Chapter 9: Veer

# Chapter 9: Veer

## Gauri

Gauri's story comes out in pieces. Not all at once. Not in the linear way that stories are told in films and books, where the beginning leads to the middle leads to the end. Her story comes out the way trauma comes out: in fragments. In shards. In the sentences that she manages between the silences, the silences, which was the spaces where the story is too heavy to carry and the carrying requires a rest and the rest is the silence.

She sits on the grey sofa. The sofa that has held Pallavi and me for five weeks and that now holds Gauri, holds her thin body in its grey fabric embrace, the embrace that the sofa provides without asking, the providing, the sofa's function: hold. Support. Let the body rest.

Pallavi sits across from her, on the dining chair that Pallavi has pulled into the living room for this conversation, the pulling, Pallavi's instinct: sit across from the guest. Face the guest. Be present. Kiaan is in Pallavi's lap, asleep. Bholu is at Gauri's feet: Bholu who has decided, in the forty minutes since meeting Gauri, that Gauri is his second person, the second-person: dog's expansion of loyalty: Bholu's first person is me. Bholu's second person is now Gauri. The decision was made in the D-Mart parking lot when Gauri's hand smelled of loneliness and Bholu's tongue decided to address it.

I stand by the kitchen doorway. I stand because sitting feels wrong. Sitting feels like I should be doing something, and the something is: listening. And listening is done best, for me, while standing. The standing, which was the posture of a man who is ready to move if needed, posture that the new world has installed, the ready-to-move: always be ready. Always be standing. Always be one step from the door.

Gauri talks.

"Main; main Nagpur se hoon."

I'm from Nagpur.

Nagpur. The city in eastern Maharashtra: the city that was the Orange City, the city famous for oranges and tarri poha and the Ambazari Lake and the Deekshabhoomi and that dry heat that made Nagpur the hottest city in Maharashtra and that made Nagpurkars the most heat-resistant Maharashtrians. Nagpur being four hours from Pune by car, six hours by train, the train: the Duronto Express that connected Nagpur to Pune and that was now, like all trains, a steel caterpillar resting on its tracks forever.

"Nagpur mein: main VNIT mein thi. Computer Science. Final year."

In Nagpur: I was at VNIT. Computer Science. Final year.

VNIT; Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur. One of the thirty-one NITs in India. The NIT — the second tier of Indian engineering, below the IITs and above the state colleges, the tier that produced engineers who were not quite IIT-level and not quite state-college-level and who were, by virtue of being in the middle, the most numerous engineers in the country: the middle, which was India's largest demographic, the demographic that the NITs served.

"Jab virus aaya; jab sab, jab sab shuru hua, main hostel mein thi. Nagpur mein."

When the virus came. When it all, when it all started — I was in the hostel. In Nagpur.

The hostel. The women's hostel at VNIT. The hostel that housed two hundred women in hundred rooms on four floors, the hostel that had a warden named Smita Ma'am and a mess that served dal-roti for dinner every night and a common room with a television that was always on Zee News and a 10 PM curfew that was enforced with the rigour that Indian women's hostels enforced curfews: absolutely, mercilessly, the mercilessly, the Indian institution's approach to women's safety, the approach, which was: lock them in. The locking-in being protection and prison simultaneously.

"Pehle din: pehle din kisi ko kuch nahi hua. News mein tha. 'New virus detected in China.' Humne socha, SARS jaisa hoga. COVID jaisa. Aayega, jayega. Kuch nahi hoga."

First day: nothing happened to anyone. It was on the news. 'New virus detected in China.' We thought, it'll be like SARS. Like COVID. It'll come, it'll go. Nothing will happen.

The assumption. The assumption that every Indian made: the assumption born of COVID-19, the pandemic that had come in 2020 and had killed and had passed and had left behind the memory of lockdowns and masks and the stubborn Indian response to pandemics: sab theek ho jayega. Everything will be fine. The assumption — the optimism that India ran on: the optimism that was not denial but was the survival strategy of a country that had survived everything (the British, Partition, famines, floods, earthquakes, cyclones, corruption, bureaucracy) and that therefore assumed it would survive this too.

"Doosre din. Doosre din Smita Ma'am beemar hui. Bukhar. Khansi. Humne socha. Flu hai. Lekin, lekin woh flu nahi tha."

Second day: Smita Ma'am fell sick. Fever. Cough. We thought, it's the flu. But. It wasn't the flu.

