Chapter 18: Pallavi

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# Chapter 18: Pallavi

## The Settling (Again)

We stay.

I did not expect to stay. I expected to drive to Lavasa, assess the safe zone, and drive back to the model flat — back to the grey sofa and the Prestige stove and the vitrified tiles and the characteristic familiarity that I had built into the walls of Sai Srushti Phase 2 over eight weeks of scrubbing and arranging and imposing order on chaos.

But we stay. We stay because staying is the obvious choice, the obvious: the model flat had us. Lavasa has sixteen people. The model flat had canned food from D-Mart. Lavasa has dal-chawal cooked on a chulha by Suvarna who knows how to cook the way a nurse knows how to bandage: with precision and care and the muscle memory of a thousand repetitions. The model flat had silence. Lavasa has voices.

Voices. The voices: the thing I did not know I needed until I sensed them — the voices of Ramchandra Kaka discussing Sanskrit grammar over breakfast (the grammar, which was the topic that Ramchandra Kaka discussed the way other people discussed weather: constantly, with passion, with the distinctive conviction that Sanskrit grammar was the foundation of civilisation and that civilisation's collapse was, in some fundamental way, a grammatical problem). The voices of Tanmay and Devika arguing about whether Interstellar was a better film than Gravity (the arguing, which was the teenager's hobby, the hobby that survived the apocalypse because teenagers argued the way the sun rose: automatically, inevitably, without regard for context). The voice of Colonel Bhosale giving morning instructions in the parade-ground voice that the Army had installed in him forty years ago and that the retirement had not uninstalled (the voice carrying across Lavasa's main avenue at 6 AM, the 6 AM being the Colonel's wake-up time because the Army's wake-up time was the Colonel's wake-up time, the time, non-negotiable, the non-negotiable (military's gift to the man): structure that outlasts the institution).

The model flat was survival. Lavasa is. Lavasa is not life, not yet, but is the approach to life. The approach, which was: closer. Closer to the thing that the model flat could not provide because the model flat was three adults and a baby and a dog and the three-adults-and-a-baby-and-a-dog was enough for survival but was not enough for living and the living required: others. The others, which was the sixteen people who eat together and argue together and wake at 6 AM together because the Colonel says so.

We move into a flat on the third floor, the flat — a two-bedroom with a balcony that faces Warasgaon Dam, the dam, which was body of water thatLavasa was built around and that provides the safe zone with its most critical resource: water. The dam's water. Filtered through a sand-and-gravel system that Gauri designs and that Farhan builds, the building; software engineer's physical labour, the physical labour that the software engineer had never performed at TCS and that the software engineer now performs daily because the new world does not need code but needs: pipes, filters, bricks, the physical infrastructure that keeps humans alive.

Kiaan's room. Kiaan has his own room, the second bedroom, the room with the window that faces the hills. The window letting in the morning light. The Lavasa morning light that is different from the Baner morning light, the difference: altitude. The Lavasa light is clearer, sharper, the light that hills produce when the light passes through air that has been cleaned by elevation, the cleaned-air being Lavasa's gift, the gift that the marketing brochure had promised ("breathe the clean air") and that the apocalypse had delivered.

Bholu adjusts. Bholu adjusts to Lavasa the way dogs adjust to everything: by sniffing. Bholu spends three days sniffing Lavasa: sniffing every building, every path, every tree, every bush, every human. The sniffing, which was the dog's installation process: the process by which the dog installs the new environment in the olfactory database that the dog's brain maintains, the database that is the dog's map, the dog's memory, the dog's understanding of the world.

On the fourth day, Bholu stops sniffing. On the fourth day, Bholu lies on the balcony in the morning sun and closes his eyes and sleeps. The sleeping, the endorsement: *this place is safe. This place is home. I leaned harder. The roughness grounded me.

I trust Bholu.

The safe zone has rules. The rules — Leah's rules, the rules that Leah had established when the safe zone had three people (Leah, Nidhi, and Ramchandra Kaka) and that had scaled to sixteen people without modification because the rules were simple and the simple scaled:

Rule 1: Everyone contributes. The contribution: work. Physical work. The work that the safe zone requires to function. Cooking, cleaning, water collection, firewood gathering, radio monitoring, perimeter patrol. No one is exempt. No one sits idle. The idle, the luxury that the old world had afforded and that the new world did not afford because the new world ran on labour and the labour was shared.

Rule 2: Food is communal. The food: cooked together, eaten together. No hoarding. No private stashes. The private-stash being the behaviour that destroyed communities, the behaviour that said I have more than you and I will keep more than you and the more-than-you is the power that I hold over you. Leah had seen this: had seen the hoarding in Pune, in the first week after the virus, when the survivors had fought over D-Mart's supplies and the fighting had killed more than the virus had killed in that particular D-Mart on that particular day.

Rule 3: No violence. The violence —: between safe zone members. The between: the qualifier. Leah was not a pacifist. Leah had a machete that she carried on perimeter patrols and that she had used once, on a man who had approached the safe zone in Week Three with a knife and intentions that the knife made clear. The machete, Leah's boundary: within the safe zone, we are civilised. Outside the safe zone, we are whatever we need to be.

