Chapter 19: Vihan

# Chapter 19: Vihan

## Shlok

Day 67. Ten weeks minus a day.

The radio changes again.

I am in the council room, doing my evening scan of the frequencies — a habit I have developed, tuning the Philips transistor through the AM and FM bands, searching for new voices, new broadcasts, new evidence that the world beyond Pune still has a pulse. Most evenings, I find nothing. The All India Radio Delhi broadcast continues its loop, relief camp, Shivajinagar, food, water, medical — and the rest of the spectrum is static.

Tonight, I find something else.

A voice. Not the recorded bureaucratic Hindi of AIR Delhi. A live voice, young, male, speaking Marathi with the specific accent of Western Maharashtra. The accent that flattens vowels and sharpens consonants, the accent of Kolhapur and Sangli and Satara, the accent of home.

"...koni asel tar aikaa. Hya Kolhapur varun bolto aahe. Amhi Rajaram College madhye aahot. Amchya javal paani aahe, jevan aahe, aushadh aahe. Koni jivant asel tar ithhe yaa. Repeating: Rajaram College, Kolhapur..."

My hand freezes on the tuning dial. My throat closes.

Rajaram College. Kolhapur. The college that is a five-minute walk from my old house. The college where Shlok's older brother Prasad studied engineering. The college canteen where I ate batata vada and drank solkadhi and argued about cricket with Omi and Tejas and Shlok.

Someone is alive in Kolhapur. Someone is broadcasting from Rajaram College. Someone is offering food and water and medicine to survivors.

I run.

I run through the corridor, past the sleeping quarters, past the kitchen where Preeti is cleaning the dinner vessels, past the guard post where Deepak is on night watch. I run to the terrace.

Tanvi is there. She is sitting on the wall, legs dangling, looking at the three lights that are visible on the Pune skyline tonight. She turns when she hears me.

"What?"

"Kolhapur." I am out of breath. The word comes out in gasps. "Radio. Someone is broadcasting. From Rajaram College. In Kolhapur."

She stares at me. "Kolhapur? That is. "

"Two hundred and thirty kilometres south."

"You are not going."

"I have to go."

"Vihan, "

"My friends are there. Shlok, Omi, Tejas. My aaji. My uncle. My old life. Everything I had before Pune." I am speaking fast, the words tumbling out of me like water from a cracked dam, the pressure of ten weeks of suppressed longing finally finding a fracture. "Baba told me to go back to Kolhapur. His last words, Tanvi. His dying words. Go to Kolhapur. Be happy."

"Baba said that before we knew about Salim. Before the army. Before this community. Things have changed."

"I know things have changed. But Kolhapur has not changed in my head. It is still the place. It is still my place."

She is quiet. The stars are out, the Milky Way, clear and bright, the dead stars still shining. A dog barks in the distance, the sound carrying across the empty city.

"You cannot walk two hundred and thirty kilometres," she says.

"Why not?"

"Because you are sixteen, and the roads are dangerous, and there are Salims everywhere, and two hundred and thirty kilometres through Maharashtra in April is a death march."

"Hemant Kaka marched further in Afghanistan."

"Hemant Kaka is a trained soldier."

"And I am a trained survivor. You trained me."

She opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.

"You are impossible."

"I am Deshpande. We do not quit."

The silence stretches. The stars watch, indifferent.

"I am coming with you," she says.

---

Council meeting the next morning is difficult.

Dr. Pallavi listens to the radio broadcast. I play it for the room, the Marathi voice crackling from the transistor's speaker, the words Rajaram College, Kolhapur filling the council room with the sound of a place that is 230 kilometres away and alive.

"You want to walk to Kolhapur," she says. Not a question.

"Yes."

"Two hundred and thirty kilometres. Through open road. In April, when the temperature will hit forty degrees. With no support, no vehicle, no guarantee that the broadcast is what it claims to be."

"Yes."

"Why?"

I have been preparing for this question. I have a rational answer. Strategic arguments about establishing supply lines between Pune and Kolhapur, about connecting survivor communities, about the value of intelligence from a different city. Gaurav helped me frame it, his engineer's mind constructing a case that appeals to logic rather than emotion.

But when Dr. Pallavi asks why, the rational answer evaporates, and what comes out is the truth.

"Because my father died in our flat in Aundh and his last words were go to Kolhapur. Because my mother died on the sofa with the TV off and the fan still. Because I have a grandmother in Kolhapur who may or may not be alive. Because my best friend Shlok sent me a voice note that I never heard. Because I planted mogra in a school garden and it sprouted, and the mogra reminds me of my mother, and my mother reminds me of Kolhapur, and Kolhapur is the only place in the world where I was ever happy."

The room is silent.

Dr. Pallavi removes her glasses. Cleans them on her kurta. Puts them back on.

"When do you leave?"

"Tomorrow."

"Who goes with you?"

"Me and Tanvi."

