Chapter 15: Ponda Mein Subah

## Chapter 15: Ponda Mein Subah

VIVEK

I wake to a sound I haven't heard in months.

A bird. Not the generic birdsong of the forest. This is specific, melodic, the rising four-note call of a magpie robin, the black-and-white bird that used to perch on the rough railing of our balcony in Kothrud and that Amma called dhaiyaal because its song sounded, to her, like a prayer.

The sound enters the classroom through a broken window and finds me on the cold floor, curled beside Chaya and Dhruv and Bholu, my body a catalogue of complaints; back, knees, shoulders, feet, the specific symphony of a body that has walked sixteen kilometres on unpaved roads and slept on a concrete floor.

Light. Actual sunlight, coming through the windows, hitting the blackboard, Mera desh mahan hai, and turning the chalk letters gold.

I sit up. The classroom resolves around me, sleeping bodies, improvised blankets, the detritus of a night spent in a government primary school at the end of the world. Suresh is snoring in the corner. Pushpa and Savita are curled together like sisters, their grey hair loose around their faces. Paul sleeps sitting up, his back against the rough wall, the sharpened shovel across his lap.

Chaya is awake. She's sitting with Dhruv in her lap, feeding him; the calm, practiced rhythm of a mother at the breast, the baby's eyes closed, his fists clenched in the soft fabric of her kurta. She looks at me when I sit up.

"Good morning," she says. The dawn smelled of wet earth and the faint sweetness of neem flowers opening. The words are so ordinary, so pre-virus, that they make me want to cry.

"Good morning."

"Log uthne lage hain. Karen Kabir ke saath bahar gayi — toilet. Paul pani dhundh raha hai."

I stand. Every joint protests. My feet, bare since I left the Wellington boots at the stables; are cut and bruised, the soles tender with blisters that formed during the walk and burst during the night.

"Mere paas kuch nahi hai tumhare liye," Chaya says, reading my face. "Na dawa hai, na bandage."

"Chalne layak hai. Bas."

I walk to the window. Look out at Ponda.

The town in daylight is both better and worse than it was in darkness. Better because I can see, the street, the shops, the petrol pump, a geography that was once alive and that still retains, in its structures, the memory of that life. Worse because daylight reveals the details that darkness hid; the broken windows, the looted shops, the weeds pushing through the tar of the main road with the patient determination of nature reclaiming what was always hers.

And, worse still — the bodies.

Not many. Three that I can see from the window, one on the cold pavement outside a pharmacy, two in a car parked at the petrol pump. They're old bodies, months old, desiccated by the Goan heat, reduced to the leather-and-bone remnants that the virus leaves behind. The virus kills fast: seventy-two hours, usually, but the decomposition is slow in dry conditions, the bodies preserved in the attitudes of their final moments, frozen mid-gesture, mid-sentence, mid-life.

I look away.

"Khaana dhundhna padega," I say to Chaya. "Aur paani. Aur — kuch plan banana padega."

"Plan. Haan." She adjusts Dhruv, switching sides. "Aur Bharat ke baare mein?"

The name. The name I've been avoiding since last night.

"Nahi pata," I say. "Lekin: Esha se baat karni padega. Woh —"

"Woh bahar hai. Akeli baithi hai. Raat bhi nahi soyi, lagta hai."

I find Esha in the school's courtyard, sitting on a bench, her knees pulled to her chest, her face turned toward the east, where the warm sun is rising over Ponda's rooftops with the distinct golden intensity of an April morning in Goa.

She doesn't look at me when I sit beside her.

"Tu theek hai?" I ask. A stupid question. A necessary question.

"Main theek hoon." A lie. A necessary lie.

We sit without a word, the air thick against their skin. The magpie robin sings from a tree in the courtyard; a neem tree, its leaves glossy and green, its fruit scattered on the ground like small, bitter marbles.

"Mama zinda hain," Esha says. The statement is flat, unadorned: someone who has decided to believe something and who will maintain the belief until evidence destroys it. "Woh bahut strong hain. Woh jaante hain kaise survive karna hai."

"Haan." I don't argue. I don't offer statistics or probabilities or the sound of gunshots. I agree, because her belief is the only thing holding her together, and I will not be the one to break it.

"Aur Kevin. Aur Devika ji." She pauses. "Woh sab theek hain."

"Haan."

The stillness returns. The bird sings. the warm sun climbs.

