Chapter 8: Veer

# Chapter 8: Veer

## The Meeting

Morning. 7:15 AM. April light through the model flat's kitchen window: the light that is already warm, the warm, which was April's announcement: the heat is coming. The heat that Pune knows and that Pune endures and that Pune curses from April to June because from April to June the Deccan Plateau becomes the Deccan Furnace and the Furnace makes the city sweat and the sweating makes the city irritable and the irritable was the mood that three million Punekars shared for three months every year.

Except this year, there are no three million Punekars. This year, there is me and Pallavi and Kiaan and Bholu. And somewhere out there, a girl who wrote on a piece of paper: Main akeli hoon.

I eat. I eat quickly; Parle-G biscuits dipped in chai, the dipping: the Indian breakfast's minimum viable product: biscuit plus chai equals calories plus caffeine equals functioning. The functioning: enough energy to walk to D-Mart and meet a stranger and not collapse from the anxiety that is currently occupying every cell of my body.

Pallavi watches me eat. She watches with the look that she has been wearing since last night, the look of a woman who is sending someone into the unknown and who cannot go with them and who is therefore dependent on the someone to return, the returning: thing thatPallavi cannot guarantee and that Pallavi fears will not happen because Pallavi's experience of the new world is: people go out and do not come back. People go to work and do not come back. People go to the market and do not come back. People go to visit friends and find them dead on their beds.

"Veer."

"Haan?"

"Ek ghanta. Agar ek ghante mein nahi aaya, toh main aa rahi hoon."

One hour. If you're not back in one hour: I'm coming.

"Theek hai. Ek ghanta."

"Aur. Aur agar kuch bhi galat lage, aaja wapas. Bas aaja. Kuch prove nahi karna hai."

And: if anything feels wrong, come back. Just come back. You don't have to prove anything.

"Samjha."

I finish the chai. I stand. I look at Pallavi: Pallavi in her grey kurta, Kiaan in her lap, the morning light on her face. The face that I have known for five weeks and that I know better than any face in the world because every other face I knew is dead and this face is alive and the alive face is the face that matters.

"Main aa jaunga," I say. I'll be back.

She nods.

Bholu and I leave. We walk through the Sai Srushti Phase 2 gate, the gate with the permanently raised boom barrier. And onto Baner Road. Baner Road at 7:30 AM, the road that should be the busiest road in the neighbourhood at this hour, the hour that was the IT professional's commuting hour, the hour that produced the traffic jam that every Banekar complained about and that every Banekar secretly loved because the traffic jam was the proof of life, the proof that the neighbourhood was alive and working and earning and commuting. The traffic jam was gone. The road was empty. The road was the road that the new world had made: a strip of asphalt connecting nothing to nothing.

I walk. Bholu trots beside me. The trotting; steady, the steady gait of a dog who has recovered and who is, in his recovery, the most reliable companion a man could have. Bholu does not worry about meeting strangers. Bholu does not have nightmares about Jagdish and Sachin. Bholu has the dog's gift: the gift of being present, the present: the only tense that dogs live in. No past. No future. Only: this walk. This road. This smell. This moment.

I envy Bholu.

D-Mart comes into view at 7:45. The D-Mart with its blue-and-yellow signage. The signage that I have seen a hundred times and that now, approaching it with the knowledge that a stranger is waiting, looks different. The signage looks like a meeting point. The signage looks like the sign above the platform at Pune Junction that says "Pune Jn.": the sign that tells you: you have arrived. What happens next is the next thing.

I arrive. I stand in the parking lot, the empty parking lot with the four cars in the four spaces. Bholu beside me. The April sun already warm on my neck.

7:50. Ten minutes early.

I wait.

The waiting is the hardest part. The waiting in which the mind produces every possible scenario; every scenario from she will come and she will be kind and she will be a friend to she will come with a weapon and she will be Jagdish-and-Sachin in a different body to she will not come at all and the note was a trap and I am standing in the parking lot of a D-Mart at 7:50 AM in a dead city waiting for nobody.

7:55. Bholu sits. Bholu's sitting being the dog's patience, the patience that dogs possess and that humans envy: the ability to sit and wait without the sitting and waiting producing anxiety. Bholu sits and looks at the parking lot entrance and waits.

7:58. My heart is hammering. My palms are wet. The sweat, which was the April heat and the anxiety combined, the combination that produces the exact wetness that the body generates when the body is both hot and afraid.

8:00.

She appears.

She appears at the parking lot entrance, the entrance that faces Baner Road, the entrance that I am watching with the intensity of a man who has been waiting for five weeks to see another human being.

