Chapter 16: Veer

# Chapter 16: Veer

## Lavasa

The road to Lavasa is a ruin.

Not a ruin in the sense of crumbling — the asphalt is intact, the bridges are intact, the tunnels through the hills are intact. The ruin is the abandonment. The ruin is the vehicles, the vehicles that sit on the road like fossils, the fossils of a migration that failed: cars pointed toward Mumbai, cars pointed toward Pune, cars pointed in no direction at all because the drivers had died at the wheel and the dying-at-the-wheel had sent the cars into ditches and against barriers and into the hillside and against each other.

I navigate the Creta through the wreckage. The navigating; slow. Fifteen kilometres per hour on a road that was built for sixty, the fifteen. Speed that wreckage permitted: weave around the truck, squeeze between the bus and the barrier, reverse and take the other lane because this lane is blocked by a Tempo Traveller that has jackknifed across both lanes.

The Tempo Traveller. The vehicle that was India's pilgrim-carrier, the vehicle that took families to Shirdi and Pandharpur and Tirupati, the vehicle that contained twenty-six seats and a driver and a garland of marigolds on the dashboard and the specific smell of Indian pilgrimage: incense and diesel and the body odour of twenty-six devotees who had been sitting in a confined space for six hours. This Tempo Traveller, the one that blocks the road — has its doors open. The twenty-six seats are not empty.

I do not look at the twenty-six seats. I look at the road. I reverse. I take the other lane.

"Kitna door?" Pallavi asks from the back seat. How far?

"Paanch kilometre. Shayad das."

Five kilometres. Maybe ten.

The road climbs. The climb: the Western Ghats' insistence: the Ghats that said you want to go higher? Then climb. The climbing is the price of altitude and the altitude is the price of safety and the safety is the thing that Lavasa was built to provide: elevation, isolation, the remove from the plains that the hills offered.

The Creta climbs. The diesel engine working harder, the working-harder being the sound that diesel engines made on inclines: deeper, louder, the compression ignition's protest against gravity. The engine that was designed for Pune's flat roads now encountering the Ghats' grades, the grades that were eight percent and ten percent and twelve percent, the percentages that the road signs announced with the warning triangles that Indian roads used: red triangle, exclamation mark, STEEP GRADIENT.

Through the windshield: the hills. The brown hills of April: the hills that would be green in three months when the monsoon came and that were now brown with the dryness that April imposed. The hills that held Lavasa — held it in the valley between two ridges, the valley that the Hindustan Construction Company had chosen because the valley had water (Warasgaon Dam) and shelter (the ridges) and a certain beauty that the marketing brochure had described as "Mediterranean charm meets Indian soul" — the charm: the Italian-coloured buildings and water and the hills and the birds. The soul.

A sign. LAVASA. 3 KM.

The sign, which was faded, the fading: sun's work, the sun that had been bleaching the sign for years because Lavasa's signs had been installed in 2010 and had been bleaching since 2010 and the bleaching was the visible measure of time: sixteen years of sun on painted metal.

Three kilometres. My heart beats faster. The beating, the anticipation — the anticipation of a man who has driven forty kilometres on an empty expressway and through a wreckage-strewn hill road to reach a place that a radio signal told him existed, the place being: SAFE ZONE LAVASA ALIVE NIDHI.

Gauri is leaning forward in the passenger seat. Her eyes scanning the road ahead, the scanning. Engineer's assessment: what are we approaching? What is the terrain? What are the conditions?

"Wahan, dekh," she says. There, look.

Ahead. Where the road curves around a hill and opens onto a view — the view, the valley. The Lavasa valley. And in the valley: buildings.

But the buildings are not what captures my attention.

What captures my attention is the smoke.

Smoke. Rising from the valley. Thin smoke, not the black smoke of fire but the grey smoke of cooking, the grey that a wood fire produced, the grey that a chulha produced, the grey that was the colour of: someone is cooking. Someone is alive. Someone is in Lavasa and they are cooking food over a fire and the fire is producing smoke and the smoke is rising into the April sky.

