Chapter 5: Vihan

# Chapter 5: Vihan

## Aai

A cough is light at first. A clearing of the throat. A tickle. The kind of cough that means nothing. Dust in the air, a dry throat, the March pollen from the neem tree outside. I lie in bed and listen, and I tell myself it is nothing, and I almost believe it.

Then it comes again. Deeper. Wetter. A cough that has roots in the chest, that draws from somewhere below the ribs and erupts with a force that shakes the thin walls of our Aundh flat.

I am out of bed before I register the decision to move.

"Aai?"

She is sitting on the sofa, hunched forward, her fist pressed to her mouth. In the grey light of early morning, the light that enters through the curtainless living room windows, the curtains having been moved to cover Baba's bedroom door because neither of us could bear to see it, she looks small. Smaller than I have ever seen her. Smaller than a woman who has spent fifteen years commanding classrooms of fifty teenagers should look.

"It is nothing," she says between coughs. "Just, the dust. The flat has not been cleaned in,"

Another cough cuts her off. This one is not a clearing of the throat. This one comes from the same place that Baba's coughs came from, the deep, wet, rattling place that I now recognize the way a soldier recognizes gunfire. The place where the virus lives.

"Aai." My voice is flat. I hear it from outside myself, as if someone else is speaking through my mouth. "You have it."

"We do not know that."

"You have it."

She stops coughing. Looks at me. And in her eyes, I see it. Not denial, not fear, but the look of a biology teacher who has been calculating probabilities for three days and has arrived at the number she was hoping to avoid.

"Maybe," she says.

"You were with Baba. For three days. Without a mask, at the end."

"I know."

"The mask would not have mattered, would it?"

She closes her eyes. "Probably not. Not with this level of viral load. Not in a closed room. Not for that long." She opens her eyes. The biology teacher speaks now, clinical and precise, even as her body betrays her with another cough. "The incubation period seems to be twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Baba started coughing Monday evening. It is now Saturday morning. I have been exposed for five days. If I was going to get it, the window has long passed."

"And me?"

"You have been in the flat too. You visited his room. You, " She pauses. "But you are sixteen. The data, what little data exists, suggests that teenagers have a much lower mortality rate. Maybe ten percent. Maybe less."

"Ten percent is not zero."

"No. It is not."

We sit in silence. The flat is quiet. No electricity, no fan, no fridge hum, no TV drone. The only sounds are Aai's breathing, already slightly laboured, already carrying the whistle that I heard in Baba's breathing four days ago, and the crows outside, and the distant sound of something I cannot identify. An engine? A generator? Or just the city's death rattle, the mechanical equivalent of what is happening in my mother's lungs.

"Here is what we are going to do," says Aai. She straightens up. The biology teacher is in command now, overriding the patient. "First: you are going to pack a bag. Clothes, water, food. As much as you can carry. Second: you are going to leave this flat."

"No."

"Vihan, "

"I am not leaving you."

"You are leaving because I am telling you to leave. Because your father told you to leave. Because staying here, in a closed flat with two infected people, one of them dead, is suicide."

"You are not dead."

"Not yet. But I might be in three days. And if you are still here when that happens, " She coughs. Recovers. "You need to go somewhere safe. Somewhere with air. Somewhere away from this building."

"Where?"

"I have been thinking about this. The school, my school, in Kothrud, has a generator. It has a water tank on the roof. It has a kitchen with supplies for the mid-day meal scheme. And most importantly, it will be empty. Nobody is going to school anymore."

"You want me to go to your school? Alone?"

"Yes. You can stay there until, " She stops. Until what? Until she recovers? Until she dies? Until the virus burns itself out and there is nobody left to infect? "Until you figure out what to do next."

"And what about you?"

"I will stay here. I will, " Another cough. Longer this time, the sound of it filling the room, bouncing off the bare walls. When she stops, there is a fine mist of red on her palm. She sees it. Closes her fist. Hides it from me.

But I saw it.

"Aai."

"Go pack your bag, Vihan. Now."

---

I pack as if I am packing for a school trip that will never end. The Wildcraft bag — the same bag I carry to Pinnacle, the bag with the ink stain on the front pocket from when Tanay Kirtane threw a pen at me in Class 9 — gets loaded with everything I can fit.

