Chapter 14: Vihan

# Chapter 14: Vihan

## Naya Ghar

Dr. Pallavi Joshi's shelter is a former community hall. The Kothrud Nagari Sahakari Pat Sanstha building, a two-storey concrete structure that once hosted Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations, housing society AGMs, and the occasional wedding reception. Now it hosts twenty-three survivors and their desperate attempt to build a world inside a world that has ended.

She gives us the tour. Tanvi and I walk beside her, our cricket bat and hockey stick left at the gate (a condition of entry, no weapons inside the compound, the guards hold them). We walk through the ground floor: the main hall, now divided by curtains into sleeping quarters, each section containing bedrolls, personal items, the compressed remnants of previous lives. The kitchen, larger and better-equipped than our school kitchen, two gas stoves, multiple cylinders, a wood-fired chulha for when the gas runs out. A storage room, padlocked, containing supplies.

The upstairs: a medical room (Dr. Pallavi's domain — a cot, basic instruments, the medicines she has collected), a children's room (two children, both under ten, one of them the laughing child I heard from the rooftop), and what she calls the council room — a former office, now containing a table, chairs, and a whiteboard covered in handwriting.

"Twenty-three people," she says, standing in the council room, her hands clasped behind her back. "Eleven men, eight women, two teenagers, two children. Ages range from six to sixty-seven. We have been here since Day 12."

"How did you start?" I ask.

"I was at my clinic when the hospitals overflowed. I treated patients from my home until I ran out of supplies. Then I started bringing survivors together. Anyone who was immune, anyone who was alone, anyone who needed help. The community hall was empty. It was large, defensible, had a water connection. We moved in."

"And food?"

"Supply runs. Like you, I imagine. The first two weeks were chaotic. We took what we could find, where we could find it. Now we are more systematic. We have mapped every shop within a three-kilometre radius. We know which ones have been looted and which have not. We rotate teams for supply runs."

Tanvi is scanning the compound, her eyes moving with the systematic intensity of a building inspector. "Your wall is good. The glass shards on top are a deterrent. But the gate is the weak point — a vehicle could ram through it."

Dr. Pallavi looks at Tanvi with something between surprise and respect. "You are seventeen?"

"Yes."

"You think like a forty-year-old."

"Necessity."

"The gate," Dr. Pallavi continues, nodding at Tanvi's assessment. "Yes. We know. We have reinforced it with a steel beam on the inside. We took it from a construction site. It would take a truck to break through now, and most trucks do not have fuel."

"The Bolero group has fuel," I say. "They raided our school on Day 34. Took most of our food, our diesel."

Dr. Pallavi's expression changes. The warmth does not leave her face, but something harder settles behind it, the look of a woman who has heard this before.

"Describe them."

I describe: the white Bolero, the black Scorpio, the red Eeco van. Eight men. The leader in the army jacket. Cricket bats, a machete, a lathi. No number plates. Efficient, professional, in-and-out.

"That is Salim's group," she says.

"You know them?"

"Everyone in this part of Pune knows them. Or will, soon enough." She sits down at the table, gestures for us to sit. "Salim Pathan. He was — I am told, a small-time property dealer in Katraj before the virus. The kind of man who settled land disputes with muscle rather than lawyers. When the virus hit, he was one of the immune. He gathered others like him — immune, aggressive, opportunistic, and started raiding. He has been working his way west through the city. Hadapsar, then Sinhagad Road, then Katraj, then Bibwewadi. Now, apparently, Kothrud."

"How many people does he have?"

"When we last had reliable information — maybe three weeks ago, he had about fifteen. It might be more now. He recruits — offers food, protection, purpose, in exchange for loyalty and muscle."

"Has he come here?"

"Not yet. We are too far south for his current route. But it is a matter of time." She pauses. "This is one of the reasons I am glad you found us. Five more people, even if two are teenagers, is five more eyes, five more hands, five more reasons to believe that we can hold this place."

I look at Tanvi. She is still scanning, still assessing. But I can see the calculation behind her eyes shifting. The calculation that has been running since Day 10, the equation of how many of us versus how many of them, and for the first time, the numbers are moving in our favour.

---

Decision to merge is not mine alone. I tell Dr. Pallavi that I need to go back to the school, discuss with the others, and return.

