Chapter 3: Veer

# Chapter 3: Veer

## The Settling

Pallavi and I get on well for the rest of the day. We have conversations about the past — nothing to do with relatives or the pandemic. Trivial things. Light topics. The topics that drift the mind from reality the way a kite drifts from the hand: connected by a thread but far enough to feel like freedom.

She tells me about her childhood in Satara; Satara being the town two hours south of Pune, the town that was famous for Kaas Plateau and the flowers that bloomed there in September and the view from Ajinkyatara Fort and the quiet quality of Satara light in the evening, the light that fell on the Deccan Plateau with the golden-orange of a town that was smaller than Pune and quieter than Pune and that produced, according to Pallavi, the best usal pav in Maharashtra, the best-usal-pav claim: claim that everyMaharashtrian town made because every Maharashtrian town believed its usal pav was the best and the believing was the Maharashtrian's birthright: to believe that your town's usal pav was superior to all other towns' usal pav.

I tell her about COEP — the College of Engineering Pune, the college that was Pune's oldest engineering college and that had a campus on the Mula-Mutha River and that had produced, in its 170 years, engineers who had built bridges and roads and software and a infrastructure of Indian modernity. I tell her about the hostel, the hostel's food, the hostel's rats, the hostel's 11 PM curfew that nobody obeyed, the 11 PM curfew being the administration's fiction, the fiction that the administration maintained because maintaining the fiction was easier than enforcing the reality.

She laughs at the rat story. The laughing being. First laugh in the model flat. The laughing. The first laugh in Sai Srushti Phase 2. The first laugh in what felt like a very long time. The laugh filling the living room the way a lamp fills a dark room: suddenly, there is light. Suddenly, the room is different. Suddenly, the grey sofa and the vitrified tiles and the empty shoe rack are not the furniture of despair but the furniture of a room in which someone has laughed.

Throughout the day, we make the effort to eat. We had found a gas cylinder in the developer's storeroom. The storeroom: room adjacent to the office, the room that contained construction supplies and, miraculously, an Indane gas cylinder that was three-quarters full, the three-quarters being the construction workers' usage: they had been using the gas to heat water for chai and the chai (construction worker's fuel), the fuel that India ran on, the fuel that was more important than petrol or diesel or electricity because chai was the thing that made work possible and work was the thing that made India possible.

I connect the cylinder to the Prestige stove. The connection. The connection requiring a regulator, the regulator, in the storeroom too, the storeroom: the treasure trove of a construction site: everything that workers needed was there, left behind by workers who would never return.

Pallavi makes rice. The rice: the Kohinoor basmati that we had carried from D-Mart: two kilograms of Kohinoor basmati, the Kohinoor, the brand that middle-class Indian kitchens stocked the way middle-class American kitchens stocked Uncle Ben's, the stocking, habit, the habit: the default, the default: when you needed rice, you bought Kohinoor, because your mother had bought Kohinoor and her mother had bought Kohinoor and the Kohinoor was the continuity that linked generations through the medium of grain.

I make dal. The dal that was toor dal, the yellow lentil that Maharashtra ate, the yellow lentil that was the base of varan (the thin dal that was poured over rice) and amti (the thick dal that was eaten with bhakri), the yellow lentil being the Maharashtrian's protein, the protein that fuelled the farmer in Satara and the engineer in Pune and the clerk in Nagpur and the minister in Mantralaya. I make the dal the way my mother made it — with tadka of mustard seeds and curry leaves and a pinch of hing, the hing being the spice that Indian kitchens used the way Western kitchens used garlic: as the foundation, the base note, the thing that made everything else make sense.

The dal is not as good as my mother's. My mother's dal was, my mother's dal was the dal against which all other dals were measured and found wanting. My mother's dal had the distinctive consistency that came from thirty years of making dal daily, the daily making that was practice that produced mastery, the mastery: the right amount of water, the right pressure-cooker time (three whistles for toor dal, not two, not four, three being my mother's number), the right tadka temperature.

My dal is, my dal is adequate. My dal is the dal of a twenty-three-year-old man who had watched his mother make dal a thousand times and who had absorbed, through the osmosis of being present in the kitchen, the approximate method but not the precise method, the approximate: good enough for survival and the survival: good enough for now.

We eat at the dining table, the wooden dining table with six chairs, the six chairs being four too many for our family of two-and-a-half (the half — Kiaan, who does not eat dal but who sits in Pallavi's lap and observes the dal with the curiosity of a six-week-old who has no idea what dal is but who can smell it and the smelling, his first encounter with Indian cuisine, an encounter that will, if he survives to solid food age, become the foundation of a lifetime of eating: dal and rice, dal and rice, dal and rice, the combination that India served at its table three hundred million times a day).