Clothes: three t-shirts, two jeans, underwear, socks. A hoodie for the nights if the temperature drops. My school jacket, because it has deep pockets.

Water: I fill three bottles from the bathtub supply. One litre each. Three litres will not last long, but I cannot carry more.

Food: I take half the rice (2.5 kg), a bag of dal (1 kg), six Maggi packets, two packs of Parle-G, the Amul butter tin, and a fistful of salt and turmeric wrapped in newspaper. I leave the rest for Aai.

Tools: the Eveready torch, a box of matches from the kitchen, Baba's Swiss knife (the one he bought on a company trip to Lonavala and used exclusively to open Amazon packages), a roll of plastic rope from the storage shelf.

My phone: 14% battery, no charger that works without electricity. Useless, essentially, but I cannot bring myself to leave it behind. It has photos of Baba. It has messages from Shlok. It has the BGMI app where I last played with my friends four days ago, four days that feel like four centuries.

I zip the bag. It is heavy, maybe twelve kilos. My shoulders will hate me by the time I reach Kothrud, which is a forty-minute walk from Aundh under normal circumstances. Under current circumstances, I have no idea.

---

Aai is in the kitchen when I come out. She has made poha. Somehow, impossibly, she has made poha. The beaten rice fried with onions and turmeric and mustard seeds, the Maharashtrian breakfast that she has made every Saturday morning since I was born, the Saturday ritual that was so constant, so reliable, that I never once considered a Saturday without it.

"Sit," she says. "Eat."

"Aai, you should not be. "

"I said sit."

I sit. She places a plate before me. The poha is perfect. Exactly as always. The peanuts crunchy, the curry leaves fragrant, the squeeze of lemon on top giving it the tang that separates good poha from great poha. She has even garnished it with fresh coriander. The last of the coriander from the fridge, now wilted but still green enough.

I eat. Each bite is a memory. Each bite is a Saturday morning in Kolhapur, in the old house with the red oxide floors, Baba reading the Sakal newspaper at the table, the pressure cooker whistling for the second batch of tea, the koel bird singing its two-note song from the gulmohar tree in the compound.

Aai does not eat. She watches me eat. Her face, already showing the first signs of the illness, the slight greyness around the temples, the shadows deepening, carries an expression that I will remember for the rest of my life. It is not sadness, not love, not fear. It is all three, compressed into something that only a mother's face can produce: the look of a woman who is memorizing her son.

"The school is on Karve Road," she says as I eat. "You know where it is; Saraswati Vidya Mandir. The side gate, the one near the peepal tree, has a simple latch. You can climb over if it is locked. The generator room is behind the science lab. The kitchen is next to the staff room on the ground floor."

"I know, Aai. You have taken me there a hundred times."

"The water tank is on the terrace. There should be water if nobody has drained it. The mid-day meal supplies, rice, dal, oil, should be in the kitchen storeroom. The key for the storeroom is hidden above the door frame. I keep it there because the peon keeps losing his copy."

"Okay."

"And Vihan — " She reaches across the table and takes my hand. Her palm is warm. Warmer than it should be. The fever is beginning. "If you meet people, survivors — be careful. Not everyone will be kind. When things fall apart, some people become their best selves. Others become their worst. You need to be able to tell the difference quickly."

"How?"

"Watch their eyes. Watch what they do with their hands when they talk to you. If someone's hands are hidden, or if their eyes keep moving to something behind you, or if they smile too quickly. Walk away."

"You sound like you have done this before."

She smiles. Barely. "I have taught in a government school for fifteen years. I have dealt with parents who threatened me, students who carried knives, and one principal who embezzled the toilet fund. I know what danger looks like. I just never expected to be teaching you survival skills in our kitchen."

I laugh. It comes out broken, half a laugh and half a sob, and I cover my mouth with my hand because I do not want her to see me break. Not now. Not when she is being so brave.

"One more thing." She stands. Goes to the bedroom. not the master bedroom where Baba lies, but my room. She returns with a folded piece of paper.

"What is this?"

"Addresses. Phone numbers. People who might help you if, when, you need help. My cousin Sanjay in Satara. Your Aaji in Kolhapur, if she is still, " She catches herself. "Your uncle Vinod in Mumbai. My college friend Smita in Nashik. These are people who know us. Who would take you in."

I take the paper. Fold it into my pocket.