She is young. My age, maybe a year or two younger. Her hair is long and black and tied in a braid: the braid: the Indian girl's default hairstyle, the hairstyle that mothers plaited and daughters inherited and that was as much a part of the Indian girl's identity as the bindi or the dupatta. She is thin, not starving-thin like Bholu was but the thin of a woman who has not been eating enough, the not-enough (new world's diet): whatever you can find, whenever you can find it.

She wears a navy blue kurti over jeans. The kurti — wrinkled, the wrinkled — sign of a woman who does not have an iron and who does not care about ironing because ironing is the luxury that the old world afforded and the new world does not. On her feet: white sneakers, dirty. The dirty, which was the dirt of walking, the dirt that accumulates when you walk through a dead city for five weeks.

But what captures me most is her eyes. Dark brown, and sharp. The sharpness: the alertness, the alertness of a woman who has survived five weeks alone and who has learned to look at everything with the eye of a prey animal: watching for movement, watching for threat, watching for the thing that will kill her.

And she is looking at me. Looking at me with those sharp eyes. Her body tense, the tense: posture of a woman who is ready to run, the running: her escape plan, the escape plan that she has prepared in case this meeting is not what it claims to be. I shifted the weight. The cutting shifted too.

Bholu's tail wags. The wagging — the dog's assessment: friendly. Not a threat. I like this person.

I trust Bholu.

I raise my hand. A slow wave, the slow: deliberate, the deliberate: I am not a threat. I am waving. The wave is the human greeting. The greeting says: hello. I am here. I am not dangerous.

She does not wave back. She stands at the parking lot entrance, twenty metres from me. And she looks. She looks at me and she looks at Bholu and she looks at the D-Mart behind me and she looks at the empty parking lot and she makes her assessment.

The assessment takes ten seconds. The ten seconds being the longest ten seconds of my life since the ten seconds in the dhaba on Sinhagad Road when Jagdish had been standing between me and the door and I had been calculating whether I could get past him (I couldn't; Pallavi solved that problem with the khurpi).

And then — she takes a step. One step forward. Into the parking lot.

And then another step. And another.

She walks toward me. The walking, cautious: the cautious walking of a person crossing a bridge that might collapse, possibility that this meeting is a trap a, the might-collapsend thing she fears and the thing she is over: the trapcoming because the overcoming is the thing that she has decided to do: she has decided to meet me and the decision is being executed one cautious step at a time.

She stops five metres from me. Five metres being the safe distance, the distance that allows for running, the running that was escape that the distance permits.

We look at each other.

"Veer?" she says. My name. The name that I had signed on the note. The name: the identification: the identification that confirms: you are the person who wrote the note. You are the person who lives in the model flat. You are the person who has a dog and a baby and another person.

"Haan," I say. "Main Veer hoon."

"Main; main Gauri hoon."

She pauses. The pause — the pause of a woman who has not spoken her own name aloud in five weeks, the five weeks being the five weeks of silence, the silence of a woman who has had nobody to speak to, nobody to tell her name to, nobody to hear her voice. I leaned harder. The roughness grounded me.

"Gauri," I repeat. "Tumne note padha."

Gauri. You read the note.

"Haan." Her voice is hoarse, the hoarseness of a throat that has not produced speech in days, possibly weeks. The throat atrophying the way muscles atrophy: from disuse.

"Tum; tum akeli ho?"

You're; you're alone?

"Haan. Chaar hafte se. Paanch hafte. Pata nahi. Count nahi kiya."

Yes. Four weeks. Five weeks. I don't know. I didn't count.

The sentence. The sentence, the sentence of a woman who has been alone for so long that time has lost its meaning; time being the thing that humans measure by events and that the absence of events renders unmeasurable. What happened yesterday? Nothing. What happened last week? Nothing. What happened last month? The world ended. Time becomes: before and after. Before the virus, after the virus. Before = the world. After = the nothing.

"Kahan rehti ho?"

Where do you stay?

She points, points toward the north, toward the area behind D-Mart, toward the residential streets of Baner that I have not yet explored.

"Wahan. Ek flat mein. Building mein. Third floor. Door lock karke rehti hoon."

There. In a flat. In a building. Third floor. I keep the door locked.

"Akeli? Poore time?"

Alone? The whole time?

"Haan."

The haan landing, the haan. The confirmation that I had feared and expected: she is alone. Completely alone. No Pallavi, no Kiaan, no Bholu. No other human. No other living being. Five weeks of silence and solitude and a horror of that was only living person in a dead city.

"Kya, kya tum ne kisi ko dekha? Kisi ko bhi? Hum se pehle?"

Have. Have you seen anyone? Anyone at all? Before us?