Rule 4: Nidhi's radio schedule is sacred. The sacred: 6 AM and 6 PM, every day, Nidhi broadcasts. Nobody interrupts. Nobody uses the transmitter room during broadcast hours. The broadcast: the safe zone's lifeline: the lifeline that had brought Ramchandra Kaka and Farhan and Meher and Tanmay and Suvarna and Devika and Colonel Bhosale and Irfan and now us. The lifeline that might bring more. The might-bring-more being the hope that kept Nidhi cranking the transmitter twice a day, every day, sending the same signal into the same frequencies: SAFE ZONE LAVASA ALIVE NIDHI.

The rules, which was, the rules — the society. The society that Leah and Nidhi had built in the hills, the society that was not the old society (the old society having died with the old world) but was a new society, the new society being: smaller, simpler, built on the four rules that Leah had written on a piece of paper and taped to the common room wall.

I read the rules. I read them the way I read everything; carefully, with the attention that I give to things that matter. And I think: *these are good rules. These are the rules that the model flat did not have because the model flat had three people and three people do not need rules because three people are a family and families operate on love, not rules. But sixteen people are not a family. Sixteen people are a community.

I accept the rules. Veer accepts the rules. Gauri accepts the rules.

We are part of the safe zone.

The chai glass burned her palm. She shifted it to her fingertips.

Weeks pass. The weeks: the settling. The second settling, the first settling having been the model flat, the model flat that now sits empty in Sai Srushti Phase 2 on Baner Road, shell of our first attempt at post-virus: the empty model flatlife, the shell that we have outgrown the way a hermit crab outgrows its first shell.

The weeks produce: routine. The routine, which was Lavasa's routine, the routine that is different from the model flat's routine because the model flat's routine was the routine of three people and Lavasa's routine is the routine of sixteen people and the sixteen-person routine is: complex, interlocking, the routine of a small village.

My routine: wake at 6 AM (Colonel Bhosale's voice carrying through the walls: "Utho, utho, subah ho gayi!"). Morning patrol with Bholu, the patrol, the walk around Lavasa's perimeter, the perimeter that Leah has defined: the ochre building at the centre, extending two hundred metres in each direction, the two hundred metres: safe zone's boundary, the boundary that separates ours from theirs, the theirs being the world outside, the world that may or may not contain threats.

Breakfast at 7. The breakfast: poha or upma or sheera, the three breakfast options that Suvarna rotates because Suvarna is Maharashtrian and Maharashtrian breakfasts have three options and the three options are rotated Monday through Sunday with Wednesday being a wildcard (the wildcard: whatever Suvarna feels like making, the whatever, Suvarna's creative outlet, the creative outlet that the nurse had not had at Sassoon Hospital and that the cook now has at Lavasa's chulha).

After breakfast: work. My work being the same as it was at the model flat — exploration, supply runs, the mapping of the territory. But the territory is larger now. The territory is Lavasa and the surrounding hills, the hills that contain: abandoned construction sites (the sites that yield building materials: bricks, cement, steel rebar, the materials that the safe zone uses for expansion), natural water sources (the springs that the hills produce and that Gauri diverts into the safe zone's water system with the ingenuity that VNIT had not taught but that survival had taught), and the road to Pune (the road that I drive once a week in the Creta, the weekly drive being the supply run: D-Mart for canned goods, the medical store for medicines, the hardware store for tools).

Kiaan grows. Kiaan is four months old now — the four months producing: the social smile. The social smile being the smile that the developmental textbook describes (the textbook, the What to Expect that Suvarna had found in a Lavasa flat, the textbook, nurse's reference, the reference that Suvarna reads every morning to track Kiaan's milestones). The social smile being: the smile that the baby produces in response to a face, the smile that says I know you. I recognise you. I am happy to see you.

Kiaan smiles at me. Kiaan smiles the social smile, the smile that the textbook says begins at two to three months and that Kiaan is producing at four months, the four-month production being within the normal range, the normal range, the reassurance thatSuvarna provides when I ask: "Kiaan theek hai na? Late toh nahi hai?" Is Kiaan okay? He's not behind, is he?

"Bilkul normal hai," Suvarna says. Absolutely normal. "Har bachcha apni speed se badhta hai." Every child grows at their own speed.

The sentence, the nurse's sentence, the sentence that nurses deliver to anxious parents with the calm authority that the nursing profession instils, the calm that says I have seen a thousand babies and your baby is fine and the fine is the diagnosis.

Kiaan smiles at me. And the smile — the smile is the thing that breaks the rationing. The rationing of hope. The rationing that I had maintained since Day One — the rationing that said don't hope too much, don't love too much, don't invest too much in the future because the future is the thing that the virus has stolen.

But Kiaan's smile is the future. Kiaan's smile is four months of life; four months of milk and warmth and carrying and singing and the recognisable devotion that three adults and a dog and a community of sixteen people have poured into one small body. And the smile is the return on that investment. The smile is the dividends. The smile is: I am here. I am growing. I am smiling. The future exists because I exist and I am smiling.

I hold Kiaan. I hold him and he smiles at me and I feel the rationing collapse, feel it collapse the way the roofless clubhouse in Sai Srushti Phase 2 had collapsed: slowly, then all at once. The hope that I had been rationing flooding in. The hope that says: *maybe. Maybe we will be okay. Maybe this safe zone will grow. Maybe Lavasa will become a town. Maybe Kiaan will grow up.

Maybe. Shayad.

The word that the new world uses instead of definitely. The word that contains both hope and uncertainty. The word that is, in the new world, the bravest word.

Shayad.