Chapter 5: Veer

# Chapter 5: Veer

## The Old House

Two weeks have passed. March has ended. April has begun; April being the month that Pune feared, the month that brought the heat, the heat that turned the Deccan Plateau into a tawa, the tawa being the flat iron griddle that Indian kitchens used and that April turned the earth into: hot, flat, unforgiving. The April that I should have been preparing for my Infosys joining date: April 15th, the date that was printed on the offer letter that was in the drawer of the desk in the Kothrud flat, the desk that I would never sit at again.

Bholu has recovered. Bholu has; Bholu has become a dog again. The ribs that were visible two weeks ago are now covered by a thin layer of fat: the fat, the result of two weeks of eating, the eating: canned dog food from the pet section of D-Mart (Royal Canin, the Royal Canin being the brand that the D-Mart had stocked and that Bholu ate with the enthusiasm of a dog who has discovered that the world, while empty of humans, is not empty of food), supplemented by rice mixed with curd and turmeric (the rice-curd-turmeric combination being my mother's remedy for sick dogs, the remedy that she had given to Raja when Raja had upset stomachs, the remedy —: bland, healing, the thing that the body needed when the body was rebuilding).

Bholu follows me everywhere. Bholu trots beside me when I walk to D-Mart. Bholu sits at my feet when I sit on the model flat's sofa. Bholu sleeps at the foot of the bed. The bed that Pallavi and I share with Kiaan between us, the bed's foot being Bholu's territory, the territory that he has claimed by lying on it every night since the third night, the third night, the night that he was strong enough to climbthe stairs, the climbing — the milestone that said recovery: in progress.

I am out on my bicycle. The bicycle, the Hero Sprint that I had found in the parking area of a neighbouring society — the society: Nyati County, the county, which was a gated society of 200 flats and a parking area that contained 200 cars and 300 two-wheelers and one bicycle, the bicycle, which was the Hero Sprint that some child had left locked to a pillar and that I had freed with a bolt cutter from the hardware store, the freeing that was liberation that the new world permitted: everything that was locked could be unlocked, everything that was owned could be taken, the ownership (fiction that the society maintained and t h)at the society's absence dissolved. I leaned harder. The roughness grounded me.

I ride. I ride through Baner, through the streets that I have mapped in two weeks of daily exploration. I ride past the D-Mart (looted once by us, the once: ongoing— we return every three days for supplies). I ride past the medical store (stocked, untouched, the untouched, sign that we are the only survivors in this part of Pune, the only-survivors, the fact thatI cannot confirm and cannot deny and that hangs over us like the April heat: constant, oppressive, un-ignorable).

I ride up the hill toward Pashan, the Pashan that was the next neighbourhood, the neighbourhood that separated Baner from the university area. The hill is steep: the steep, the Pune geography that two-wheelers hated and cyclists feared, the steep (grade that made P)une's western hills the western hills: elevated, resistant, the resistance that the body felt in the thighs and the lungs.

I am hardly paying attention. I am too wrapped up in my internal monologue. The loop: Pallavi. Kiaan. My parents. Harsh. Pallavi. Kiaan. The loop that cycles every waking hour.

And this is probably why I don't immediately notice where I am. Or rather, in which direction I am heading.

It is when I come over the hill and see Kothrud stretching out below; Kothrud with its dense residential blocks and its narrow lanes and its particular quality of being old Pune in a way that Baner was not old Pune, Baner being new Pune, the new —: IT parks, gated societies, wide roads, the infrastructure of the 2010s. Kothrud being: the 1970s, the 1980s, the wadas and the chawls and the three-storey buildings that predated the glass-and-concrete towers. Kothrud being: home.

My stomach turns. My heart quickens. My mind races.

I bring the bicycle to a halt. Straddle it, my sweaty palms on the handlebars, as I stare at the sea of buildings.

My old house is amongst them. The streets that I used to walk every day. The streets where I grew up. The Kaka Halwai where my mother bought puran poli on Holi. The Chitale Bandhu where my father bought bakarwadi every Saturday. The Karve Road that I had walked a thousand times, to school, to tuitions, to the library, to the park, to Harsh's flat, to the everywhere that a Kothrud childhood contained.

If I thought Baner held a lot of memories...

