Chapter 16: Vihan

# Chapter 16: Vihan

## Shivajinagar

Day 56. The scout mission.

Hemant Kaka walks the way ex-army men walk — upright, measured, each footstep deliberate, as if the ground beneath him is a terrain map and every step is a calculation of distance and cover. He carries a cricket bat in his right hand and a lathi in his left, the bamboo staff resting on his shoulder like a rifle. His eyes scan constantly, left, right, up, ahead — the systematic sweep of a man trained to see threats before they see him.

Tanvi and I follow. She carries the hockey stick. I carry a cricket bat and the Swiss knife in my pocket. We wear N95 masks. We carry water and biscuits. We have agreed on the plan: observe first, approach only if Hemant gives the signal. If anything goes wrong, we scatter. Hemant goes north, Tanvi goes west, I go south. Rendezvous at the Parvati temple in two hours.

The route from Kothrud to Shivajinagar crosses half of Pune. Under normal circumstances, traffic, signals, the specific chaos of Pune's roads, it would take thirty minutes by auto-rickshaw. Under current circumstances, it takes two hours on foot, moving through back lanes, avoiding main roads, stopping at every intersection to listen and look.

The city at seven weeks is a different city than it was at three weeks. At three weeks, the city looked abandoned, cars parked, shops closed, streets empty, the infrastructure intact but unused. At seven weeks, the city is being consumed. The weeds that pushed through cracks have become thickets. The stray dogs that wandered alone have formed packs, we see one pack of seven dogs trotting down a side street, their bodies lean, their eyes sharp, the domestication of generations dissolving in weeks. Trees have dropped branches onto power lines, dragging them down. Pipes have burst, flooding low sections of road. The compound walls of housing societies, untended, have been breached by bougainvillea and creepers, the plants scaling the concrete like slow-motion invaders.

And the bodies. The bodies are everywhere, in various stages of decomposition, the ones in the sun reduced to bone and leather, the ones in shade still swollen, still organic, still producing the smell that has become the city's signature perfume. We walk past them. We do not look. We have learned not to look.

Hemant, who has seen worse (Afghanistan, he tells us, a peacekeeping deployment in 2008), walks past them without a change in stride. Tanvi, who has her own catalogue of horrors, walks past them with her jaw set and her eyes forward. I walk past them and think about the people they were. The lives they lived, the chai they drank, the cricket they watched, the WhatsApp messages they sent, the arguments they had about parking and politics and the price of onions.

"Quiet through here," Hemant murmurs as we approach the Deccan Gymkhana area. "This is open ground. Lots of sight lines."

We move through the gymkhana grounds; the cricket pitch overgrown, the nets sagging, the pavilion empty. Past the Tilak memorial. Past Ferguson College, its grand gates locked, its campus silent. And then into Shivajinagar.

---

Shivajinagar is, was, the heart of old Pune. The area where the Shivaji Market sprawls across several blocks, where the bus terminus handles thousands of commuters daily, where the narrow lanes are packed with shops selling everything from gold jewellery to plastic buckets. The architecture is a collision of eras: the old stone buildings of the British period, the concrete blocks of the 1970s, the glass-fronted showrooms of the 2010s.

We smell the relief camp before we see it.

Not the smell of death — a different smell. Cooking. The unmistakable, heart-rending smell of food being prepared in quantity: rice steaming, dal boiling, the sharp tang of a tadka hitting hot oil. My stomach clenches. Beside me, Tanvi's mask shifts — she is inhaling, despite herself.

"There," says Hemant, pointing.

That camp is in the Shivaji Market compound, the large, walled market area that normally houses hundreds of vendors. The vendor stalls have been cleared, replaced by a row of military tents, olive green, standard issue, the kind I have seen in news footage of disaster relief operations. An Indian flag hangs from a makeshift pole at the entrance. A banner, hand-painted, reads:

BHARAT SARKAR. AAPATKALEEN RAHAT SHIVIR** **Government of India. Emergency Relief Camp** **Food, Water, Medical Aid

Outside the entrance, a queue. Maybe fifty people, standing in line with the patience of people who have nowhere else to be. They are thin, ragged, carrying bags and bundles and the exhaustion of survival. Some are coughing. Not the virus cough (the virus cough is unmistakable and these people would not be standing if they had it), but the cough of dust and malnutrition and weakened lungs.

