Chapter 17: Veer

# Chapter 17: Veer

## The Safe Zone

The ochre building is a four-storey apartment block, one of Lavasa's finished residential buildings, the finished (exception in a development where unfinish e)d was the rule. The ground floor has been converted into a common area. The common area being: a kitchen (wood-burning chulha built from bricks, the bricks; scavenged from the unfinished buildings), a dining space (three tables, mismatched chairs, the mismatching, the aesthetic of the apocalypse), and a storage room (stacked with supplies, rice, dal, canned goods, water drums, the supplies; evidence of organisation, of planning, of a group that has been here long enough to establish systems).

Leah leads us through the ground floor. She moves with the proprietary ease of a person who built this; built the chulha, arranged the tables, organised the storage. The building is hers. Not legally; legally, the building belongs to the Hindustan Construction Company or whatever creditor had claimed it in the bankruptcy proceedings. But functionally, practically, in the way that the new world assigns ownership: Leah's.

"Kitne log hain yahan?" I ask. How many people are here?

"Gyaarah," Leah says. "Tumhare pehle gyaarah the. Ab. Ab solah."

Eleven. Before you, eleven. Now: sixteen.

Sixteen. The number landing, the number: sixteen survivors. In Lavasa. In the hills forty kilometres from Pune. Sixteen people who have found this place and who have stayed and who have built a safe zone.

"Kaun kaun hain?"

Who's here?

"Aao. Milwati hoon."

Come. I'll introduce you.

She leads us up the stairs, the stairs, the concrete stairs that Lavasa's buildings had, the concrete that was the standard Indian construction material: strong, ugly, permanent. On the first floor: a corridor with four doors. On the second floor: another corridor, four more doors. The building having sixteen flats in total — four per floor, four floors.

Leah knocks on doors as we ascend. The knocking producing: people. People emerging from their flats, people who have felt the Creta's engine and who have been watching from their windows and who are now, at Leah's summons, coming to meet the newcomers.

They emerge. One by one. Two by two.

An old man, seventies, white hair, white kurta, the kurta, uniform of the retiredIndian male, the retired who had replaced the office shirt with the white kurta and the office trousers with the white pyjama and who had worn the white-kurta-white-pyjama combination every day since retirement because retirement was: white. Comfortable. The letting-go of professional appearance. His name is Ramchandra Joshi — Ramchandra Kaka, as Leah introduces him. Kaka being the Marathi honorific for an elder male, the honorific that said you are respected, you are elder, you are the generation that we defer to.

Ramchandra Kaka is from Pune. From Deccan Gymkhana, the neighbourhood that was Pune's old money, the neighbourhood that produced lawyers and professors and the particular brand of Brahmin intellectualism that Pune was famous for. He had been a retired professor of Sanskrit at Fergusson College — the Fergusson that Pallavi had dropped out of, the coincidence producing a look between Pallavi and Ramchandra Kaka that says: we know this place. We know its corridors and its canteen and its particular smell of old books and phenol.

A married couple — Farhan and Meher Sheikh. Farhan is thirty-five, a former software engineer at TCS Pune (the TCS that was Pune's largest employer, the employer that had given jobs to a hundred thousand engineers and that had built the Hinjewadi campus that was Pune's Silicon Valley). Meher is thirty-two, a former school teacher. They are from Hadapsar, the neighbourhood on Pune's eastern edge, the neighbourhood that was new Pune's new Pune: IT parks and apartment complexes and the precise soullessness that rapid development produced. They have no children. They had been trying, the trying; the Indian couple's quiet struggle, the struggle that was discussed in whispers with doctors and in silence with parents and that was, in the new world, irrelevant because the trying required doctors and the doctors were dead.

A teenager, Tanmay Ranade, seventeen, from Nigdi. Nigdi being the Pimpri-Chinchwad suburb, the suburb that was Pune's industrial twin, the twin that produced cars (Tata) and motorcycles (Bajaj) and the stubborn working-class pride that PCMC carried: we make things. Pune talks. We make. Tanmay had been a Class 12 student. Science stream, JEE preparation, the JEE — the entrance exam that consumed Indian teenagers the way the A-Virus consumed the world: completely, mercilessly, leaving nothing behind. Tanmay is alone. His parents, his parents are the sentence that he does not finish, the not-finishing: silence that every survivor shares.

