by Mainak Dhar
‘What do you want to do?’
‘There seems to be some staff still inside Haiko. Let’s send a group over to fetch water and food. Ideally, packaged or canned food that will last for a long time. Credit cards won’t work, but let’s pool together cash and buy the stuff.’
Mrs Khatri stood up abruptly and looked around in a distracted way. ‘Thousands of families live in the area around us. What must they all be thinking?’ she said.
‘Mrs Khatri!’
I regretted snapping at her, but I needed her to be focused.
‘We should probably get to Haiko and pick up supplies before others get the same idea. Unless we’re already too late, that is.’
Something struck her and she caught me by surprise with her next question.
‘How long do you think we’ll need to be prepared for? What do we do about cooking gas?’
I had never cooked much at home and being caught up with all the other things going on over the last day, cooking gas supply had never occurred to me as a problem.
Nitish explained. ‘All our apartments have piped gas, and that supply is electronically controlled from the pumping station. Like everything else, that’s stopped. We’re getting cooked food because some apartments have gas cylinders—luckily for us they were more used to the old-fashioned way of doing things.’
My head reeled with all the things we would need to take care of. We had taken our modern amenities and life so much for granted that it was hard to contemplate even the most basic things without them. And how long were we really going to be without any power or communication? I had no answer to that question.
‘Mrs Khatri, I really don’t know. I’m hoping, like everyone else, that the power will come back on soon, but if Nitish is right about this being a solar flare or something, then there’s no guessing when things will get back to normal.’
I looked at Nitish and he shrugged. ‘Look, I just read some article in a magazine. If this is a solar flare, then I really don’t know what’s involved in getting power back. As far as cooking goes, we can use the cylinders for now and then do it the really old-fashioned way—chop some wood and light fires.’
When Mrs Khatri addressed the group about organizing a trip to Haiko, there was some grumbling from predictable quarters. Suri again made noises about us being communists. ‘If we want to shop, we can go ourselves and buy what we need,’ he said.
Didn’t the man get that things were not business as usual? However, looking around the room, I could see that many of those gathered were thinking just like him. They were sure that things would get back to the normal routine soon, and unwilling to confront the possibility that we were dealing with a situation that was so far from normal that we would need to behave very differently from how we usually would. I stepped in.
‘Look, it is possible the lights will come on very soon, but at the very least, shouldn’t we be ready for the possibility that we may have to last a little longer without power and the shops being open? Is there any harm in stocking up a bit? We’re talking canned and packaged food and bottled water, nothing that will go waste anyway. And Mr Suri, why doesn’t each family send a representative and they can pick up what they need so we don’t have to pool and share things, if that bothers you so much.’
He glared at me, but he also got the sense that many in the room seemed to agree with me, or at least were not as opposed to the idea as they had initially been. So we began the task of organizing a shopping trip to the supermarket, which without cars was going to be much more difficult than it sounded. We could not get back any of the bulkier items like bottled water, or in any meaningful quantities at any rate, on our bicycles, and while Haiko was just about a kilometre away, carrying it all back by hand was also going to be a tough ask. Someone in the group stood up. Mrs Khatri whispered to me that his name was Mr Kundu.
‘I can help think through this.’
In a few minutes, we had a plan. A long line of people, almost thirty of us, were each laden with backpacks and between us would push along the six bicycles we could find, each jury-rigged with a makeshift carrier made of plastic buckets or cardboard boxes dragging behind it. I called Pandey and pulled him to one side.
‘Do we have anything for protection?’
He smiled. ‘Protection for a shopping trip?’
I reminded him of the thugs I had seen at the police station and his smile disappeared.
‘We have my stick, which is of no use against people with swords.’
I saw a tall, strapping boy standing in a corner, looking pretty bored with the proceedings. I walked up to him.
‘What’s your name and how old are you?’
‘Subin, and I’m eighteen.’
‘Congratulations, you’re part of our security detail.’
Our security team, if one could call it that, comprised of Pandey, myself and Subin, armed with an armoury that would not exactly have inspired fear in any attacker or much confidence in those we were supposed to be protecting. Pandey had his stick, I had a golf club I borrowed from Nitish, and Subin had a hockey stick. Still, it was better than nothing.
As we set out, I asked Kundu how he had thought of a plan so fast. He laughed. ‘I am a bloody supply chain director in my firm. Never thought I’d have to use those logistical skills and thinking to organize a convoy to Haiko.’
By the time we got to Haiko, it was almost five in the evening and we were clearly creating quite a spectacle. We had told everyone in the group to not breathe a word about what we were doing. I don’t know why we did that, but somehow it came naturally. Are we all inherently selfish? Why was it that our first instinct was not to share our idea with the others we saw along the way, watching us from their apartment gates and balconies? It did bother me, but then I had more immediate concerns to occupy me.
Once we were closer to Haiko, I ran ahead alone so that the people inside would not be spooked by the sudden arrival of such a large group. I crouched under the half open shutters and was surprised to see just one person inside the supermarket. She was an elderly woman; her clothes were crumpled and her hair was unkempt.
‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.
She looked at me with fearful eyes. ‘Since yesterday…I live quite far from here, near Vidya Vihar. I had spent the night at a friend’s house nearby on Saturday as I had an early shift yesterday. There were no auto-rickshaws in the morning and everything had shut down, but my friend’s neighbour, a security guard, gave me a lift on his bicycle here on his way to the hospital. I got here, but most of the staff did not. The few that made it left by evening, when it was clear that things were not right. Most of them walked or took bicycles, hoping to get home by night. My friend had left late at night on Saturday to catch a train, so there was nobody at her place. I thought I’d wait here till things became normal.’
‘Can we buy some things?’
She looked around and smiled. ‘The registers don’t work, so you won’t get a formal receipt.’
The smile disappeared when she saw the large group appear in front of the store.
‘Don’t hurt me. Take what you want.’
I realized how I must have looked, with a golf club in my hand and leading a large group to the store, so I dropped the club and extended the wad of cash I had carried. ‘Look, we’ll pay for everything. You can keep the cash and pass it on to the managers when the store reopens. Since the system is down, I’ll write down each transaction on some paper so that you can have the records, and also leave the names and phone numbers of every person along with what they’ve bought. I hope that you’ll be okay with that.’
She nodded. I felt bad telling her that things would be back to normal so easily when I had no real idea of when that would happen, but if sharing a little hope made it smoother for all of us, then I was comfortable saying it. The group came in and fanned out, picking up things they needed and stuffing them into their backpacks and into the buckets and boxes. I tried telling a few of them to focus on
packaged and canned food, but after a while I gave up. Old habits die hard and I saw several of them pick up bread and fruit which would spoil easily. I asked Pandey and Nitish to focus on getting water since people seemed to be forgetting that drinking water would become a problem faster than lack of food. People could live on cookies for days. It would not be a fun diet but would keep them alive, but even a couple of days without water would be impossible. We lugged cartons of bottled water and put them in the buckets and boxes. The lady at the counter came up to me when we were finished.
‘Is it okay if I come with you? I don’t know how long I can stay here alone.’
The people around looked at me, wondering if we should bring in a stranger when we were worried about our own stores of food and water. But then the lady, Rani, was carrying something that made her invaluable.
She had the keys to the store.
We made the journey back as the sun was setting and I could almost feel the hundreds of eyes boring into our backs as we passed the many societies on the way home. The word had clearly got around that we had made a trip to Haiko and stocked up on supplies, and the occasional angry shout we attracted told me that others were coming to the same conclusion we had earlier in the evening. There was a high likelihood that we would be stuck in this situation for some time yet, and we needed to be prepared.
We were welcomed like conquering heroes and any doubts people had about the newcomer we had brought along disappeared when they realized who Rani was and the fact that she held the key to the supermarket. Mr Guha produced a bottle of Scotch and opened it.
‘Come on, let’s have a toast.’
A few more people chipped in with beer and I realized that some people had used the trip to Haiko to stock up on alcohol. The mood was more upbeat than it had been at any time during the day, but I didn’t take a sip of alcohol. Night was falling, and god only knew what it would bring.
FOUR
There was something about the night that made it darker and more ominous than just the absence of lights around us. There was the silence, there was what I had seen at R City and the police station, and then there was the fear of the unknown. Many of us had lived in this neighbourhood for years, and would often talk about how safe an area this was, how you could walk home late at night without any fear. Now, we were not sure we could move beyond the building gates. Everybody was on edge, but it hardly helped our cause to have people panicking.
Sitting with Pandey near the gate, I could see many people huddled at their windows, looking outside. Only a handful of the neighbouring buildings had their lights on, and I suspected they felt the way we did, since I caught glimpses of people silhouetted by the lights, standing at their windows, perhaps looking at us much as we were looking at them. It felt like we were marooned in a sea of blackness, looking out at others like us, clinging on to the supposed safety that the lifeboats that were our buildings provided.
It was now nine at night, hardly late by normal standards, but then things could hardly be called normal. I kept staring into the distance, half-remembered training coming back, old instincts kicking in, and barked commands of troop leaders as we exercised in the NCC ringing in my ears again.
‘Dogwatch.’
Pandey looked at me and smiled and then he got up, stood straight and to my utter surprise, saluted. I had said the word in a bare whisper, but that was converted into a command by Pandey, perhaps his own old instincts and remembered commands kicking in. He left, walking straighter than I remembered him walking before. I went up to Nitish’s floor and called him down. By the time I returned, Pandey had rounded up Subin, another kid called Prashant and Raju, the other guard.
‘Dogwatch squad here as ordered.’