"Two teenagers on a 230-kilometre walk through post-apocalyptic Maharashtra." She pauses. "I cannot stop you. And truthfully, I do not want to. The broadcast, if legitimate, is the first evidence of organised survival outside Pune. Establishing contact with Kolhapur is strategically valuable." She looks at Hemant. "Can they make it?"

Hemant studies us. The retired subedar, the man who marched through Afghanistan, the man who has assessed the physical capabilities of hundreds of soldiers, looks at a sixteen-year-old boy and a seventeen-year-old girl and calculates.

"Twenty to twenty-five kilometres per day," he says. "That is a sustainable pace for young, fit people with adequate food and water. Rest days every three to four days. Total journey time: ten to twelve days." He pauses. "The route is Pune-Satara-Karad-Kolhapur. National Highway 48. Relatively flat until the ghats near Satara, then a climb, then descent into Kolhapur. Water sources: the Mutha River out of Pune, then the Krishna River basin after Satara."

"The ghats," says Tanvi. "Those are, what? Two thousand metres?"

"The Katraj ghat is at 600 metres. The real climb is the Kambatki ghat near Satara, 800 metres. But the road is graded. It is a highway, not a mountain trail. Trucks climb it daily. You can too."

"What about threats?" asks Dr. Pallavi.

"The highway is long and mostly open. Visibility is good. The danger is at night, in confined spaces, villages, towns, urban areas. Sleep in elevated positions. Keep a fire going at night, it deters animals and announces your presence to other survivors, which is usually a deterrent in itself."

He turns to me. "Take the lathi. And take this." He reaches into his pocket and produces a compass. A small, brass military compass, the glass face scratched, the dial slightly faded. "It was issued to me in 1998. It has been to Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Nagaland. It will get you to Kolhapur."

I take the compass. The brass is warm from Hemant's pocket. The needle swings, finds north, steadies.

"Thank you, Kaka."

"One more thing." He lowers his voice. "If you encounter hostile groups on the road, and you might, do not fight. Do not negotiate. Run. You are young and fast. Use that. Pride is a luxury that dead men cannot afford."

---

Day 68. The morning of departure.

We pack. The packing is a science that Tanvi has perfected over ten weeks of survival; every gram matters, every item earns its weight or gets left behind.

Each rucksack contains: - 3 kg rice - 1 kg dal - 500 ml oil (in a sealed bottle) - Salt, turmeric, chilli powder (in small packets) - 6 packets of glucose biscuits - A steel pot (for cooking) - Matches - A water bottle (1.5 litres) - A change of clothes - Medicine: Crocin, ORS, bandages, Betadine - The torch - The compass - The Swiss knife (Tanvi) - The lathi (me)

Total weight per bag: approximately 8 kg. Light enough to walk with. Heavy enough to last ten days.

---

That goodbye at the gate is harder than I expect.

Maitreyi cries. She holds my hands and her tears fall on my knuckles and she says nothing, because words are unnecessary when someone is leaving and you do not know if they will come back. She presses a small canvas into my hand. A painting, the size of a postcard. On it: two figures, walking on a road, their backs to the viewer, heading toward a horizon painted in gold. Behind them: a city in blue and grey. Above them: stars.

"So you remember us," she says.

"I will come back," I say. "I promise."

The word promise. The currency of the dying. But I am not dying. I am leaving. And leaving carries its own weight of loss.

Gaurav shakes my hand. His grip is precise, firm — the handshake of an engineer who has measured the exact force required to convey respect without excess. "Send word if you can. The radio frequency we used — 1125 kHz AM. If you find a transmitter in Kolhapur, broadcast on that frequency. I will be listening."

"1125 AM. Got it."

Sudhir Kaka, who returned from the relief camp for this, presses a folded paper into my hand. I open it. It is a handwritten letter, addressed to no one.

"If you find a post office that still works, I know, absurd, post this to my daughter. University of Toronto. Her name is Aditi Gokhale." He pauses. "If you cannot post it, read it to the wind. Maybe the wind reaches Canada."

Dr. Pallavi holds both my hands. "Come back," she says. "With information, with people, with mogra cuttings. I do not care what. Just come back."

Hemant salutes. I salute back — badly, my hand not quite at the right angle, the gesture of a boy pretending to be a soldier. He smiles. The first full smile I have seen from him. The moustache lifts, and the face underneath, the soldier's face, hard and watchful — is, for a moment, the face of a grandfather looking at a grandchild who has done something unexpectedly brave.

Preeti hands us a packet wrapped in newspaper. "For the road," she says. Inside: six thaalipeeth, still warm, spread with ghee and folded into triangles. The smell — bajra and rice flour and cumin and the specific nuttiness of a freshly cooked thaalipeeth — makes my eyes sting.

We walk through the gate. Tanvi and I. Two rucksacks. Two teenagers. 230 kilometres.

I look back once. They are standing at the gate. Maitreyi, Gaurav, Sudhir Kaka, Hemant Kaka, Dr. Pallavi, Preeti. Six people who were strangers ten weeks ago. Six people who are now the closest thing to family that a virus-orphaned sixteen-year-old has.

They wave. I wave.

Then I turn south. And I walk.