Guards at the entrance. Not cricket-bat guards — soldiers. Three of them, in Indian Army fatigues, carrying rifles. Real soldiers. The sight of them, the uniforms, the weapons, the discipline of their posture — is simultaneously reassuring and terrifying.

"It is real," I say.

"It appears to be," says Hemant. He is studying the setup with professional eyes. "Standard relief camp configuration. Military tents, perimeter security, central distribution point. The flag, the banner. Regulation. The soldiers are Indian Army, not impersonators."

"How can you tell?"

"The boots. Standard-issue Windstorm combat boots. You cannot buy those on the open market. And the way they hold their rifles — shoulder strap over the left shoulder, barrel at forty-five degrees. That is the SOP for crowd-control deployment. Civilian impersonators hold rifles across the chest because that is what they see in films."

Tanvi is watching the queue. "The people. They look. Okay. Neither scared nor coerced Just tired."

"Let us get closer," says Hemant.

We approach. Not through the main entrance. Hemant leads us around the perimeter, staying close to the compound wall, until we reach a vantage point behind a parked truck. From here, we can see inside the compound through a gap in the wall.

Inside: the tents are arranged in rows. One row for sleeping (bedrolls visible through the open tent flaps). One row for cooking (the source of the smell, large steel vessels on gas burners, women in aprons stirring, the choreography of mass feeding). One row that appears to be medical (a red cross painted on the tent, people sitting outside on benches, a woman in a white coat moving between them). And at the centre, a command tent, larger, with an antenna on top, cables running to a generator that hums behind it.

"The antenna," says Hemant. "That is a satellite communication setup. Military-grade. They are in contact with Delhi."

"So the broadcast is real," I say. "All India Radio, the relief camp announcement. It is all real."

"It appears so." Hemant strokes his moustache. "The question is: what are the terms? Relief is never free. The government will want something in return. Registration, compliance, possibly relocation to a larger camp. We need to know the terms before we bring twenty-eight people here."

"I can find out," says Tanvi.

"How?"

"By joining the queue. I am a seventeen-year-old girl with a rucksack and a mask. I look like every other survivor in that line. I go in, I talk to people, I listen, I find out what the terms are. Then I come out."

Hemant considers this. "If you go in, there is a chance they will not let you leave."

"Then I will make a scene. I am very good at making scenes."

Despite everything, the situation, the stakes, the grim absurdity of a teenager volunteering to infiltrate a government relief camp, Hemant smiles. It is a soldier's smile: brief, hard, appreciating the courage of the person beside him.

"Go," he says. "We will be here. If you are not out in one hour, we come in."

"Give me ninety minutes. Government queues move slowly even after the apocalypse."

---

Tanvi joins the queue. I watch her from behind the truck. A small figure in a JanSport backpack and N95 mask, standing between a family of four and an old man leaning on a walking stick. She blends. She disappears into the crowd of survivors as naturally as water into sand.

The wait is excruciating. Hemant and I sit behind the truck, in the shade, drinking water sparingly. He tells me about Afghanistan. Not the combat, not the politics, but the small things: the tea that the local translators made, which was sweet and green and tasted of cardamom. The sunsets over the mountains, which were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and which he watched every evening from the guard post, holding his rifle, knowing that beauty and danger could coexist in the same landscape.

"This is similar," he says, nodding at the relief camp. "Beautiful in a way, the flag, the food, the attempt to rebuild. Dangerous in another way, the rifles, the terms, the possibility that helping is just another form of control."

Fifty-three minutes later, Tanvi emerges from the camp entrance. She walks casually, her rucksack on her shoulders, her mask in place. She does not look back. She walks toward us with the measured pace of someone who does not want to be followed.

"Well?" says Hemant.

Tanvi sits down beside us. She pulls off her mask. Her face is flushed. the heat inside the camp, the crowd, the anxiety.

"It is real," she says. "Government-run. The soldiers are from the 4th Maratha Light Infantry — I saw the insignia. The medical tent has two doctors and a nurse. They are providing food twice daily — rice and dal, basic but sufficient. Water from a tanker that is refilled every three days."

"The terms?"

"Registration. They take your name, your Aadhaar number, your address, your next of kin. They assign you a tent. You follow camp rules, no weapons, no leaving without permission, no hoarding."

"No leaving without permission?" I say.

"The exact words were temporary restriction for safety. The commanding officer, a Captain Sunil Deshmukh, says it is to prevent people from going out and getting hurt. But the people I spoke to in the queue said the real reason is to keep a headcount. The army needs to report survivor numbers to Delhi."

