Chapter 15: Veer

# Chapter 15: Veer

## The Journey

The car is a Hyundai Creta. Diesel. Automatic transmission. White — the white — colour thatIndian car buyers chose most often, the white: the colour of safety and resale value and the recognisable Indian logic that said: white cars are cooler in summer. Summer is eight months of the year. Therefore white. The Creta sits in the parking lot of Nyati County, the same society where I had found the Hero Sprint bicycle, the society whose parking area contains two hundred cars and from which I have now taken two vehicles, the taking — the new world's commerce: you take what you need, you leave what you don't, and the owner, the owner who is dead in Flat 304 or Flat 712 or wherever the owner died; does not object.

The Creta's key is in the glove compartment. The key: there because Indian car owners. Certain Indian car owners, the ones who parked in the basement of their gated society and who trusted the security guard and who left the key in the glove compartment because the leaving-the-key was the convenience that the trusted-security provided — left their keys in their cars. The security guard who is now dead. The trust that is now irrelevant. The key that is now mine.

Gauri checks the fuel. She does this by turning the ignition to the accessory position, not starting the engine but powering the dashboard, the dashboard lighting up with the blue-white glow of a Hyundai instrument cluster, first car-dashboard glow that any of us h — the glowas seen in eight weeks, the glow: civilisation. Technology. The proof that machines still work even when the humans who made them do not.

The fuel gauge: three-quarters full. The three-quarters being approximately forty litres of diesel, the forty litres being enough for approximately six hundred kilometres, the six hundred being more than enough for the forty-kilometre drive to Lavasa and the forty-kilometre drive back.

"Bahut hai," Gauri says. Plenty.

I turn the key. The engine — the engine, a 1.5-litre diesel, the diesel that Hyundai had engineered and that Korea had built and that India had bought and that was now, in the parking lot of Nyati County in Baner, Pune, being started by a twenty-three-year-old COEP graduate who had never owned a car and who had learned to drive in his father's Maruti Ertiga (the Ertiga, the family car, the car that his father had bought in 2019 and that was now parked in the basement of Saraswati Apartments in Kothrud, the basement where it would remain forever).

The engine starts. The diesel clatter. The clatter that diesel engines produced and that petrol engines did not, the clatter, sound of compression ignition, the sound that Indian taxi drivers knew and that Ola drivers knew and that the sound was, in 2026, the feel of the affordable, the reliable, the engine-that-would-not-quit.

The engine runs. The engine runs smoothly. No hesitation, no coughing, no stalling. The battery is alive. The oil is adequate. The diesel is uncontaminated. The Creta is functional.

"Chalo," I say. Let's go.

---

The cot's canvas was tight and rough under his back, the metal frame pressing into his shoulder blades. I shifted the weight. The cutting shifted too.

We load the Creta in the morning. The loading being: supplies for two days (in case Lavasa is not what the signal promises and we need to return), baby supplies for Kiaan (formula, bottles, wipes, Cerelac, spare clothes. The spare clothes, the multiple outfits that babies required because babies produced fluids from every orifice at unpredictable intervals), Bholu's food (Royal Canin, water bowl), the radio (the Kaito KA500, packed in its box, placed carefully in the boot), and the weapons.

The weapons being: the knife that I carry in my pocket. The khurpi that Pallavi carries, the khurpi that she had used on Jagdish and Sachin, the khurpi that she had washed and kept and that she carries now as the talisman of survival, the talisman that says I have used this before and I will use it again if I must. And a cricket bat, the cricket bat that I had found in a flat in Sai Srushti Phase 2, the bat: a SG bat, the SG that was the brand that Indian cricketers used, the brand that Sachin Tendulkar had used, the brand that now served a different purpose: not cricket but protection.

Gauri carries nothing. Gauri says: "Main drive karungi wapas. Tum dono weapons le lo." I'll drive back. You two take the weapons. The division of labour being the new world's labour division: some carry weapons, some carry skills, and the combination is the team.

Pallavi sits in the back with Kiaan. Kiaan in his carrier, strapped to the seat. The strapping, which was baby safety that we improvise because the Creta does not have a baby seat and baby seats are the old world's safety feature and the old world's safety features are the things we no longer have. Bholu sits on the back seat beside Pallavi, Bholu who has never been in a car and who responds to the car's interior with the dog's response to new enclosed spaces: sniffing everything, turning in circles, eventually settling with his head on Pallavi's thigh.

Gauri sits in the front passenger seat. The notebook in her lap, the Classmate notebook with the signal observations, map that guides us: the notebook: SAFE ZONE LAVASA ALIVE NIDHI.

I drive.

I drive out of Nyati County's parking lot. Onto the road. The road that connects Nyati County to Baner Road. Baner Road to the highway. The highway, which was NH4, the old Mumbai-Pune Expressway, the expressway that connects Pune to Mumbai and that, at the Khopoli exit, connects to the road that leads to Lavasa.

