Chapter 21: Veer

# Chapter 21: Veer

## The Monsoon's Promise

June arrives. June being the month that Maharashtra waits for, the month that the Deccan Plateau has been holding its breath for since March, the breath-holding being the wait for rain. The wait for the monsoon. The wait for the southwest wind that picks up moisture from the Arabian Sea and carries it across the Konkan coast and hits the Western Ghats and releases. Releases the rain that makes Maharashtra possible, the rain that fills the dams and feeds the rivers and grows the crops and washes the dust and turns the brown hills green.

The monsoon arrives on June 7th. I know the date because Colonel Bhosale keeps a calendar, the calendar. A hand-drawn calendar on the common room wall, the drawing, the Colonel's morning activity: every morning he crosses off yesterday and writes today and the crossing-and-writing is the Colonel's time-keeping, the time-keeping that the Colonel maintains because the Colonel believes that a community without a calendar is a community without history and a community without history is a mob.

June 7th. The rain begins at 4 PM. The rain, first rain since the virus, the rain. The first rain that our ears have heard in the new world. The first rain that falls on Lavasa's coloured buildings and on the ochre building's roof and on Warasgaon Dam's surface and on the brown hills that are already, within hours of the rain, beginning the transformation that the monsoon performs: brown to green. Dead to alive.

Twenty-four of us stand on the ochre building's balconies. Twenty-four people watching the rain: the rain that is not just rain but is the monsoon, the monsoon that India has worshipped for three thousand years because the monsoon is not weather but is survival, the monsoon (water that makes the next twelve months p o)ssible.

Kiaan: Kiaan who is five months old now, who smiles and gurgles and reaches for things and who has begun the developmental milestone that Suvarna calls "rolling" (the rolling that was baby's first independent movement: from back to stomach, the movement that says I am no longer stationary, I am beginning the journey toward crawling and walking and running and the running is the thing that humans do: we run) — Kiaan feels the rain on his face and makes a sound that is not crying and not laughing but is something between, the between, which was the baby's response to the new sensation: wet. Cold. Drops. On the face. The face that has never felt rain before.

Pallavi holds Kiaan in the rain. Holds him out: not carelessly, not recklessly, but with the intention of: feel this. Feel the rain. Feel the monsoon. Feel the thing that India feels every June and that India will feel every June forever, the forever, the monsoon's promise: I will return. I will always return.

"Pehli baarish," Pallavi says. First rain.

The sentence: the marker, the marker that says this is Kiaan's first monsoon. This is the first of the many monsoons that Kiaan will experience in his life. This is the beginning of Kiaan's relationship with the rain.

I stand beside them. Pallavi, Kiaan, Bholu (Bholu who hates the rain and who is pressing against my legs with the careful displeasure that dogs feel toward water falling from the sky: why is the sky wet? Who permitted this? I did not consent). The four of us on the balcony. The rain on our faces.

And for a moment. For a moment that is brief and perfect and that I will remember for the rest of whatever life I have, for a moment, I feel it.

Not happiness. Not the old-world happiness that required promotions and purchases and likes and followers. Something else. Something that the old world did not have a word for because the old world did not need the word.

The word that the new world needs: enough.

This is enough. This rain. This balcony. This woman. This baby. This dog. This community of twenty-four people in a half-finished hill city watching the monsoon arrive. This is enough.

---

Dust settled on her skin, fine as talcum.

The safe zone grows through the monsoon months. Grows because Nidhi's radio keeps broadcasting and the broadcasting keeps pulling survivors toward Lavasa the way the monsoon pulls clouds toward the Ghats: inevitably, by the force of something larger than any individual decision.

By August, the safe zone has thirty-seven people.

The new arrivals include: a family from Kolhapur (husband, wife, two daughters, the daughters — seven and nine, the seven-and-nine: ages that play withKiaan and that make Kiaan laugh with the deep-belly laugh that babies produce when older children are funny, the funny being: faces, sounds, the distinctive silliness that seven-year-olds specialise in). A retired doctor from Nashik. Dr. Medha Apte, the doctor — the most valuable arrival since Colonel Bhosale because the doctor was the profession that the safe zone needed most: the profession that could examine Kiaan and say healthy and that could treat the infections that the monsoon produced and that could provide the medical authority that Suvarna's nursing authority could not.

