Chapter 7: Veer

# Chapter 7: Veer

## The Return

I go back the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that.

Three days of D-Mart visits. Three days of walking through the aisles with Bholu at my side, the walking, which was slow and deliberate, the slowness that was not the slowness of shopping but the slowness of hunting, the hunting: looking for signs. Signs of the watcher. Signs that someone had been here between my visits. Signs that I was not imagining things.

Day One (return): nothing. The Thums Up bottles were where I had placed them back on the shelf. The aisles were as I had left them. The service area behind the D-Mart was empty. Empty of people, full of garbage, the garbage unchanged.

But Bholu's nose told a different story. In the beverage aisle. The aisle where the bottles had fallen, Bholu's nose went to work. The nostrils flaring, the head dipping to the floor, the body pulling toward the left end of the aisle. The scent. The same scent. The scent of a person who had been here, not today but recently, the recently. Scent's freshness, the freshness that a dog could measure the way a human measured time: by intensity. Fresh scent = recent. Fading scent = older. Bholu's pull said: recent.

Day Two: a change. The change: small, the kind of small that a person who was not looking would miss and that a person who was looking would notice. In the canned goods aisle — aisle 7, three cans of rajma were missing from the shelf. Three cans that had been there yesterday. I knew they had been there because I had counted the cans (the counting, the habit that the new world had installed in me: count everything, know your inventory, the inventory: difference between being prepared and being surprised).

Three cans of rajma. Gone.

I checked the rest of the aisle. Everything else was as I had left it. Only the rajma. Three cans.

Bholu's nose confirmed: the scent was there. In the canned goods aisle. Stronger than in the beverage aisle. Fresher. The person had been here: had been here between my visit yesterday and my visit today. Had walked the same aisles. Had taken three cans of rajma.

Day Three: another change. This time in the baby aisle. Four packets of wet wipes were missing. And a tin of Cerelac, the Cerelac that was the baby food that Indian mothers used for the transition from milk to solid, the Cerelac, the gateway drug of Indian infant nutrition.

Four packets of wet wipes. One tin of Cerelac.

The person has a baby. Or the person is caring for a baby. Or the person knows someone who has a baby. I shifted the weight. The cutting shifted too.

Bholu confirmed the scent. The same scent. The same person. Coming to the D-Mart between my visits. Taking what they need. Leaving everything else.

I told Pallavi. I told her on Day One (she said "coincidence"). I told her on Day Two (she said "maybe rats?"). I told her on Day Three; told her about the wet wipes and the Cerelac: and she went quiet.

"Wipes aur Cerelac?" she repeated.

"Haan."

"Toh, toh bachcha hai?"

So — there's a baby?

"Lagta hai. Ya toh bachcha hai ya kisi ke paas bachcha hai."

Seems like it. Either a baby or someone who has a baby.

She looked at Kiaan. Kiaan in her lap, shaking the rattle. Kiaan who was our baby, our baby who was not our baby but who was the baby we had found and the baby we had kept and the baby who was, in the absence of all other purpose, our purpose.

If. If they also have a baby: then they're not dangerous.

The logic: people with babies are not Jagdish-and-Sachin. People with babies are like us. Survivors who are caring for something small and fragile and who are therefore, by the act of caring, not predators but protectors.

"Shayad," I said. Maybe.

"Kal: kal ek kaam kar. D-Mart mein, baby section mein, ek note chhod de. Hindi mein. Simple sa. 'Hum bhi yahan hain. Hum khatarnaak nahi hain. Milna chahte hain.' Bas."

Tomorrow: do one thing. In D-Mart; in the baby section — leave a note. In Hindi. Simple. 'We're here too. We're not dangerous. We want to meet.' That's it.

The note. The note, the communication method of the post-internet world. The method that was not WhatsApp and not Instagram and not email but paper, the paper, medium that humanity had used for four thousand years before the internet and that humanity would use again now that the internet was gone. Paper and pen. The old technology. The technology that survived the A-Virus because paper did not need electricity and pen did not need Wi-Fi and the not-needing was the resilience that the old technology had and the new technology did not. I leaned harder. The roughness grounded me.

"Achha idea hai," I said. Good idea.

---

Her nails were rough from washing. She could feel the fabric catch on them.

Day Four. I leave the note. I write it on a piece of paper torn from a notebook that I had found in the developer's office, the notebook: developer's sales notebook, the notebook that had contained the names and phone numbers of prospective buyers and that now contained, on its last page, a message to a stranger:

Hum bhi yahan hain. Do log, ek bachcha, ek kutta. Model flat mein rehte hain, Sai Srushti Phase 2, Baner Road. Hum khatarnaak nahi hain. Agar tum bhi zinda ho, toh milte hain. Note ke neeche apna jawab likh do.

We're here too. Two people, a baby, a dog. We live in the model flat; Sai Srushti Phase 2, Baner Road. We're not dangerous. If you're alive too, let's meet. Write your reply below the note.

