle on the side and an antenna that telescopes out and a small speaker on the front and the controls: AM, FM, SW1, SW2, the controls, which was frequencies that the radio receives, the frequencies that was channels of communication that remain when all other channels are dead.

"Radio," Gauri says. The word, unnecessary. We can all see that it is a radio. But the word, which was necessary because the word confirms: this is what I think it is. This is a radio. This is a device that receives broadcasts. This is a device that might: might. Connect us to the world beyond Pune.

"Hand-crank hai," Pallavi says. "Bijli nahi chahiye."

It's hand-crank. Doesn't need electricity.

Gauri turns the crank. The cranking: thirty seconds of winding, the winding producing a whirring sound, the whirring, the weight of mechanical energy converting toelectrical energy, the conversion, which was the physics that VNIT had taught Gauri in her second year (or was it third? the years blurring because VNIT's years are the before-time's years and the before-time's years are losing their edges).

The radio's light comes on. A green LED, the green, the colour of on, the colour of power, the colour that says: *I am awake. I am listening.

Gauri extends the antenna. The antenna telescoping out, one section, two sections, three sections, until the antenna is pointing at the basement's ceiling, the ceiling, concrete that separates the basement from the ground floor, the concrete that the radio's signal must penetrate to reach the sky.

She turns the dial to FM. 91.1 MHz, Radio City, the station that Pune listened to in the before-times, the station that played Bollywood songs and had RJs who made jokes about traffic and weather and the specific Pune complaint: potholes. The potholes, which was the topic that united all Punekars, the topic that transcended caste and class and religion and age because every Punekar, regardless of who they were, had hit a pothole and had cursed the PMC and the cursing was the Punekar's prayer: O PMC, fix the roads.

Static. The static — the weight of nothing, the sound of a frequency that has no signal, the frequency that Radio City used to broadcast on and that now broadcasts: static. The static of an empty frequency. The static of a station that is dead.

Gauri turns the dial. 92.7, Big FM. Static. 93.5: Red FM. Static. 98.3 — Mirchi. Static.

All FM stations: static.

She switches to AM. Scans the dial — slowly, careful scanning that radio operators per — the slowlyform, the scanning that listens not for the clear signal but for the faintest signal, the signal that might be buried beneath the static, the signal that might be there if you listen carefully enough.

AM: static. All frequencies. Nothing.

She switches to shortwave. SW1. Scans.

Static. Static. Static. Static.

And then: at 7.240 MHz, a sound.

Not static. Not a voice. But, a tone. A repeating tone. A beep — a short beep, followed by a longer beep, followed by silence, followed by the short beep again. The pattern repeating. The repetition —: beep-beeeeep-silence-beep-beeeeep-silence.

We freeze. All three of us, frozen in the basement of the model flat, frozen by the sound that is not static and not silence but is a signal, a signal from somewhere, a signal that someone is broadcasting.

"Yeh kya hai?" I whisper. What is this?

Gauri listens. She listens with the concentration of an engineer, the concentration that her four years of VNIT have produced, the concentration that analyses the signal's pattern: short beep, long beep, silence. Short beep, long beep, silence. I shifted the weight. The cutting shifted too.

"Morse code," she says.

Morse code. The code that was invented in 1836 and that was used for a hundred years and that was replaced by the telephone and the internet and that is now, in the year 2026, in the dead world, being used again because the dead world has returned to the technologies that the living world had discarded. The dead world has returned to: paper. Fire. Morse code.

"Kya bol raha hai?"

What is it saying?

"Short-long. Short-long. Woh. Woh 'A' hai. Morse mein, dot-dash, 'A' hai."

Short-long. Short-long. That's, that's 'A.' In Morse; dot-dash, 'A.'

"Sirf 'A'?"

Just 'A'?

"Haan. Baar baar. A. A. A. A."

Yes. Over and over. A. A. A. A.

'A.' The letter 'A.' Being broadcast on shortwave frequency 7.240 MHz. Being broadcast by someone, somewhere, who is sending the simplest possible signal: a single letter. Repeated. The repetition: I am here. I am broadcasting. I am alive. I am 'A.'

Or, the 'A' being something else. The 'A' being: A-Virus. The 'A' that named the virus. The 'A' that the world had come to know as the letter of death. The 'A' being the signal's identifier: this broadcast is related to the A-Virus. This broadcast is official. This broadcast is from someone who has information about the thing that killed the world.

"Kahan se aa raha hai?"

Where is it coming from?

"Nahi pata. Shortwave, shortwave bahut door tak jata hai. Hazaaron kilometre. Yeh Pune se ho sakta hai. Mumbai se ho sakta hai. Delhi se ho sakta hai.

I don't know. Shortwave, shortwave travels very far. Thousands of kilometres. This could be from Pune. Could be from Mumbai. Could be from Delhi. Could be from anywhere.

"Lekin koi hai," Pallavi says. "Koi toh hai. Kahi na kahi."

But someone's there. Someone exists. Somewhere.

"Haan," Gauri says. "Koi hai."

The confirmation landing in the basement the way a stone lands in a well: with a sound that echoes, that reverberates, that continues after the stone has settled at the bottom.

Koi hai. Someone is there. Someone is broadcasting. Someone has a shortwave transmitter and the knowledge to use it and the power to power it and the will to send a signal, a single letter, repeated: into the dead world's airwaves.

Someone is saying: A.

And we are hearing it.

In the basement of the model flat in Sai Srushti Phase 2, Baner Road, Pune 411045, three adults are hearing the first external signal since the virus killed the world. I leaned harder. The roughness grounded me.

The first proof that beyond Pune, beyond the dead city, beyond the dead roads, beyond the four cars in the D-Mart parking lot and the empty Saraswati Apartments and the silent Karve Road, there is life.

"Kya karein?" I ask. What do we do?

Gauri looks at the radio. Looks at me. Looks at Pallavi.

"Suno," she says. "Roz suno. Signal track karo. Pattern dekho. Kab aata hai, kab jaata hai. Kitni der chalta hai. Agar pattern hai; toh samajh aayega. Agar message hai. Toh decode karenge."

Listen. Listen every day. Track the signal. Observe the pattern. When does it come, when does it go. How long does it last. If there's a pattern, we'll understand. If there's a message, we'll decode it.

The plan, the engineer's plan: the plan that was not emotional but analytical, the analytical — Gauri's contribution to the family: the analysis that emotion could not provide, the analysis that said *do not react. Observe. Collect data.

"Theek hai," I say. Okay.

Pallavi nods. Pallavi who found the safe room. Pallavi who found the radio. Pallavi who has given us the thing that five weeks of exploration could not find: a connection to the world.

We stand in the basement. The radio in Gauri's hands. The green LED glowing. The signal repeating: beep-beeeeep-silence. Beep-beeeeep-silence.

A. A. A. A.

The letter of death. Or the letter of life. We do not yet know which.

But we are listening.