"Vivek."

"Haan?"

"Ab kya karein?"

The question. The real question. The one that twenty-one people are waiting for me to answer, because somehow, through the accident of initiative, through the chain of events that started with a whispered conversation behind the stables — I have become the person they look to. Not a leader, exactly. An initiator. The person who started something and who is now expected to see it through.

"Pehle, basic needs," I say. "Khaana. Paani. Medical supplies. Yeh sab Ponda mein mil sakta hai, dukaan hain, pharmacy hai. Looting hua hai lekin kuch bacha hoga."

"Phir?"

"Phir, decision. Yahan rukein ya aage badhein. Agar Lakshman humare peeche aayega, aur woh aayega, Esha, mujhe pata hai woh aayega: toh Ponda safe nahi hai. Bahut paas hai. Uske paas gaadiyaan hain. Do ghante mein yahan pahunch sakta hai."

"Toh aage badhna padega."

"Haan. Panaji ki taraf. Ya — coast ki taraf. Koi jagah jahan hum chup sakein. Lamba waqt."

She nods. Unfolds her legs. Stands.

"Main help karungi. Supply dhundhne mein. Main pharmacy check karungi; mujhe medical ka thoda pata hai. Mama ne sikhaaya tha."

"Shukriya, Esha."

She looks at me. The chai-brown eyes, still wet, still red, but underneath the grief; something harder. Something that I recognise as the beginning of a resolution.

"Jai ke liye," she says. "Aur mama ke liye. Hum yeh sab unke liye kar rahe hain."

---

The scavenging takes the morning.

I divide the group into teams, three teams of five, with six people staying at the school to guard, rest, and care for the children (Kabir, Dhruv, and a three-year-old girl named Anvi who escaped with her father, a subdued man named Hemant who has spoken approximately twelve words since the escape and all of them were directed at his daughter).

Team One: me, Paul, Suresh. The grocery stores.

Team Two: Esha, Pradeep, Savita. The pharmacy and medical supplies.

Team Three: Arun, Pushpa, a woman named Jyoti who was a nurse before the virus and who has, until now, been the quietest member of the group but who volunteers for the scavenging with a firmness that suggests she's been waiting for a task that uses her skills.

The grocery stores yield more than I expected. The looters, whoever came through Ponda in the weeks after the virus, took the obvious things: bottled water, packaged snacks, cigarettes, alcohol. But they left the staples — rice, dal, atta, oil, salt, sugar. The things that keep you alive but don't excite you. The things that, in normal times, sit at the back of shelves and are purchased without thought.

We carry rice in sacks, dal in bags, oil in plastic containers. Paul finds a hand-operated water filter in a hardware store. The ceramic kind that rural families use, the clay pot with the candle filter that turns brown water into drinkable water with the patient efficiency of a technology that predates electricity.

Esha's team returns with medicines. Paracetamol. Ibuprofen. Antiseptic cream. Bandages. A bottle of cough syrup that expired three months ago but that Jyoti says is still effective. Rehydration salts. The orange-flavoured kind, ORS, that every Indian child has tasted and that tastes like nothing so much as survival itself.

"Aur yeh," says Esha, holding up a small cardboard box. Baby formula. The powdered kind, the one that Chaya and I have been rationing since we found Dhruv. The sight of it, the familiar box, the cartoon baby on the front; makes my chest tight.

"Kahan mila?"

"Pharmacy ke peeche. Storeroom mein. Puri ek carton thi."

I take the box. Hold it. The cardboard is dry and light and contains, inside it, the possibility of Dhruv's continued survival. Such a small thing. Such an enormous thing.

"Shukriya," I say.

---

By afternoon, the school has been transformed. The classrooms, three of them, the largest, have been organised into living spaces. The courtyard is the kitchen. Pushpa and Savita have set up a chulha using bricks from a collapsed wall, and the smell of dal tadka fills the warm air with the exact warmth that is, for every Indian, the smell of home and of not-dying.

People eat. The first real meal since the escape: dal and rice and chapati, cooked over an improvised fire, served in steel plates found in the school's kitchen. The food is simple. The food is everything.

Kabir eats with Bholu beside him. The boy's appetite has returned — he eats two servings of dal and three chapatis, which Karen watches with that relief of a woman who measures a child's wellbeing by his food intake.