"Teesre din: teesre din hospital full ho gaye. Nagpur ke saare hospital. Government Medical College bhi. Mayo bhi. Sab full. News mein bol rahe the, 'don't panic.' Lekin, lekin sab panic kar rahe the."

Third day: hospitals filled up. All of Nagpur's hospitals. Government Medical College. Mayo too. All full. The news was saying, 'don't panic.' But: everyone was panicking. I shifted the weight. The cutting shifted too.

"Chauthe din. Chauthe din hostel mein; hostel mein ladkiyan marne lagi."

Fourth day. In the hostel; girls started dying.

The sentence landing in the model flat's living room the way a stone lands in still water: with impact, with ripples, with the disturbance that radiates from the point of impact and reaches every surface.

Pallavi's hand goes to Kiaan, the instinctive clutch of a mother (not-mother, surrogate-mother, the-woman-who-holds-the-baby) when the conversation turns to death. The clutching, which was the protection that the body provides without the mind's instruction: hold the baby. Hold the baby close. The death is near.

"Paanchve din: paanchve din light gayi. Internet gaya. Phone network gaya. Sab gaya. Hostel mein: hostel mein sirf main thi. Main aur — aur teen aur ladkiyan. Baaki sab; baaki sab mar gayi thi ya bhaag gayi thi."

Fifth day — power went. Internet went. Phone network went. Everything went. In the hostel — only I was left. Me and; and three other girls. The rest: the rest had died or run away.

"Chhathe din. Chhathe din woh teen bhi, woh teen bhi;"

Sixth day. Those three also,

She stops. The stopping, which was the wall, the wall that the story hits when the story reaches the part that cannot be spoken, the part that the mouth refuses to form into words because forming the words is re-living the event and the re-living is the thing that the mind cannot bear.

Pallavi reaches across. Puts her hand on Gauri's knee. The touch. The touch: sentence thatPallavi does not say: I know. I understand. You don't have to say it. I know what happened on the sixth day.

Gauri breathes. Takes a long, shuddering breath. The breath of a body that is trying to hold itself together, the holding — physical: the breath is the glue that holds the body together when the emotions are trying to pull it apart.

"Main. Main hostel se nikli. Chhathe din. Nagpur mein: Nagpur mein koi nahi tha. Sadken khaali. Gaadiyan khaali. Dukaan khaali. Hospital. Hospital ki parking mein, bodies thi. Hospital ke andar. Bodies thi. I leaned harder. The roughness grounded me.

I, I left the hostel. Sixth day. In Nagpur; nobody was there. Streets empty. Cars empty. Shops empty. The hospital: in the hospital parking lot: bodies. Inside the hospital, bodies. Everywhere, everywhere,

"Gauri," I say. "Ruk. Ruk. Baad mein bata."

Gauri. Stop. Stop. Tell us later.

She looks at me. Her sharp dark-brown eyes, the eyes that I had seen in the D-Mart parking lot, the eyes that were alert and wary, now wet. The wetness, the tears that she has been holding for five weeks, the tears that the solitude had not allowed (crying alone is crying into nothing, the nothing. Absence of a shoulder, the absence of a hand on the knee, the absence of someone who says ruk).

"Nahi," she says. "Nahi. Batana hai. Kisi ko toh batana hai."

No. No. I need to tell someone. I need to tell somebody.

"Theek hai. Bata."

Okay. Tell.

"Main. Main Nagpur se nikli. Chhathe din. Main, maine socha — Pune jaungi. Pune mein, Pune mein meri mausi hai. Thi. Baner mein rehti thi. Maine socha — shayad Mausi zinda hai. Shayad."

I. I left Nagpur. Sixth day. I thought: I'll go to Pune. In Pune: my mausi lives. Lived. In Baner. I thought, maybe Mausi is alive. Maybe.

Baner. Her mausi lived in Baner. Gauri had come to Baner; had come four hours from Nagpur to Baner: to find her mausi. The way I had walked twelve kilometres from Kothrud to find Harsh. The way every survivor had gone somewhere to find someone, the going-somewhere that was survivor's first instinct: find the people you love. Go to them. Maybe they are alive.

"Kaise aayi? Nagpur se Pune?"

How did you come? From Nagpur to Pune?

"Gaadi chalayi. Nahi, nahi chalayi. Maine, maine drive karna seekha. Ussi din. Nagpur mein — ek automatic car mili. Maruti Baleno. Chaabi andar thi. Maine: maine YouTube dekha tha ek baar. Drive karna. Kuch yaad tha. Baaki. Baaki seedhi sadak thi. NH44. Koi traffic nahi tha."