"Achha hai," Pallavi says, eating the dal with rice from a steel plate that we had found in the model flat's kitchen.

It's good. Your mother taught you?

"Haan. Sort of. Maine kabhi actually nahi banaya tha. Bas dekha tha."

Yes. Sort of. I never actually made it. Just watched.

"First time ke liye achha hai."

Good for a first time.

The compliment landing, the compliment that was first positive assessment of anythingI had done in the new world, the positive assessment being: you made dal. The dal is edible. The dal sustains. The dal is a step toward normal. The normal — the thing we were reaching for, the thing that was impossible (normal required a functioning society and the society was dead) and that we were reaching for anyway because the reaching was the survival strategy and the survival strategy was: pretend. Pretend that eating dal at a dining table in a model flat is normal. Pretend that the empty streets outside are temporary. Pretend that the stillness is a phase.

In the evening, after Pallavi has taken Kiaan upstairs for his feed, I am alone in the living room. Alone with the grey sofa and the decoration cabinet with the artificial flowers and the window that looks out onto the development's unfinished landscaping, the landscaping; the red soil and the concrete swimming pool and the roofless clubhouse, the unfinished things that would remain unfinished forever because the workers were dead and the developers were dead and the machines were silent and the silence was the unfinished's future: unfinished forever.

The malaise returns. The grief settling into my chest the way the March evening settles into the model flat, gradually, then completely.

Harsh. My parents. Pallavi. Kiaan. The world. My life.

A constant loop. The loop cycling through my consciousness every waking hour and following me into sleep. The nightmares. The nightmares that have worsened, that are more frequent, that come sometimes twice in a night, sometimes three times.

How long I can keep going like this, I don't know. But like I keep telling myself: one day at a time.

Ek din. Ek din. Ek din.

It's all we can do.

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The following days become a routine. The routine: wake, feed Kiaan, eat, clean, explore, eat, sleep. The routine, which was the structure that we impose on the structureless world, the structure that the world used to provide (alarm at 7, office at 9, lunch at 1, chai at 4, home at 7, dinner at 9, sleep at 11) and that we now provide for ourselves because without structure, the days are water: shapeless, flowing, impossible to hold.

I explore. I explore Baner — the Baner that I had known as Harsh's neighbourhood and that I now know as our neighbourhood, the our-neighbourhood being the territory that survival claims: the D-Mart (our grocery store), the medical store on Baner Road (our pharmacy. The pharmacy's medicines being our medicine cabinet, the cabinet that contained Crocin and Combiflam and Digene and ORS packets and the antibiotics that we might need and that we took without prescription because prescriptions required doctors and doctors were dead), the hardware store on the side lane (our tool shop — the tools: our tools now, the tools that we carried back to the model flat: a hammer, a torch, batteries, rope, a knife, the knife that was weapon thatI kept in my pocket not because I expected to use it but because carrying a weapon was the new normal, the new normal being: the world was not safe, and the not-safe required a blade in the pocket).

Pallavi does not explore. Pallavi stays in the model flat with Kiaan. Pallavi has become, Pallavi has become the indoor person. The person who does not leave. The person for whom the model flat's door is the boundary between the manageable and the unmanageable, the manageable: inside, with Kiaan, with the dal and the rice and the camping light and the grey sofa. The unmanageable that was: outside, where Jagdish and Sachin had been and where other Jagdishes and Sachins might be and where the streets were empty and the emptiness was the thing that Pallavi could not face because the emptiness confirmed the thing that she did not want confirmed: *the world is dead. The world is not coming back.

I understand. I understand the not-leaving. I understand the boundary. I understand that Pallavi's survival strategy is the opposite of mine: my strategy is to move, to explore, to map the dead city, to fill the emptiness with activity. Her strategy is to stay, to hold, to make the model flat the world, to shrink the world to a size that can be managed.

Both strategies are the same strategy. Both strategies are: don't think about it. Stay busy. Stay alive.

We are settling. We are settling into the model flat the way water settles into a vessel: taking the shape of the container, filling the space, becoming still. The settling — the first stage of the new life: the new life that is not a life but is the absence of death, the absence of death being the minimum that we can hope for and the minimum, for now, enough.

We are settling into Sai Srushti Phase 2, Baner Road, Pune 411045.

We are settling into the end of the world.