"And this." She pulls off her mangalsutra. The black-beaded necklace with the gold pendant that every Maharashtrian married woman wears, the necklace that Baba gave her on their wedding day in 2007 at the Mahalakshmi temple in Kolhapur. She presses it into my palm.

"Aai, no; "

"It is gold. If you need money, you can sell it. Any jeweller will buy it. Do not let them cheat you. The pendant alone is at least ten grams. At current gold rates, that is ₹60,000 minimum."

"I am not going to sell your mangalsutra."

"You will if you need to eat. Promise me."

I close my fingers around the necklace. The beads are warm from her skin. The gold pendant presses into my palm. Small, solid, the weight of a marriage condensed into ten grams.

"I promise."

---

At the door. My bag on my shoulders. My shoes, the Sparx sneakers with the worn soles, tied tight. The mangalsutra in my front pocket, zipped shut. The paper with the addresses in the other pocket.

Aai stands in the hallway. She is leaning against the wall. The cough has gotten worse in the past hour. She is suppressing it now, holding it in, because she does not want me to hear it. But I hear the effort of the suppression, the small catches in her breath, the way she swallows after each near-cough as if pushing it back down.

"Be safe," she says. "Be smart. Be a Deshpande."

"I will."

"And do not come back here. Whatever happens. Even if you. Even if you feel you need to check on me. Do not come back."

"Aai; "

"Promise me, Vihan."

The word promise again. The word that Baba used. The word that seems to be the currency of the dying — the last thing they can ask for, the last thing they can give.

"I promise."

She steps forward. Wraps her arms around me. Holds me the way she held me when I was five and had a fever and was scared of the dark. Tightly, completely, as if her body could be a wall between me and everything terrible in the world. I feel her heartbeat against my chest. Fast. Too fast.

"I love you, mazha raja," she whispers into my shoulder. "More than anything on this earth."

"I love you too, Aai."

She pulls away. Wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. Coughs, once, twice, the sound of it raw and sharp, and then opens the flat door.

"Go."

I step into the stairwell. I look back once. She is standing in the doorway, framed by the dim light of the flat behind her, one hand on the door frame, the other pressed to her chest. She raises her hand.

I raise mine.

She closes the door.

---

The stairwell is dark. The society's common lights are dead, no electricity, no backup. I use the torch, its yellow beam cutting through the darkness, illuminating the steps, the railing, the peeling paint on the walls. The building smells wrong. The stairwell, which normally smells of phenyl floor cleaner and the faint spice of a dozen kitchens cooking simultaneously, now smells of, nothing. Of absence. Of the specific emptiness that a building produces when most of its inhabitants have stopped living.

I descend three flights. At the ground floor, I pass the security guard's booth. It is empty. The chair is overturned. The register, the thick, ruled notebook where visitors signed their names, is open to the last entry: March 18, 2026. Swiggy delivery. Flat 302.

March 18. Five days ago. That was the last normal day.

I push through the society gate. It is unlocked. the electromagnetic lock runs on electricity, and without electricity, the gate swings freely, the mechanism clicking uselessly in its housing.

The street.

Aundh. My neighbourhood. The neighbourhood I have walked through every school day for eight months, headphones in, ignoring the world. The neighbourhood I know — the Medipoint clinic, the paan shop, the Amul parlour, the chai stall at the junction, the IT park entrance, the Persistent Systems building where Baba worked.

It is unrecognizable.

Street is empty. Not empty in the way that streets are empty at 3 AM, when the city is sleeping and the silence feels temporary. Empty in the way that a house is empty after someone moves out. Permanently, completely, the emptiness not a pause but a conclusion.

Cars sit where they were parked days ago. Some with their doors open. One Innova has its engine still running. The battery dying, the fuel gauge on empty, the headlights flickering weakly in the morning sun like the last breaths of an animal. An auto-rickshaw is stopped in the middle of the road, its driver's door open, the seat smeared with something dark and dry.

I do not look too closely.

I walk. The Wildcraft bag digs into my shoulders. The sun is already warm. Eight AM and the Pune March heat is building, the concrete under my feet giving back the warmth it absorbed yesterday, the air shimmering above the asphalt. My sneakers are loud on the empty street. Too loud. Each step echoes off the compound walls of housing societies that are full of people who may or may not be alive.