I drove. No, I didn't know how to drive. I. I learned to drive. That day. In Nagpur: found an automatic car. Maruti Baleno. Keys were inside. I, I had watched YouTube once. How to drive. I remembered some of it. The rest: the road was straight. NH44. No traffic.

NH44, National Highway 44, the highway that connected Nagpur to Pune via Aurangabad, the highway that was India's longest highway and that was, in the before-times, India's busiest highway: the highway that carried a million vehicles a day and that now carried one Maruti Baleno driven by a twenty-one-year-old VNIT student who had learned to drive from a YouTube video.

"Kitne ghante lage?"

How many hours?

"Nahi pata. Bahut. Shayad das. Shayad barah. Raste mein: raste mein gaadiyan thi. Sadak pe. Beech mein. Unke aas paas. Nikalni padi. Ek baar: ek baar ek truck ke saath, lag gayi. Daayi taraf. Sheeshe toote. Lekin: lekin chal rahi thi gaadi. Toh chalti rahi."

I don't know. A lot. Maybe ten. Maybe twelve. On the road: there were cars. On the road. In the middle. Had to go around them. Once, once with a truck: crashed. Right side. Windows broke. But, the car kept running. So I kept going.

The image: a Maruti Baleno with a shattered right window, driven by a twenty-one-year-old girl who had learned to drive that morning, navigating around abandoned vehicles on NH44 for ten or twelve hours, from Nagpur to Pune, alone. The alone, the operative word. Alone on a highway that had been designed for a million vehicles and that now contained one, the one: hers, the hers: the miracle that the new world occasionally produced: the miracle of a person who should not have survived and who did.

"Aur: aur Mausi?"

And. Your aunt?

Gauri is quiet. The quiet, the answer. The quiet being: dead. The quiet, the word that she does not have to say because we have all said it enough times and the enough-times means that the quiet is understood.

"Mausi ka flat, wahi rehti hoon. Third floor. Door lock karke."

Aunt's flat. That's where I stay. Third floor. Door locked.

"Akeli. Paanch hafte."

Alone. Five weeks.

"Haan."

The haan settling in the model flat. The haan that contains five weeks of solitude, five weeks of a twenty-one-year-old woman living alone in her dead aunt's flat on the third floor of a building in Baner, eating canned food from D-Mart, drinking bottled water, sleeping in a bed that smelled of her aunt's mogra talcum powder, waking to the silence that was the world's new sound, walking through the flat's rooms that were decorated with her aunt's furniture and her aunt's photographs and her aunt's life and that now contained only her aunt's niece, the niece who had driven from Nagpur to find her aunt alive and who had found her aunt dead and who had stayed in the dead aunt's flat because staying was better than leaving and leaving was the thing she could not do because leaving meant: where would she go?

Pallavi squeezes Gauri's knee.

"Tu ab akeli nahi hai," Pallavi says. You're not alone anymore.

The sentence. The sentence that Pallavi delivers with the authority of a woman who knows what being alone means and who knows what not-being-alone means and who is offering the not-being-alone to Gauri the way she had offered it to me on the night we met: freely, simply, without conditions.

Gauri's face crumples. The crumpling — the collapse of the wall, the wall that five weeks of solitude had built and that Pallavi's sentence has collapsed, the collapsing (moment that the dam breaks and the water t)hat has been held behind the dam is released and the releasing is the crying, the crying that Gauri does now: the deep, shuddering, full-body crying of a woman who has been alone for five weeks and who is not alone anymore.

Pallavi moves to the sofa. Sits beside Gauri. Puts her arm around Gauri's shoulders. Kiaan between them: Kiaan asleep, undisturbed by the crying, the undisturbed-sleeping being the baby's gift: the ability to sleep through anything, including the grief of a stranger.

Bholu puts his head on Gauri's lap. The head. The weight that comfort provides — the weight that says I am here. I am heavy. I am real. You can feel me.

I stand by the kitchen doorway. I watch the three of them on the sofa; Pallavi's arm around Gauri, Kiaan sleeping, Bholu's head on Gauri's lap. The configuration: a family. Not the developer's hoarding family (husband, wife, son, daughter). A different family. A family made of: a boy from Kothrud, a girl from Satara, a baby from a Maruti Ertiga, a dog from a Baner street, and now a girl from Nagpur.

The family that the virus made.

Gauri cries. Pallavi holds. Kiaan sleeps. Bholu rests.

And the model flat: the model flat in Sai Srushti Phase 2. Holds them all.