I swallow. I have a choice. I either head back, the way I came, which would be an hour. Not that this phases me. The longer I am out of the model flat, the better.

Or I don't turn around. I carry on. And I stand up to whatever awaits me in the streets below.

It is as I descend the hill into Kothrud that I begin to wonder if going back to the flat will just make things worse. What do I have to gain from remembering how things used to be? From remembering when the world was still whole?

But something keeps me going. Maybe I'm a masochist. Maybe I can't accept reality: that my parents and all my friends are dead and nothing will bring them back.

I carry on down the hill until the road enters Kothrud. Enters the neighbourhood that was built for Maharashtrian middle-class families and that had been built by Maharashtrian middle-class families and that had housed Maharashtrian middle-class families for fifty years: families named Joshi and Kulkarni and Deshpande and Patwardhan and Gokhale, the names that Kothrud's nameplates carried, the nameplates that were brass or steel or painted wood and that said: *this is our home. This is who we are.

It is not long before I begin to recognise where I am. Memories returning like blades in the chest.

It starts as soon as I pass the park: the park on Paud Road where my mother used to take me when I was small. Pushing me on the swings as I laughed and shouted. Helping me climb the slide. Sitting on the see-saw with me. Being the mother that she was: the mother who had taught biology at Abhinav Vidyalaya for twenty-two years and who had come home every day smelling of chalk and the institutional smell of Indian schools (phenol floor cleaner, Dettol, chalk dust, the combination — olfactory signature ofIndian education) and who had, despite the smell and the tiredness, pushed me on the swings.

I swallow. Something choking me.

Turn back, an intuition says.

But I don't. I push on.

I pass the ground where Harsh, Pratik, Tejas, and I used to play cricket. Stumps drawn in chalk on the compound wall. 2-a-side. Tennis ball. The tennis ball that we would lose over the wall and that the Kulkarni Kaku on the other side would keep and that we would never get back because Kulkarni Kaku believed that cricket balls in her garden were an invasion and invasions were repelled, not accommodated.

Now Harsh and Pratik and Tejas are dead. And Kulkarni Kaku is dead. And the tennis ball — the tennis ball is probably still in her garden, behind the wall, where she had placed it after confiscating it from us in 2015.

I carry on. Tears threatening.

Why am I doing this to myself?

I pass my mother's best friend's house, Meenakshi Maushi's house on Karve Road. I feel vomit fighting my throat when I see her Maruti Swift parked at the kerb. That blue Swift. 2018 model. The Swift that Meenakshi Maushi drove to pick me up from school when my mother was running late, the late, my mother's chronic condition: chronically late for everything because chronically busy with everything, the everything —: school, home, cooking, teaching, grading, the Indian mother's portfolio of responsibilities that had no end and no rest and no weekends.

I remember Diwali at Meenakshi Maushi's house. The rangoli on the doorstep. The faral on the table: karanji, chakli, shankarpali, chivda, the four items of Maharashtrian Diwali faral that every house made and that every house believed its version was the best. Meenakshi Maushi's karanji: the karanji that my mother said was better than her own and that Meenakshi Maushi said was not, the saying-was-not being the Indian modesty that was not modesty but was the social protocol: never admit that your karanji is better than your friend's karanji, even if it is.

Now Meenakshi Maushi is dead. Her rangoli colours are in the drawer. Her karanji recipe is in the notebook on her kitchen shelf. The notebook — the Indian kitchen's DNA, the notebook that every Indian mother maintained and that contained the recipes that were not written as recipes (no measurements, no temperatures, no cooking times) but were written as memories: "thoda jeera, thoda rai, mirchi adjust karo" — a little cumin, a little mustard, adjust the chilli. The adjust, the instruction that required no instruction because the adjust was the skill that the mother passed to the daughter and the daughter passed to her daughter and the passing was the tradition that the notebook encoded in its imprecise, beautiful language.

I cycle past the lanes where my friends and I used to walk. Where we used to hang out after school, the hanging out being: sitting on the compound wall of someone's building, drinking Pepsi from glass bottles that we returned to the tapri for the ₹5 deposit, the ₹5 being the incentive that the tapri provided and that we used to fund the next Pepsi.