I place the note in the baby section. I place it on the shelf where the Cerelac had been: the shelf that the watcher had visited, the shelf that was the watcher's grocery aisle, the aisle that said I have a baby and I need baby food and that was therefore the aisle where the watcher would return.

I leave the note and I leave.

Day Five. I return. My heart beating fast, the fast, anticipation, the anticipation that said maybe there is a reply. Maybe the watcher has read the note. Maybe the watcher has written back.

The note is where I left it. On the shelf. In the baby section.

But beneath my message, beneath the Note ke neeche apna jawab likh do, there is new writing. New writing in a different hand, the hand: smaller than mine, the letters rounder, the writing of a woman (the assumption — the assumption, the assumption that I could not confirm but that the handwriting suggested).

The reply:

Main akeli hoon. Ek ladki. Bahut darr lagta hai. Milna chahti hoon lekin darr hai. Kal D-Mart ke bahar, subah 8 baje. Akele aana. Kutta la sakte ho. Lekin koi aur nahi.

I'm alone. A girl. I'm very scared. I want to meet but I'm afraid. Tomorrow outside D-Mart, morning 8 AM. Come alone. You can bring the dog. But nobody else.

I read the reply three times. I read it and my hands are shaking, the shaking, which was the same shaking that I had felt outside Saraswati Apartments but different: that shaking was grief. This shaking is, this shaking is hope. The hope that the new world produces rarely and that, when produced, is so powerful that the body cannot contain it and the body shakes because the body has forgotten how to hold hope and the forgotten-how is the atrophy of a muscle that has not been used in five weeks.

A girl. Alone. Scared.

Alive.

---

I tell Pallavi. She reads the note. Reads it three times, the same way I had read it.

"Kal subah 8 baje," she says. "Akeli hai."

Tomorrow morning 8. She's alone.

"Haan."

"Aur darri hui hai."

And scared.

"Haan."

"Toh — toh akele jaana padega. Usne bola hai. Agar main bhi aayi. Toh shayad darr jayegi."

So: you have to go alone. She said so. If I come too. She might get scared.

"Haan. Bholu le jaunga."

Yes. I'll take Bholu.

"Veer."

"Haan?"

"Sambhal ke."

Be careful.

"Hamesha."

She looks at me. The look that she gives me when she is worried, the look that contains the Jagdish-and-Sachin memory and the khurpi memory and a fear that the new world has installed in her: the fear of strangers. The fear that every encounter is potentially the last encounter.

"Main theek rahunga," I say. I'll be fine.

"Woh nahi, woh nahi bol rahi main. Main, main bol rahi hoon ki, ki agar woh sachchi mein zinda hai, agar sachchi mein ek aur insaan hai; toh; toh use darrao mat. Use. Use achha feel karao. Kyunki agar woh darri hui hai. Toh usse sabse zyaada zaroorat hai ki koi use bole: 'tu safe hai.'"

That's not. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying: if she's really alive, if there really is another person, then, 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 sentence. The sentence — Pallavi's wisdom, the wisdom of a woman who had been scared and who knew what the scared needed: not weapons, not walls, not distance. The scared needed the sentence. Tu safe hai. You're safe. The sentence that undid the fear — not completely, not permanently, but enough. Enough to let the scared person take a step. Enough to let the scared person stay.

"Samjha," I say. Understood.

Tomorrow. 8 AM. D-Mart.

Bholu and I will meet the watcher.

---

The night is long. The longest night since the night after finding Harsh. The night that had been long because of grief. This night is long because of anticipation. The anticipation: the anticipation of a man who has been alone (alone-except-for-Pallavi-and-Kiaan-and-Bholu) for five weeks and who is about to meet another human being and the another-human-being is the rarest thing in the new world: rarer than clean water, rarer than working electricity, rarer than hope.

I lie on my side of the bed. Pallavi on hers. Kiaan between us. Bholu at the foot. The four-person configuration that has become our nightly arrangement — the arrangement that the model flat's master bedroom holds: two adults, one baby, one dog, one double bed, the bed: geography of our family, the geography that has become fixed and familiar.

I cannot sleep. I stare at the ceiling. The ceiling of the model flat, the white ceiling with the fan that does not rotate (no electricity) and the light fixture that does not illuminate (no electricity) and a certain darkness of a ceiling at 2 AM in a city without power.

Tomorrow I will meet another person. Another survivor. Another proof that the virus did not kill everyone. Another data point in the equation that I have been trying to solve since Day One: how many are left?

The equation that I cannot solve because I have only two data points (us and her) and two data points are not enough to extrapolate and the not-enough is the frustration of a man who studied engineering and who knows that equations need data and data is the thing that the dead world does not provide.

But tomorrow; tomorrow there will be a third data point. A girl. Alone. Scared.

I close my eyes. I try to sleep.

Sleep does not come.

The night continues.