She shakes her head. The head-shake being. Answer that confirms the worst, the head-shake: she has seen nobody. In five weeks, in a city of three million, she has seen nobody except the dead. Nobody except the bodies. Nobody except the crows and the dogs and the silence.

Until us.

"Main, main tumhe dekha tha," she says. "D-Mart mein. Hafte bhar pehle. Tum kutta le ke aaye the. Main: main chhup gayi thi. Darr laga tha."

I, I saw you. In D-Mart. A week ago. You came with the dog. I, I hid. I was scared.

"Thums Up ki bottles."

"Haan. Maine: maine galti se gira di. Bhaag gayi."

Yes. I. I knocked them over by accident. Ran away.

The mystery solved. The bottles. The running. The hiding. All explained by one word: darr. Fear. The fear that a twenty-something woman alone in a dead city would feel upon seeing a man. The fear that was not irrational but was the most rational response possible: in a world where Jagdish-and-Sachin existed, fear of strange men was not paranoia. Fear of strange men was survival.

"Theek hai," I say. "Darr mat. Hum; hum theek hain. Hum; hum tere jaisa hain. Bas zinda hain."

It's okay. Don't be afraid. We're — we're fine. We're, we're like you. Just alive.

She looks at Bholu. Bholu who has been sitting patiently through this exchange, his tail wagging slowly, his eyes on Gauri with the familiar expression that dogs have when they have decided to love someone: the expression that says you are my person now. I have decided.

"Kutta: kutta ka naam kya hai?"

The dog, what's the dog's name?

"Bholu."

And for the first time, for the first time in what I suspect is five weeks — Gauri smiles. The smile, small, the small smile of a woman who has forgotten how to smile and whose facial muscles are remembering and whose remembering produces the small smile that is the first step toward the full smile that she might, someday, produce again.

"Bholu," she repeats. And she crouches, crouches at the five-metre distance, her hand extended toward Bholu, the hand, which was invitation that dogs understand: come. I am safe. I am a friend.

Bholu stands. Walks to her. Sniffs her hand — the hand that smells of the flat on the third floor and the rajma from the cans and the Cerelac and the wet wipes and the recognisable aloneness that a body carries when the body has been alone for five weeks.

Bholu licks her hand. The licking, which was the endorsement. The dog's endorsement of the stranger.

Gauri's smile widens. The widening, which was the first crack in the wall. The wall that five weeks of solitude had built and that Bholu's tongue had cracked.

She looks up at me from her crouch. Her eyes, her sharp, dark-brown eyes. Wet now. The wetness. Tears. Not the tears of grief (she has cried those tears for five weeks). The tears of, the tears of something else. The tears that the body produces when the body encounters the thing it has been missing and the thing-it-has-been-missing is: contact. Touch. The lick of a dog's tongue on the back of a hand.

"Shukriya," she says. Thank you.

"Kisliye?"

For what?

"Note ke liye. Aane ke liye. Bholu ke liye."

For the note. For coming. For Bholu.

The three things. The note, the coming, the dog. The three things that had brought her from the third-floor flat to the D-Mart parking lot to the crouch on the asphalt with the dog's tongue on her hand.

I take a step forward. Reduce the distance from five metres to three metres. She does not flinch. She does not step back. The not-stepping-back being the trust, the first grain of trust, the grain that Bholu's lick had planted.

"Gauri — hamare saath aana chahogi? Model flat mein? Pallavi hai: meri — meri partner. Aur Kiaan, ek bachcha. Do mahine ka. Hum, hum ek chhota sa ghar bana rahe hain. Agar, agar tu chahti hai toh.

Gauri; would you like to come with us? To the model flat? Pallavi is there, my, my partner. And Kiaan, a baby. Two months old. We're — we're building a small home. If; if you want; you can come.

The invitation. The invitation: — the invitation, the thing that the new world rarely producedand that the old world had produced daily: come over. Come to our house. Come for chai. Come for dinner. The Indian invitation that was the foundation of Indian social life, the invitation that every Indian mother extended to every guest and that every guest accepted because accepting was the social requirement and the social requirement was: you accept. You go. You sit. You eat. You drink chai. You talk. You leave. And the leaving is the promise of the next invitation and the next invitation is the social fabric and the social fabric is the thing that the virus destroyed and that we are now, one invitation at a time, trying to rebuild.

Gauri stands. She looks at me. She looks at Bholu. She looks at the D-Mart and the empty parking lot and the April sun.

And she nods.

The nod —: yes.

"Chalo," I say. Let's go.

And Gauri follows me. And Bholu walks between us. And we walk out of the D-Mart parking lot and onto Baner Road and toward the model flat in Sai Srushti Phase 2.

And the family becomes four-and-a-half.