I pass the tapri where I used to buy vada pav before tuitions. The tapri on Paud Road: the tapri being the Indian street-food stall that was a counter and a gas stove and a man and a tava and the alchemy that the man performed on the tava: potatoes mashed, spiced, shaped, fried, placed in a pav with chutney, handed over, ₹15, the ₹15 being the price of a meal that cost more to make at home and that tasted better from the tapri because tapri food was tapri food and home food was home food and the two were not the same and never would be.

It is around the corner from the tapri that I finally come to it.

My old lane. The lane that led to our building; Saraswati Apartments, the building that my parents had moved into in 1998 when my father got his job at Thermax and that they had lived in for twenty-six years, the twenty-six years being my parents' tenure in the building and the building's tenure in my heart.

I get off the bicycle. And then I just stand there, in the middle of the lane. Taking it all in.

Saraswati Apartments. Four floors. Twelve flats. The building that I knew by its smells — the ground floor smelling of Patwardhan Kaku's pickles, the first floor smelling of Joshi Kaka's agarbatti, the second floor smelling of my mother's tadka, the third floor smelling of Deshpande Uncle's cigars. The building that I knew by its sounds — the ground floor producing the sound of Patwardhan Kaku's TV (always Zee Marathi, always at volume 40), the first floor producing the sound of Joshi Kaka's harmonium (he played every evening at 7, the playing, which was his puja), the second floor producing the sound of my mother's pressure cooker (three whistles for toor dal), the third floor producing the sound of Deshpande Uncle's arguments with his wife (daily, at 9 PM, about money, the money that was topic thatIndian marriages argued about the way Western marriages argued about feelings).

I look at the building. The building looks back. The building not changed, the paint still the same faded yellow, the balconies still the same rusted railings, the nameplate at the entrance still reading SARASWATI APARTMENTS in Devanagari and English.

But the building is silent. The building that should be producing the sounds and the smells is producing nothing. The nothing — the absence: the absence of twelve families, forty-seven people (I know the count because I had known every person in the building since birth), the forty-seven people being dead and the building that was shell that they had left behind, the shell that contained their furniture and their clothes and their pickles and their harmoniums and their pressure cookers and their cigars and their everything, the everything, which was: a life. Twelve lives. Forty-seven lives.

My hands are shaking. My stomach is flipping. My mouth is dry and my eyes are wet.

Because now, as I look at Saraswati Apartments, and remember the twenty-three years I spent there as a family, the memories begin to rain.

Moments of fun and joy and sadness and anger and excitement and togetherness and love. Family dinners and childhood memories. Birthdays and Diwalis and Ganpati celebrations. The Ganpati, the annual festival that Saraswati Apartments celebrated together, the together: the Ganapati idol on the ground floor, the aarti at 7 PM, the modak distribution, the visarjan on Day 5 (Saraswati Apartments being a Gauri-Ganpati building, the Gauri-Ganpati being the Maharashtrian tradition of inviting both Gauri and Ganpati and immersing on Day 5 instead of Day 10).

I remember huge moments, my father telling me that I had been accepted to COEP, the telling, which was a phone call at 11 AM on a Tuesday, the Tuesday, the day that changed everything: COEP meant engineering, engineering meant Infosys, Infosys meant Hyderabad, Hyderabad meant the future. My mother's reaction when she came home from school that day. The reaction, which was: tears, followed by ladoo distribution to all twelve flats, the ladoo distribution being the Maharashtrian announcement protocol: good news was announced with ladoo, the ladoo being the sweet that carried the news the way the postman carried the letter.

And then I remember the small moments. The silly things that now no longer seem silly. My mother giving me a hug before she left for school. My father telling me the Pune Warriors score, when the Pune Warriors existed, the existing — brief and inglorious). Playing FIFA with Harsh in my room. Having water fights in the building's compound during Holi. Helping my father clean his motorcycle in the parking area. Helping my mother arrange her school papers on the dining table. Just looking at my parents' faces as we ate dinner (the dinner that my mother had cooked and that my father had served and that I had eaten without gratitude because gratitude required the knowledge that the thing you were grateful for would end, and I had not known that dinner with my parents would end, and the not-knowing was the youth's privilege: the privilege of believing that the present was permanent.

And it is then that it all gets too much. That I can look at Saraswati Apartments no longer.

That in a stream of shaking, throbbing tears, I get back on my bicycle, turn around, and ride back to the model flat.

Back to the new family.

Back to the life that remains.