"Dhuaan," Pallavi says from the back seat. Smoke.

"Haan."

"Koi hai."

Someone's there.

"Haan."

The Creta descends into the valley. The road narrowing, the narrowing: approach toLavasa's entrance, the entrance that had once had a security gate and a guard and a boom barrier and the precise bureaucracy that gated communities imposed: show your ID. State your purpose. Sign the register. The security gate is empty. The boom barrier is raised. The register, the register that the guard had kept on his desk, is on the ground, open to a page dated March 14, 2026, the last date that a visitor had signed in.

We pass through. Into Lavasa proper.

The buildings are closer now. The Italian-coloured buildings; some finished, some unfinished. The unfinished — the legacy of the HCC bankruptcy: buildings that were started and not completed, buildings that had foundations and walls but no roofs, buildings that had roofs but no windows, the incompleteness, which was the permanent state of Lavasa: permanently under construction, permanently almost-finished, permanently the promise that was almost-but-never-quite fulfilled.

But some buildings are finished. Some buildings are occupied. Occupied now, in the new world, by people who are not Italian tourists but are survivors. The evidence of occupation being: laundry on a balcony. A water bucket on a windowsill. A child's drawing taped to a ground-floor window.

A child's drawing. A child is here. A child who draws.

"Ruk," Gauri says. Stop.

I stop the Creta. In the middle of the road: the road — Lavasa's main avenue, the avenue that was designed to look like a European promenade and that now looks like a European promenade that has been abandoned by Europeans and occupied by Indians, the occupation; visible in the details: the laundry is saris and kurtas, not shirts and trousers. The bucket is a Sintex bucket, not a ceramic pot. The drawing is of a house with a sun and a tree and the stubborn Indian child's addition: a rangoli in front of the house.

I turn off the engine. The silence, the stillness of the valley, the silence that is not the dead silence of Pune but a different silence: a silence with sounds in it. The sound of a bird. The sound of wind through the unfinished buildings. And, the texture of a voice. A human voice. Distant, but unmistakable.

We get out of the Creta. All of us, me first, then Gauri, then Pallavi with Kiaan in the carrier, then Bholu leaping from the back seat with the enthusiasm of a dog who has been confined for forty minutes and who needs to smell everything immediately.

We stand on the avenue. Looking at the buildings. Looking for the source of the voice.

And then — from behind one of the finished buildings, the ochre building with the laundry on the balcony, a person appears.

A woman. Twenties. Short hair. The short: practical short of a woman who has cut her own hair with scissors, the cutting that was new world's salon: do it yourself. She wears a grey T-shirt and cargo pants and boots: the boots; military-style boots, practical footwear of a woman who walks o, the military-stylen unfinished construction sites and hill paths and the precise terrain that Lavasa provided: uneven, rocky, the terrain that chappals could not navigate and that boots could.

She sees us. She stops. She stares.

The staring lasting five seconds. Ten seconds. The staring: the assessment, the same assessment that Gauri had performed in the D-Mart parking lot: who are you? Are you dangerous? Should I run?

But this woman does not look like she will run. This woman looks like she is assessing not for flight but for fight. The fight, which was alternative to flight, the alternative that people chose when they had something to protect and the something was: behind her, in the ochre building, the building that contained whatever she was protecting.

"Kaun ho tum?" she calls. Who are you?

Her voice carrying across the avenue, the avenue that amplifies because the buildings on either side create a canyon effect, the canyon that carries sound the way the Ghats carry rain.

"Hum Pune se aaye hain," I call back. We came from Pune.

"Pune se?"

"Haan. Radio suna. Signal. SAFE ZONE LAVASA ALIVE NIDHI. Toh aaye."

Yes. Heard the radio. Signal. SAFE ZONE LAVASA ALIVE NIDHI. So we came.