But first: the city. The city that I have not driven through. The city that I have explored on foot and on bicycle but not in a car, the car, which was the different experience: faster, enclosed, the windshield — screen through which the city passes like a film.

And the city: the city is worse from a car. The city is worse because the car's speed compresses the horror: what takes thirty minutes on a bicycle takes five minutes in a car, and the five minutes means that the horror is concentrated, the concentration: dead bodies (the bodies that are no longer bodies but are decomposition, the decomposition that has been proceeding for eight weeks and that has produced the thing that the April heat accelerates: the smell, the smell that the car's closed windows cannot fully block, the smell that enters through the air vents and through the door seals and through the familiar porosity that every car possesses), abandoned vehicles (the vehicles that sit at traffic lights and in the middle of roads and on pavements, the vehicles that I navigate around with the steering that my father had taught me: "slow, beta, dekh ke", slow, son, carefully), and the dogs. I leaned harder. The roughness grounded me.

The dogs. The dogs that have inherited Pune, the dogs that roam in packs now, the packs that the virus created by killing the humans who had fed the dogs and by forcing the dogs to form packs because the packs were the survival strategy that dogs adopted when humans disappeared. The packs ranging from three dogs to fifteen dogs, the packs that move through the streets with the territorial confidence of the new landlords.

A pack crosses the road in front of us: seven dogs, moving in a line, the line, the pack's formation: alpha in front, subordinates behind, the behind. Hierarchy that dogs maintained without meetings or memos or org charts, the hierarchy: natural order that the new world had returned to: the strong lead, the rest follow.

Bholu, Bholu in the back seat: sees the pack. His ears go forward. His body tenses. His lips pull back from his teeth. The teeth: the warning that Bholu sends to the pack through the car window: I am here. I am not alone. I have humans. Do not approach.

The pack does not approach. The pack continues across the road, the alpha glancing at the Creta with the dismissal of a leader who has assessed a threat and found it insufficient to warrant attention.

We drive. We drive through Baner, through Aundh, through the university area, through Kothrud, Kothrud where I do not look left or right because looking left or right would mean seeing Saraswati Apartments and seeing Saraswati Apartments would mean;

I do not look.

We reach the expressway. The expressway, which was the road that should contain a hundred thousand vehicles and that contains: us. One white Hyundai Creta on a six-lane expressway. The six lanes stretching ahead like a grey river, the river flowing toward the hills, toward the Western Ghats, toward Lavasa.

I accelerate. The Creta's diesel engine responding. The response, smooth, the smooth: the Korean engineering that Hyundai had perfected, the perfection that the dead world inherited: the machines are fine. The machines are excellent. The machines are the best they have ever been. It is only the humans who are gone.

100 kilometres per hour. On an empty expressway. The wind against the car. The hills growing larger through the windshield. The Western Ghats: the Ghats that were the spine of the Deccan Plateau, the Ghats that caught the monsoon and held the rain and produced the rivers that fed Maharashtra, the Ghats that were green in the monsoon and brown in the summer and that were, today, the brown of April.

"Lavasa ka exit, kahan hai?" I ask Gauri. Lavasa's exit, where is it?

She checks the notebook, the notebook where she has written the directions that she had memorised from Google Maps before the internet died, the memorised directions; navigator's skill in the pre-GPS world: take the expressway toward Mumbai. Exit at Khopoli/Tamhini junction. Take the state highway toward Temghar Dam. Follow signs to Lavasa.

"Khopoli junction," she says. "Yahan se; shayad tees kilometre."

Khopoli junction. From here, maybe thirty kilometres.

We drive. Pallavi is quiet in the back: the quiet of a woman who is watching the world pass through the car window and who is seeing, for the first time, the scale of the destruction: not one street but all streets, not one society but all societies, not one neighbourhood but all neighbourhoods. The scale that the model flat had hidden, the model flat: shelter that had shielded us from the full picture, the full picture being: it is not just Baner. It is everything.

"Veer," she says softly.

"Haan?"

"Yeh: yeh sab khatam ho gaya, na?"

This, all of this is over, isn't it?

The question. The question that she has not asked before — the question that she had avoided because avoiding was the survival strategy and the strategy was: don't say it out loud. If you don't say it, maybe it's not true. But the expressway has made it true. The expressway — the six lanes of empty road, the toll booths with no attendants, the service areas with no chai stalls, the bridges with no traffic, has made it true in a way that the model flat could not.

"Haan," I say. "Sab khatam ho gaya."

Yes. It's all over.

She says nothing more. Kiaan makes the motor-sound. Bholu shifts his weight. The Creta hums.

We drive toward Lavasa.

We drive toward the signal.

SAFE ZONE LAVASA ALIVE NIDHI.

The words that have brought us here. The words that are leading us into the hills. The words that we are choosing to believe, the choosing, which was the act of faith, the faith, thing that the new world requires more than food or water or shelter: the faith that somewhere, beyond the dead city, there is a place that is not dead.

The faith that somewhere, someone named Nidhi is alive.

And waiting.