An auto-rickshaw driver from Pune named Balasaheb; Balasaheb Jadhav, the Jadhav — the Maratha surname that was as common in Maharashtra as the auto-rickshaw that Balasaheb had driven for twenty years, the twenty years, the career that the virus had ended and thatthe ending had freed Balasaheb to become the safe zone's most unexpected asset: the mechanic. Balasaheb who could fix anything with an engine: the anything: generators, water pumps, the Creta's diesel engine, the Scorpio's diesel engine, the small Honda generator that Gauri had found in a Lavasa maintenance shed and that Balasaheb had repaired with duct tape and WD-40 and the particular mechanical intuition that twenty years of maintaining auto-rickshaws had produced.

The safe zone's infrastructure grows. Gauri's water filtration system expands. The expansion: pipes running from the dam to the ochre building and from the ochre building to the surrounding buildings, the pipes, the PVC pipes that the construction sites had left behind and that Gauri joins with the skill that VNIT had taught her (or rather, that survival had taught her, VNIT having taught her computer science and survival having taught her plumbing, more useful of the two educations in the; the plumbingnew world).

Leah's rules hold. The four rules: contribute, share food, no violence, protect the radio; holding thirty-seven people together the way four walls hold a roof: simply, structurally, without ornament.

But the threat remains. The threat: the knowledge that Aarav has brought, the knowledge that in Satara, a group of fifty has become a hierarchy, the hierarchy becoming an oppression, the oppression that was thing that communities produce when the community's leaders choose power over service. The knowledge that other groups exist; groups that are not safe zones but are fiefdoms, groups that are not communities but are armies, groups that are not families but are gangs.

The knowledge that the new world, like the old world, produces both: the Lavasas and the Sataras. The communities that care and the communities that consume.

---

It is late August when I see her.

I am on the evening perimeter patrol. The patrol that I perform with Colonel Bhosale, the Colonel who walks the perimeter with the stride of a soldier and who sees things that I do not see because the Colonel's eyes have been trained to see what civilian eyes miss: the movement in the peripheral vision, the shadow that is not a shadow, the shape that is not a rock.

"Ruk," the Colonel says. Stop.

I stop. Bholu stops. The three of us: stationary, at the western edge of Lavasa's perimeter, facing the hill that overlooks Warasgaon Dam.

"Wahan," the Colonel says. "Deewar pe."

There. On the wall.

The wall. The wall: the retaining wall that borders Lavasa's western edge, the wall that the construction company had built to prevent the hillside from sliding into the development, the wall, three metres high, concrete, the concrete that the construction company had poured and that the monsoon rains had begun to stain green with algae, the green — the life that the monsoon produced on every surface: walls, roofs, roads, the green of growth, the green of the monsoon's gift.

On the wall: a figure.

A girl. Sitting on top of the retaining wall, sitting three metres above the ground, her legs dangling over the edge, her body silhouetted against the monsoon sky, the sky, the grey ofAugust clouds, the grey that was the monsoon's permanent colour, the colour that said more rain is coming, the rain has not finished, the monsoon is here.

She is: she is young. Teenager. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Thin. The thin of a teenager who has not been eating enough, the not-enough: new world's standard adolescent physique. She wears a salwar kameez, the salwar kameez being dirty, the dirty: weeks-of-wearing-the-same-clothes dirty, the dirty that every survivor carried in the first months. Her hair is tied in a ponytail: the ponytail; messy, ponytail's natural state when the ponytai, the messyl has not been combed in days.

But what stops me: what makes my breath catch: is what she holds.

In her right hand: a weapon. A long weapon; not a knife, not a machete, but, a bow. A recurve bow. The bow, which was the weapon that predated firearms and that India had used for a thousand years and that this girl, this teenager sitting on the retaining wall of a half-finished hill city in the Western Ghats, is holding with the grip of someone who knows how to use it. I shifted the weight. The cutting shifted too.

And across her back: a quiver. A quiver with arrows, the arrows, which was hand-made, the hand-made being visible in the irregular shafts and the bound feathers, the feathers that she has attached with string, binding that holds the arrow together — the string.

A girl with a bow and arrows. Sitting on the wall. Looking at Lavasa.

Looking at us.

"Don't move," the Colonel says in English: the English, the language that the Colonel uses for commands because the Colonel's training was in English and the training's language is the command's language.

I don't move. Bholu doesn't move, Bholu whose body is rigid, whose tail is rigid, whose eyes are fixed on the girl, the fixed (dog's focus): I see you. I am watching. I have not decided if you are friend or foe.

The girl sees us. She sees us seeing her. And she does not move. She does not raise the bow. She does not nock an arrow. She sits on the wall and looks at us with the specific calm of a person who is not afraid — the not-afraid, the most unsettling thing about her because everyone in the new world is afraid and the not-afraid is the anomaly.

"Kaun hai tu?" I call out. Who are you?