I pass the Medipoint clinic. The queue from five days ago has dispersed. The clinic's glass door is shattered. Someone broke in, looking for medicine, or oxygen, or answers. Inside, I can see overturned chairs, scattered papers, a blood-pressure monitor lying on its side on the floor.

I pass the chai stall. The stall is closed, its metal shutters down. The chai-wallah, the man who was coughing into the hand that poured tea, is not here. Nobody is here. The stack of cutting glasses sits on the counter, unwashed, ringed with the brown residue of the last tea that was poured.

I pass the IT park entrance. The security boom is raised permanently, the guard absent. A Bengaluru-bound Volvo bus is stopped at the bus stand across the road, its doors open, its seats visible through the tinted windows, empty, all of them, except for one, where a figure sits slumped against the window. I do not look long enough to determine if the figure is sleeping or something else.

I walk faster.

The route from Aundh to Kothrud is one I know. Down the Aundh-Baner link road, past the University Circle, through the campus if the gates are open, and then down to Karve Road. Forty minutes on a normal day. Maybe an hour today, with the bag.

The streets remain empty. I see dogs — strays that have always been part of Pune's landscape, the brown, scrappy, uncollared dogs that sleep on footpaths and bark at two-wheelers and eat from the garbage. They are not barking today. They are walking, slowly, through the empty streets, sniffing at things. One dog sits beside a form on the footpath — a human form, covered by a thin shawl, unmoving. The dog does not bark. It just sits. As if waiting.

I look away. I keep walking. The bag is getting heavier with every step, or I am getting weaker, or both.

At University Circle, I see the first living person since leaving the flat.

A woman. Maybe thirty. Sitting on the low wall outside the Savitribai Phule Pune University campus, her legs dangling over the side. She is not coughing. She is not bleeding. She is just sitting, staring at the road, holding a bottle of Bisleri water in one hand and a phone in the other. Though the phone's screen is dark, dead or dying.

She sees me. I see her. We look at each other across the empty circle. The circle that is normally a traffic nightmare, five roads converging in a chaos of buses and autos and two-wheelers and the specific Pune driving style that treats red lights as suggestions and lane markings as abstract art.

She raises her hand. A small wave. Not friendly, not threatening. Just — I see you. You see me. We are alive.

I raise mine.

Then I keep walking. And she stays sitting. And neither of us says a word.

---

Saraswati Vidya Mandir. Karve Road. The school where Aai has taught biology for fifteen years. The school where she takes me for the annual day programme every January. The school where I once vomited on the science lab floor during a frog dissection visit when I was twelve, and Aai pretended not to know me for the rest of the day.

The main gate is locked, a thick chain and padlock. But the side gate, the one near the peepal tree, is exactly as Aai described. The latch is simple. I reach over, flip it, and push. The gate swings open with a groan that echoes across the empty school compound.

I step inside. Close the gate behind me.

The school is silent. The kind of silence that schools are never supposed to have, the absence of children, of bells, of the chaos that defines an Indian school during hours. The benches in the corridor are neat. The blackboards in the classrooms I pass are covered in the last lessons that were taught, algebra, Hindi grammar, the water cycle diagram in Aai's biology room. The chalk dust is still visible on the edges.

I find the kitchen. The door is locked. The key is above the door frame, exactly where Aai said. I reach up, feel the cold metal, pull it down, and unlock the door.

Inside: bags of rice stacked against the wall. Sacks of dal. Jerrycans of oil. Salt. Turmeric. Hing. The mid-day meal supplies for a school of four hundred students, enough to feed me for months if I am careful.

I set down my bag. I sit on the kitchen floor. The tile is cool against my legs.

I take out my phone. 11% battery. No network. No messages. No connection to anyone or anything.

I look at the last photo in my gallery. It is from Sunday — six days ago. Baba and I at the Pune FC match, the East Stand, Nitin's seats. Baba is wearing his Persistent Systems polo shirt. I am wearing my Kolhapur Warriors cap. We are both grinning — the wide, unconscious grins of two people who do not know that they are living in the last good moment.

I put the phone down. Face-first on the floor, so the screen cannot look at me.

Then I curl up on the kitchen floor, surrounded by bags of rice that were meant for children who will not come back, and I close my eyes, and I let the silence of the empty school settle over me like a blanket made of nothing.

I am alone.

For the first time in my life, completely and absolutely alone.