"Of course," she says. "Take your time. We will be here."

Tanvi and I walk back to the school. The walk is faster now, the streets are familiar, the threats mapped, the route optimised. We arrive at noon. Gaurav, Maitreyi, and Sudhir Kaka are in the kitchen, eating cold roti (the cooking-only-in-evening rule).

I describe what we found. Tanvi adds tactical details, the wall, the gate, the guard rotations, the medical room. Gaurav asks questions, How many? What resources? What is their food supply? What is their governance structure? Sudhir Kaka listens, his pencil hovering over the register. Maitreyi listens with her painting on her lap, as if the canvas is a security blanket.

"We should go," says Gaurav. "The maths is clear. Twenty-three plus five is twenty-eight. Twenty-eight people is a community. A community can specialise. guards, cooks, medics, farmers, builders. Five people cannot specialise. Five people can only generalise, and generalisation is inefficient."

"I do not want to leave the school," says Maitreyi. It is the most words she has spoken in a group setting. Everyone looks at her. She clutches the painting tighter. "This is — this has been safe. The art room. The paintings. Your drawings, Vihan. If we leave —"

"We take the paintings," I say. "We take the drawings. We take everything that matters. The school is not home, Maitreyi. We are."

She looks at me. Her eyes are wet. She nods. Barely.

"Sudhir Kaka?" I ask.

He closes the register. "A community with a doctor is safer than a school without one. If I fall ill, and at fifty-three, it is a matter of when, not if, I want a doctor within reach. I vote yes."

"Tanvi?"

She has been quiet, standing by the kitchen counter, arms crossed. Her face is the thinking face — the lip-chewing, scenario-running face.

"We go," she says finally. "But we maintain the school as a fallback. We leave one cache here. We do not tell them about the culvert or the supply route to the Erandwane shops. Those are our insurance. If the community fails, if it turns out to be something other than what it appears, we have somewhere to come back to."

"Agreed."

---

Day 45. The move.

We carry what we can. The rucksacks, loaded with our personal belongings, the remaining food, the medical supplies. Maitreyi carries her paintings. Five of them, wrapped in plastic, strapped to her back with rope. Sudhir Kaka carries his register and, for reasons that I find endearing and absurd, the brass bell from the staff room that was used to signal the end of periods.

"A memento," he says when I ask.

"Of a school that was not even your school."

"Of a place that saved my life. I am allowed a memento."

I carry the family photo, the mangalsutra, the Kolhapur Warriors cap (on my head, as always), and the charcoal drawings from the physics classroom wall. I roll them carefully, secure them with rubber bands, and slide them into the side pocket of the Wildcraft bag.

Tanvi carries the Swiss knife, the torch, and the first-aid supplies. She also carries, concealed in her waistband, the smallest kitchen knife. I notice but do not comment. Tanvi's paranoia is our collective immune system.

We leave through the side gate. I lock it behind us, as much as a broken hinge allows, and stand for a moment in the lane, looking back at the school. Saraswati Vidya Mandir. The place where Aai taught biology. The place where I survived a month of solitude, grief, and quiet terror. The place where I made bad khichdi and good charcoal drawings and learned to start a generator and planted a garden that I will come back to water.

"Let us go," says Tanvi.

We go.

---

The walk to the shelter takes forty minutes. We move in single file, Tanvi in front, me in the back, the three others between us. The streets are quiet. A dog follows us for two blocks, then loses interest. The March sun is fierce, the air shimmering above the asphalt, the shadows of the trees providing relief in short, intermittent bursts.

When we arrive at the compound gate, the guard, the same COEP-shirt guard from yesterday, opens it without hesitation. Dr. Pallavi is waiting in the courtyard.

"Welcome," she says. "We have prepared space."

That space is a section of the ground floor, curtained off, containing five bedrolls, five blankets, and five small wooden stools that serve as bedside tables. It is not a room. It is a compartment, a subdivision of a larger shared space, separated from the other residents by cotton curtains that provide visual privacy and zero acoustic privacy.

It is, in other words, an Indian train compartment. And like an Indian train compartment, it is simultaneously too small, too public, and exactly right.