No response. The girl looking at me. Looking at the Colonel. Looking at Bholu. The looking, which was the assessment that every survivor performs but that this girl performs with a stillness that is different from Gauri's stillness in the D-Mart parking lot, Gauri's stillness was the stillness of fear) and different from Aarav's stillness at the Scorpio (Aarav's stillness was the stillness of calculation). This girl's stillness is the stillness of (the stillness of a hunter. A hunter who sits still because the sitting-still is the hunter's skill: the skill that the quarry reads as harmless and that the hunter knows is the opposite.

"Neeche aao," the Colonel calls. His command voice, the voice that has commanded battalions and that now commands a teenager on a wall. Come down.

The girl tilts her head. The tilting: the tilting — curiosity. Not defiance. Not fear. Curiosity. The curiosity of a teenager who has been alone and who is seeing a community for the first time and who is assessing: is this a community or a cage? Is this Lavasa or Satara? Is this the safe zone or the trap?

She does not come down. She does not speak. She looks at us for another five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds. I leaned harder. The roughness grounded me.

And then she moves. She stands — stands on the wall, three metres above the ground, stands with the balance of a person who has been standing on walls and climbing trees and navigating terrain that requires the balance that the body produces when the body has been trained by survival, the survival that is the best training that exists.

She turns. Turns away from us. And she drops. Drops from the wall on the other side, the other side (hill), the hill that faces Warasgaon Dam, the hill that descends into the forest that the monsoon has made green and dense and impenetrable.

She is gone. In two seconds. From the wall to the forest. From visible to invisible. From seen to unseen.

I stand there. Colonel Bhosale stands there. Bholu stands there.

"Woh kaun thi?" I say. Who was that?

The Colonel is quiet.

"Woh ek survivor hai. Akeli. Young. Armed. Trained; nahi formally, lekin survival se trained. Bow use karti hai. Iska matlab hai ki woh hunt karti hai. Khud ke liye khaana dhundhti hai. Kisi group mein nahi hai. Akeli rehti hai. Jungle mein."

She's a survivor. Alone. Young. Armed. Trained — not formally, but trained by survival. She uses a bow — means she hunts. Finds her own food. Not part of any group. Lives alone. In the forest.

"Khatarnaak hai?"

Is she dangerous?

"Har koi khatarnaak hai, Veer. New world mein. Lekin: lekin woh hampe attack nahi kiya. Woh dekh rahi thi. Observe kar rahi thi. Jaise: jaise Gauri observe karti thi D-Mart mein. Darri hui nahi thi. Curious thi."

Everyone is dangerous, Veer. In the new world. But, she didn't attack us. She was watching. Observing. Like, like Gauri observed in D-Mart. She wasn't afraid. She was curious.

"Toh kya karein?"

So what do we do?

"Wahi jo hamesha karte hain. Watch. Wait. Agar woh aana chahegi, aayegi. Agar nahi. Toh nahi. Choice uski hai."

Same as always. Watch. Wait. If she wants to come. She'll come. If not, she won't. The choice is hers.

The Colonel's wisdom being the military wisdom, the wisdom that says you cannot force an asset to come in. You can only create the conditions that make coming-in attractive. The conditions: safety, food, community, the things that every survivor seeks.

I look at the wall. The wall where the girl had been sitting. The wall that is now empty: empty of the girl, empty of the bow, empty of the quiver with the hand-made arrows.

The girl on the wall.

Who is she? Where did she come from? How did she survive — alone, in the forest, with a bow and arrows, for three months?

The questions that I cannot answer. The questions that the wall cannot answer. The questions that the monsoon sky cannot answer.

But the questions that I will keep asking.

Because the girl on the wall is, the girl on the wall is the thing that I did not expect. The thing that the safe zone did not expect. The thing that the new world keeps producing: surprises. The surprises that say the world is not what you think it is. The dead city is not as dead as you think. The forest is not as empty as you think. The wall is not as bare as you think.

The girl on the wall.

She will come back. I know she will. Because curiosity brings people back. And the curiosity that she showed, the tilted head, the fifteen seconds of looking, the assessment, is the curiosity of a person who has found something and who will return to look again.

She will come back.

And when she does. We will be ready. Not with weapons. Not with walls. But with the thing that Pallavi taught me in the model flat, on the night before I met Gauri:

"Use darrao mat. Use achha feel karao. Kyunki agar woh darri hui hai, toh usse sabse zyaada zaroorat hai ki koi use bole: 'tu safe hai.'"

Don't scare her. Make her feel safe. Because if she's scared: what she needs most is someone to tell her: 'you're safe.'

The girl on the wall will hear those words.

When she is ready.