"Debbie Aunty nahi hai," he says, between bites. The statement is matter-of-fact, the way children state facts: without the emotional padding that adults wrap around painful truths.

Karen freezes. Her rough hand, reaching for a chapati, stops mid-air.

"Nahi, beta," she says carefully. "Debbie Aunty: woh abhi humare saath nahi hai."

"Woh ghode pe gayi thi. Maine dekha."

"Haan."

"Kya woh wapas aayegi?"

Karen looks at me. The look is a plea. help me, say something, give me words that will protect this child from the truth without lying to him.

"Devika Aunty bahut brave hain," I say. "Woh apna khayal rakh sakti hain. Aur. haan, main ummeed karta hoon ki woh wapas aayengi."

Hope. Not a promise. Not a lie. The middle ground between truth and kindness, which is the only ground available when talking to a seven-year-old about the possible death of the only person he loved.

Kabir considers this. Nods. Goes back to his dal.

---

After the meal, I gather the core group in the farthest classroom — the one facing away from the road, the one where conversation can happen without reaching the ears of anyone outside.

"Status," I say. "Twenty-one log hain. Ek baby, do bachche. Khaana hai, ek hafte ka, agar ration karein. Paani hai, filter lagaya hai. Medical supplies hain, basic."

"Lekin yahan nahi ruk sakte," says Paul. "Lakshman ke paas gaadiyaan hain. Scouts hain. Agar woh dhundhna chahe; toh Ponda pehli jagah hogi."

"Haan. Isliye: kal subah nikalte hain. Coast ki taraf."

"Coast pe kya hai?"

"Panaji. Ya usse pehle, koi chhoti jagah. Mapusa, shaayad. Ya: actually —"

"Candolim," says Chaya. The word drops into the room like a stone into water. "Humara ghar. Jahan hum pehle rehte the. Woh safe hai, remote hai. Beach ke paas hai. Agar boats mil jaayein — toh hum pani se nikal sakte hain."

"Boats?" Paul raises an eyebrow.

"Fishing boats. Goa ke har beach pe fishing boats hain. Chhoti, wooden, lekin chalne layak. Main dekh chuki hoon: Candolim beach pe kam se kam paanch boats hain jo theek hain."

"Toh plan yeh hai. Candolim jaao, boats lo, pani se niklo?"

"Option hai," I say. "Lekin pehle, Candolim pahunchna padega. Ponda se Candolim, lagbhag chaubees-pachchees kilometre. Do din mein, agar raat ko chalein aur din mein chhupein."

"Raat ko? Bacchon ke saath?"

"Bacche adapt ho jayenge. Kabir ne kal raat sixteen kilometre walk kiya. Anvi ko Hemant carry karega. Dhruv ko Chaya."

"Aur Lakshman?"

"Lakshman humare peeche aayega. Lekin, usse pata nahi ki hum kahan gaye. Humne ditch se nikle, camera ke blind spot se. Usse direction nahi pata. Woh road pe search karega, north, south, east, west. Chaaron direction mein scouts bhejega. Hum ek direction mein hain. Agar hum tez chalein, agar hum din mein chhupein — toh chances hain."

"Chances." Karen says the word the way she says everything. With a realism of a woman who has stopped believing in certainties and who operates, now, on probabilities.

"Haan. Chances. Guarantee nahi hai. Lekin: yahan baithe rehne ki guarantee pata hai? Pakde jaayenge."

The room is quiet. Twenty-one lives, balanced on a decision. Move or stay. Risk or certainty.

"Vote?" asks Paul.

I look around the room. Esha, her jaw set. Karen, her arm around Kabir. Chaya, Dhruv in her lap. Paul, his shovel beside him. Suresh, Pradeep, Arun, Pushpa, Savita, Jyoti, Hemant with Anvi on his knee.

"Hath uthao," I say. "Candolim ke liye."

Hands rise. One by one. Then in clusters. Then all of them; every hand in the room, including Kabir's small hand, raised because Karen raised hers and because children follow the adults they trust.

"Unanimous," says Paul.

"Toh; kal raat. Sundown ke baad. Ponda se Candolim. Pachchees kilometre. Do raat mein."

"Do raat mein," Chaya repeats. She looks at me. Her eyes, the green eyes that I've been reading for two months, the eyes that contain, in their particular shade, everything she feels and everything she won't say; hold mine for a long moment.

Then she nods.

"Chalo," she says. "Ghar chalte hain."

---