I began to smile but then nodded at Pandey, who stood at ease. I explained what I had in mind to the guys. Back in the day, this was a drill we trained in all the time—managing a constant sentry duty of at least two hours at a stretch through the night so that the camp was guarded at all times. It meant the relief crew had to master the art of short naps, people had to get from groggy to alert instantly, and build up stamina to stay this way for days on end, if needed, in a combat zone. Falling asleep while on dogwatch meant instant punishment.
I was not dealing with cadets or troops, and I had no formal authority over them, but we needed to keep watch, and relying on just Pandey and myself to do it all night meant risking that one or both of us would lose our concentration or fall asleep when we most needed to be on guard. Subin and Prashant seemed pretty excited at the idea. Subin sniggered, ‘Better down here playing soldier than listening to my mother crib about how she’s missing Big Boss since the TV is not working.’ Raju seemed far less enthusiastic but I suspected Pandey had left him little choice in the matter.
The plan was for Pandey and me to be on watch for three-hour blocks while the others rotated through two-hour watches. We would get through till daybreak without anyone having to be totally without sleep and with at least two pairs of eyes watching our building at any given time.
‘What about me?’ Nitish asked, after I’d outlined the plan.
‘You play an important role, but your talents are better suited to things other than being just a sentry.’
We chatted briefly about what I had in mind and he got to work. It was fun seeing him tinkering with gadgets and lights. He was really in his element and I got the feeling that his real talents had been wasted in his day job as an IT analyst in some multinational firm. But then, how many of us was that not true for? I had made my choices and been happy with them, but why had I been more buzzed over the last couple of days than I remember being for years? Why was the adrenaline rush I had felt on seeing the men at the police station and in contemplating what was to come at night something a part of me had welcomed?
My uncle had once told me that the Army was in our blood; that a soldier somewhere deep within himself fell in love with war, and that even when there was no war to be fought, it would somehow seek him out. I remember my father arguing with him over the influence he had on me, saying something about my uncle suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
‘We’re done.’
I was snapped back to reality by Nitish and when I saw his handiwork, I had to shake his hand.
‘You, my man, are a genius at this.’
Our building was really exposed only on three sides. The rear of the building was next to a thick concentration of trees, the remnants of the forests that had once thrived here. On the two sides were other buildings separated from us by narrow alleys, but both ended up in dead ends, so that anyone coming towards us would be spotted if we watched the approach roads. It was the front of the building that was most vulnerable, facing the main road and with two smaller approach roads leading into it, one weaving through small shops, where it would be hard to spot movement even in good light.
Nitish had set up two small table lamps—one from my apartment and one from his—with long wires attached to a power point the generator was providing juice to, to cover the two sides. They were small lamps, but with no streetlights and both adjacent buildings without any power, they served their purpose as makeshift searchlights well. It was, however, on the front wall that he had truly displayed a touch of genius. He’d borrowed a tall, heavy floor lamp with a swivelling head from one of the families and—with the gawking kids and parents gathered to watch him at work—Nitish had attached it to the power, placed it close to the wall and then attached to its head a thick piece of rope about six feet long. So, if we wanted a look at who or what was outside our front gate, all we had to do was turn on the lamp and then use the rope to swivel it around without getting too close to the boundary wall. For all intents and purposes, we now had a remotely-controlled roving searchlight with which we could have a look outside without getting close to the wall.
Pandey and I did have torches, but holding those in our hands while looking out for potentially hostile intruders was an idea that Pandey had dismissed. ‘If anyone
has a gun, they’ll aim at the light and you don’t want to be holding it when the bullet comes at it.’
We had taken his advice to heart and were happy that Nitish had managed to rig up something that gave us a light source that could cover a pretty wide area without exposing us to risk. Nitish was justifiably proud of his handiwork and I asked him to reward himself with a good night’s sleep. He went back to his apartment, but I wasn’t sure just how much rest he would actually get.
It was now close to midnight and our second night in the darkness had begun.
I had been dozing in the guard cabin when Raju woke me up.
‘Pandeyji asked me to call you.’
I walked over to where Pandey and Subin were crouched near the front wall.
‘What’s up, Pandeyji?’
He looked at me and motioned for me to get down.
‘There is some movement in the road up ahead. We heard it once a few minutes ago and then again just now. I’ve woken up the others as well.’
I walked up to the wall and turned on the lamp and the road ahead was suddenly bathed with a beam of light. I motioned to Pandey and he walked slowly, sweeping from left to right, gently pulling on the rope. The lamp’s head moved, as did the beam of light, and within twenty seconds we had scanned the area outside our front gate. I had been watching all the time, as had Subin, and neither of us spotted anything, which of course did not mean there was nothing out there. I looked at my watch. It was one in the morning, and after one more sweep of the area, I asked Pandey to stop.
‘Guys, could have been an animal. Nothing more.’
Pandey and Subin were about to walk away from the wall when I thought I heard something and quickly motioned for them to stop and squat down. We waited in silence, and then I heard something again. A shuffling sound that may have been nothing more than a rat or cat walking in the night, but then it stopped and started, again and again.
A cat pausing to look at something on the ground, or something more?