"Is it a prison?"

"No. People are fed, treated, sheltered. Nobody seems unhappy. Exhausted, yes, but not oppressed. But it is controlled. You follow their rules, on their schedule, in their space."

Hemant is silent. Thinking. "The 4th Maratha Light Infantry. I know people in the 4th MLI. Good unit. Disciplined. Their CO, whoever is running this, would not tolerate mistreatment."

"So we go?" I ask.

"Not yet." Hemant stands. "We go back. We report. The council decides."

---

Council meeting that evening is the longest yet. Two hours of discussion, argument, and the specific Maharashtrian style of decision-making that involves everyone speaking simultaneously until one voice, usually the loudest, but sometimes the most patient, prevails.

The divide is clear: half the council wants to go to the relief camp (food, security, medicine, connection to the government). The other half wants to stay (independence, autonomy, no weapons-confiscation, no permission to leave).

Sudhir Kaka speaks for the camp: "We have thirty-five days of food. The camp has unlimited food. Government supply lines. We have one doctor. The camp has two doctors and a nurse. We have cricket bats. The camp has the Indian Army. The mathematics is overwhelming."

Tanvi speaks against: "The mathematics is correct until it is not. The government is feeding us today. What happens when the government's supply lines break? What happens when Delhi decides that Pune is not a priority? We are trading independence for dependency. And once you are dependent, you cannot go back."

A argument goes back and forth. Dr. Pallavi listens, absorbing, weighing. When the room has exhausted itself, she stands.

"We do both," she says. The room quiets. "We send a delegation; ten people, those who want to go, those who need medical care, the children. They register at the camp. They access the food, the medicine, the security. The rest of us stay here. We maintain the shelter. We maintain the garden. We maintain our independence."

"And if the camp works out?" asks Nikhil.

"Then more of us go. Gradually. On our terms."

"And if it does not?"

"Then the ten who went come back. And we still have our shelter."

Compromise is Dr. Pallavi at her best. The doctor's instinct, the pragmatist's calculation. Give people options. Reduce risk. Keep the fallback.

The vote is unanimous.

---

Day 58. The delegation.

Ten people leave for the relief camp: three families with children, Sudhir Kaka (his arthritis is getting worse and he needs medical attention), and Nikhil Godbole (who volunteered to be the liaison between the camp and the shelter, the bridge between the two worlds).

Sudhir Kaka finds me before he leaves. He is carrying his bag, his register, and the brass bell from the school.

"Keep growing things, Vihan," he says. "The garden is the most important thing you do."

"More important than the supply runs? The guard shifts?"

"More important than everything. Food you grow is food that nobody can take from you. It is the only resource that multiplies. Everything else diminishes. diesel, medicine, biscuits. Rice in the ground becomes more rice. That is the closest thing to magic that this world has left."

He shakes my hand. His grip is firm, the accountant's grip. The grip of a man who has counted everything and found that the only number that matters is the number of people who are still alive.

"Take care of yourself, Kaka."

"You too, bala."

He walks out the gate. The delegation follows. Hemant Patil escorts them, the ex-army man walking alongside the civilians, his lathi on his shoulder, his moustache catching the morning light.

I watch them go. Eighteen of us remain. The shelter is quieter now. The spaces that were occupied are empty. The curtains that separated sleeping areas hang limp, the bedrolls behind them rolled and stacked.

Tanvi finds me on the terrace. She stands beside me, looking south, toward Shivajinagar, toward the relief camp, toward the column of cooking smoke that rises from the market compound.

"They will be okay," she says.

"I know."

"We will be okay too."

"I know."

We stand on the terrace. The sun sets. The lights in the city, fewer each week, dying embers, flicker and fade. The stars emerge. This Milky Way stretches across the sky, indifferent, eternal.

Eighteen people. A shelter. A garden. A radio that plays the same government message every two hours. A world that is broken and rebuilding, broken and rebuilding, the cycle of catastrophe and recovery that has defined humanity since the first fire.

I am sixteen. I have lost my parents, my home, my school, my phone, my friends, my city, my world. I have gained a garden, a community, a girl who thinks like a general, a collection of charcoal drawings, and the stubborn, irrational belief that tomorrow will be better than today.

The belief has no evidence behind it. The evidence, if anything, points in the other direction.

But the mogra sprouted. The potatoes are growing. The tomatoes are almost ripe.

And the stars are shining. Even the dead ones.

Especially the dead ones.