A woman in her forties, Suvarna Patil, from Satara. Satara, Pallavi's hometown. The coincidence producing another look, another recognition: Satara. My Satara. Your Satara. The Satara that is two hours south and that we cannot reach and that we carry in our names. Suvarna had been a nurse at Sassoon Hospital in Pune: the Sassoon that was Pune's oldest government hospital, the hospital that had treated the poor and the injured and the desperate for 150 years and that had been the first to overflow when the virus came. She had survived because she had been on leave, on leave visiting her mother in Lavasa (her mother had retired to Lavasa, the retiring, the dream that the marketing brochure had sold: retire in the hills, breathe the clean air, watch the sunset over Warasgaon Dam). Her mother is dead. Suvarna is alive. The alive, the cruelty that the virus specialised in: kill the mother, spare the daughter, let the daughter live with the sparing.

Three more people: a college student named Devika Kulkarni from Kothrud (my Kothrud — the third coincidence, the coincidences accumulating the way they did in Pune: every Punekar was connected to every other Punekar by two degrees of separation, the two degrees being the Pune social network that was smaller and tighter than any algorithm), a retired Army officer named Colonel Hemant Bhosale from Koregaon Park, and a young man named Irfan Patel from Solapur.

Eleven people. Plus Nidhi and Leah. Plus us three and Kiaan and Bholu.

Sixteen humans. One baby. One dog.

The safe zone.

---

The weight of the backpack pulled at his shoulders.

Nidhi tells us about the radio over lunch, the lunch: rice and dal cooked on the chulha, the chulha that Leah had built from bricks and that Suvarna tended because Suvarna's hands knew fire the way a nurse's hands knew wounds: instinctively, from a lifetime of practice (Suvarna's mother had cooked on a chulha in Satara, the chulha being the Satara kitchen's heart, the heart that gas stoves had replaced in the cities but that the villages had kept because the villages kept what the cities discarded and the discarded was sometimes the better technology).

"Radio, radio Pappa ka tha," Nidhi says. The radio, it was my father's.

Her father. Pramod Shinde — the name that Nidhi speaks with the weight that dead fathers' names carry, the weight that is different from dead mothers' names and dead friends' names and dead aunts' names because dead fathers' names carry the recognisable weight of: the man who protected, the man who provided, the man who stood between the child and the world.

"Pappa HAM radio operator the. Hobbyist. Unke paas equipment tha. Transmitter, receiver, antenna. Amravati mein, ghar pe, ek poora setup tha."

Papa was a HAM radio operator. Hobbyist. He had equipment, transmitter, receiver, antenna. In Amravati; at home, a full setup.

Amravati. Gauri's head snaps up, Gauri who is from Nagpur, Gauri whose parents are in Amravati (maybe), the maybe that was word that the new world attaches to every statement about every person who is not physically present.

"Amravati?" Gauri says.

"Haan. Amravati mein hum rehte the. Pehle. Phir. Phir Pappa ne mujhe Pune bheja. Education ke liye. MIT, MIT College of Engineering, Pune."

Yes. We lived in Amravati. Before. Then, Papa sent me to Pune. For education. MIT, MIT College of Engineering, Pune.

MIT College of Engineering. Not the Massachusetts one but the Maharashtra one, the MIT that was Pune's third engineering college (after COEP and VIT) and that was located in Kothrud and that produced engineers who were not quite COEP-level and not quite VIT-level and who were, by virtue of being MIT-level, a certain brand of Pune engineer that said: I am good. I am not the best. I am good enough.

"Jab virus aaya, main MIT hostel mein thi. Sab: sab mar gaye. Main bach gayi.

When the virus came, I was in MIT hostel. Everyone, everyone died. I survived. I don't know why.

The sentence that every survivor shares. The sentence that is the survivor's defining question: why me? Why did I survive when everyone else died? What makes my biology different? What makes my immunity different? What makes me the exception?