The woman's expression changes. The change that was: from assessment to something else. From wariness to; not warmth, not yet, but the absence of wariness, the absence that was space that recognition creates.

"Tum ne radio suna?" she says. You felt the radio?

"Haan."

"Nidhi ka signal?"

Nidhi's signal?

"Haan."

And then: the woman does something unexpected. She smiles. The smile, which was wide and sudden and the kind of smile that breaks the face open, the kind of smile that the new world does not produce often and that, when produced, is so startling that the body does not know how to respond.

"NIDHI!" she shouts. Not to us. Behind her. Toward the ochre building. "NIDHI! SUNO! KOI AAYA HAI! I shifted the weight. The cutting shifted too.

NIDHI! LISTEN! SOMEONE CAME! THEY HEARD THE RADIO!

From inside the ochre building: the feel of a door opening. The sound of footsteps on stairs. The sound of, the sound of running. The running of a person who has been broadcasting a signal for weeks and who is hearing, for the first time, that the signal has been received.

A second woman appears. Younger — nineteen, maybe twenty. Darker skin. Curly hair. She runs; runs toward us, past the first woman, runs with the careful urgency of a person who has been waiting and who has stopped waiting because the waiting is over.

She stops. Three metres from us. Panting.

"Tum ne, tum ne mera signal suna?" she says. You, you heard my signal?

"Haan," I say. "Tum Nidhi ho?"

Yes. Are you Nidhi?

"Haan. Main: main Nidhi hoon. Nidhi Shinde."

Yes. I'm. I'm Nidhi. Nidhi Shinde.

Nidhi Shinde. The name that the radio had broadcast. The name that we had decoded from the Morse code in the model flat's basement. The name that had brought us forty kilometres from Pune to Lavasa.

"Kitne log ho tum?" the first woman asks. How many of you are there?

"Teen. Aur ek bachcha. Aur ek kutta."

Three. And a baby. And a dog.

The first woman's eyes go to Kiaan: Kiaan in Pallavi's carrier, Kiaan who is making the motor-sound, the motor-sound that carries across the avenue. The woman's expression softening. The softening that babies produce in adults, the softening that is universal and that survives the apocalypse: even in the dead world, the sight of a baby softens.

"Bachcha," she says. Repeating the word. As if the word is a miracle. "Bachcha hai tumhare saath."

A baby. You have a baby with you.

"Haan."

"Kitne mahine ka?"

How many months?

"Teen. Lagbhag."

Three. Almost.

The woman looks at Nidhi. Nidhi looks at the woman. Something passes between them: a communication that does not require words, the communication that says: they're real. They heard the signal. They came. They have a baby.

"Andar aao," the first woman says. Come inside.

She extends her hand. "Mera naam Leah hai."

My name is Leah.

Leah. The name from the radio. L-E-A-H. The second name that the signal had broadcast. The name that we had decoded on Day 2, the name that Gauri had written in the Classmate notebook. I leaned harder. The roughness grounded me.

Leah. Not a Maharashtrian name. Not a Hindu name. A Christian name, the Christian name that Goa produced and that Mangalore produced and that the Indian Christian community carried, the community that was a minority within a minority and that had names that sounded Western but were Indian, the Indian: Leah from Goa, Leah who had grown up eating fish curry rice and speaking Konkani and attending Mass at the Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in Panjim.

"Main Veer hoon. Yeh Pallavi. Yeh Gauri. Yeh Kiaan. Aur yeh Bholu."

I'm Veer. This is Pallavi. This is Gauri. This is Kiaan. And this is Bholu.

Bholu's tail wags. Bholu who has been sniffing the Lavasa air: the air that is different from the Baner air, the difference being: altitude, trees, water, a freshness that hills produced and that cities did not.

Leah nods. Nidhi nods. And they turn and walk toward the ochre building. And we follow.

We follow into Lavasa. Into the safe zone. Into the place that the radio promised.

Into the next chapter of whatever this is.