We unpack. Maitreyi hangs her paintings on the curtain partition. The acrylics of her family, bright and bold against the faded cotton. Sudhir Kaka places his register on his stool and begins a new page: Day 1 at Kothrud Shelter. Gaurav explores the building, talking to the other residents, gathering data for his whiteboard. I pin my charcoal drawings beside Maitreyi's paintings.

Tanvi does a perimeter check.

---

That evening, Dr. Pallavi convenes what she calls a council meeting. All adults and older teenagers are invited. We sit in the council room. Twelve people, including the five of us.

Introductions. The residents of the shelter are:

Dr. Pallavi Joshi, 42, general practitioner. The leader.

Hemant Patil, 55, retired army subedar. Head of security. A large man with a moustache that could qualify as structural engineering. His hands, thick-knuckled and scarred, rest on the table like two slabs of Deccan basalt.

Preeti Deshpande (no relation to me; Deshpande is to Maharashtra what Smith is to England), 35, former schoolteacher. Runs the kitchen.

Nikhil Godbole, 28, former IT professional from Infosys. Handles logistics and supply runs.

Rashmi Sawant, 50, former municipal corporator. The only person in the room who has any experience with governance. She keeps minutes of the council meetings in a notebook with a Congress party logo on the cover, which she does not attempt to hide.

And others, a plumber, a retired professor of Sanskrit, a college student, a woman who ran a catering business, a mechanic. The cross-section of Pune that survived: random, diverse, united by nothing except the genetic lottery that made them immune.

"Our new members," says Dr. Pallavi, gesturing to us. "Vihan, Tanvi, Gaurav, Maitreyi, and Sudhir. They have been surviving independently for over a month. They bring skills, supplies, and, most importantly, the knowledge that there is at least one well-stocked kirana shop route in Erandwane that we have not yet mapped."

Tanvi shifts beside me. The Erandwane route was supposed to be our insurance. But Dr. Pallavi is trading it. Using our information as currency, establishing our value to the group. Smart. Tanvi recognises the move and, after a beat, nods.

Hemant Patil, the ex-army man, leans forward. His voice is deep, gravelly, the voice of a man who has spent thirty years giving orders and expects them to be followed. "What can you tell us about the raider group? The Bolero people."

I tell him what I told Dr. Pallavi. The description, the numbers, the tactics. Hemant listens without interrupting, his eyes narrowing at certain details; the missing number plates, the machete, the army jacket on the leader.

"That jacket," he says. "Did it have insignia? Rank marks?"

"I could not see from the terrace."

"It matters. If Salim has actual military personnel, deserters, maybe, his group is more dangerous than we thought. Military training changes the calculus."

"We also have military training," says Rashmi Sawant, nodding at Hemant.

"I have military training. Singular. And I am fifty-five with a bad knee." He turns to me. "The girl, Tanvi, she set up your defences?"

"Yes."

"She is good?"

I think about the tripwires, the caches, the escape routes, the combat training. "She is very good."

Hemant nods, slowly. "Good. We need people who can think about defence. I will work with her."

The meeting continues. Topics: food supply (rationed, thirty-five days at current levels, supply runs needed), water (the building has a borewell that still functions, a luxury, a miracle), electricity (a large generator, diesel-powered, running four hours daily), sanitation (latrines dug in the compound, lime-treated, a system that works but is not pleasant), and morale (low, but functional, there is a nightly gathering where people share stories, a ritual that Dr. Pallavi insists on as essential for mental health).

At the end, Dr. Pallavi stands. "We are twenty-eight now. That is a number that means something. That is a number that can build."

She looks around the room. At the plumber and the professor and the IT professional and the caterer. At the teenagers and the retirees. At the five of us, new arrivals, still carrying the dust of the road and the wariness of people who have learned that trust is expensive.

"We are not going back to what was," she says. "What was is gone. But we can build something new. Something that works. Something that keeps us alive and gives us a reason to stay alive."

She pauses. "Welcome to Kothrud. Welcome home."

I look at the charcoal drawings pinned to the curtain beside my bedroll. Baba. Aai. Shlok. Omi. Tejas. The faces of people who are gone, whose light is still traveling.

Home. The word is too heavy and too light simultaneously. But I hold it. I turn it over. I let it settle.

Home.

For now.