The answer that no one has: we don't know. The virus killed 99% and spared 1% and the 1% has no explanation for the sparing. The 1% is alive and the 99% is dead and the dead do not explain and the alive do not understand.

"Main, main Amravati jaana chahti thi. Pappa-Mummy ke paas. Lekin. Lekin road blocked the. NH6 pe. Accident the. Gaadiyaan. Bahut saari gaadiyaan. Maine try kiya. Teen baar.

I wanted to go to Amravati. To Papa-Mummy. But, the road was blocked. On NH6, accidents. Cars; too many cars. I tried. Three times. But couldn't get through.

"Toh Lavasa kaise aayi?"

So how did you come to Lavasa?

"Leah. Leah milti. Pune mein. Hum dono, hum dono saath nikle. Leah ne bola, Lavasa jaate hain. Hills mein. Safe hoga. Paani hoga. Wahan se, wahan se radio chalayenge. Pappa ne sikhaya tha. Main jaanti thi; Morse code, shortwave, sab."

Leah. I met Leah. In Pune. We both. We left together. Leah said. Let's go to Lavasa. In the hills. It'll be safe. There'll be water. From there. We'll run the radio. Papa taught me. I knew, Morse code, shortwave, everything.

"Toh signal. Signal tumne Pappa ke knowledge se bheja?"

So the signal, you sent it using your father's knowledge?

"Haan. Equipment yahan nahi tha, yahan pe ek purana transmitter mila. Lavasa ke maintenance office mein. Construction company ka tha. Leah ne dhundha. Maine repair kiya.

Yes. The equipment wasn't here: found an old transmitter here. In Lavasa's maintenance office. Construction company's. Leah found it. I repaired it. And, started sending the signal.

The story, the story of the safe zone's creation, the creation that was not one person but two: Leah who found the transmitter, Nidhi who repaired it. Leah who chose Lavasa, Nidhi who broadcast the signal. The partnership that built the safe zone, the partnership that was the new world's version of the old world's startup: two people with complementary skills, no funding, no office, no business plan, just the conviction that if we build it, they will come.

And they came. Ramchandra Kaka came. Farhan and Meher came. Tanmay came. Suvarna came. Devika came. Colonel Bhosale came. Irfan came.

And now we came.

"Aur LEAH?" I ask. "Signal mein LEAH bhi tha."

And LEAH? LEAH was also in the signal.

Leah smiles: the smile from the avenue, the wide smile that breaks the face.

"Meri ID hai. Signal mein — Nidhi broadcasting station ki ID hai: LEAH. L-E-A-H.

It's my ID. In the signal: the broadcasting station ID is: LEAH. L-E-A-H. Leah Alvares Hereafter.

Leah Alvares. The Goan surname — the surname that confirmed what the first name had suggested: Leah was Goan. Leah was Catholic. Leah was the Indian Christian who carried the Portuguese surname that Goa's history had bequeathed, the bequeathing, the colonial inheritance thatGoan Christians carried: Alvares, Fernandes, D'Souza, Pereira, the surnames that were as Indian as Patil and Joshi and Kulkarni because the Indian was not the Hindu alone but was the Hindu and the Muslim and the Christian and the Sikh and the Jain and the Parsi and the Buddhist and the every-other, the every-other being the India that the diversity produced.

"Hereafter?" I ask.

"Maine naam diya. Broadcasting station ka naam. LEAH. Leah Alvares Hereafter. Hereafter because, because yeh naya duniya hai. Jo bhi hoga: hereafter hoga. Purana khatam. Naya shuru."

I named it. The broadcasting station's name. LEAH: Leah Alvares Hereafter. Hereafter because, this is a new world. Whatever happens; happens hereafter. The old is over. The new begins. I shifted the weight. The cutting shifted too.

Hereafter. The word. The word that Leah had chosen for the broadcasting station, the word that contained the future tense, the tense that the new world needed: not before (the before was death) but hereafter (the hereafter was whatever came next, and the whatever-came-next was the reason to broadcast, the reason to build, the reason to cook dal on a chulha and hang laundry on a balcony and draw a house with a sun and a tree and a rangoli).

Hereafter.

The name of the safe zone. The name of the future.

The name of whatever comes next.