by Gauri Mittal
“Oh, yes.” Dhruv made a dramatic expression, his hands clasped together. “I am sure something marvellous must be present in your wardrobe. Something just right for me.”
“Not again, Dhruv. You never wash, and you leave them lying around for days.”
Dhruv’s eyes bulged, and he curved his mouth into a pseudo-scary smile. He wiggled his fingers and said, “I’ll ask Madhavi not to embarrass you in front of Monika again. You know she listens to me.” He wiggled his eyebrows up and down, waiting for a response to his suggestion.
Aarav looked at him and rolled his eyes. “Don’t say anything to Madhavi, and just take whatever you want.” He stood up and opened his wardrobe. Neatly ironed clothes in piles, arranged according to newness and frequency of need, came into view. “I am wearing this white shirt and pants, you can take whatever else you want.”
Dhruv hit Aarav on the back, his arms outstretched. “My bro,” he said, mockingly wiping tears from his eyes. “Come here and give me a hug.”
“Forget it, then. I’m not giving you anything. Wear your stinky clothes,” Aarav said.
“Fine, fine, relax, man.” Dhruv smiled broadly.
It had become dark and pleasantly cool. Aarav was in a light mood. He was sitting with Dhruv and some other guys on the field, in front of the big screen that had been erected, talking about cricket and the movie that had been scheduled to be screened by the senior class. Some of the girls had already started arriving, decked up for the dancing and dinner later on. Someone called out his name, and Aarav turned his head.
A group of three girls was walking towards where he sat. He recognized Divya and Sonakshi. They looked pretty in their formal attire, but his gaze was captured by the girl walking beside them, giggling and looking like a beauty. Aarav’s throat went dry as he realized the long luscious straight black hair, the graceful movement of the body, all of it belonged to Madhavi. He averted his gaze, suddenly lost for words.
The girls came up to them. Madhavi walked up to Aarav and sat down beside him, saying, “So, what movie are they screening today?” She talked casually as she did every day, but Aarav couldn’t respond as he always did. Her perfume was intoxicating. Her eyes were lined with kohl and her lips were ruby red. Her hair was loose and looked so soft he wanted to reach out and touch it. He gulped, realizing he had been staring at her.
“No one here knows,” he said to her question.
Madhavi nodded, smiling at him. “You look nice today,” she said.
Is she flirting with me? Aarav wondered. “Thanks. You don’t look so bad yourself.”
“Really?” Madhavi said, cocking one eyebrow at him.
The rest of the gang started talking, and after a while the movie started playing, but Aarav’s mind was distracted. He missed most of the dialogue and replied to the group’s conversations absent-mindedly. His eyes would flutter to Madhavi every other minute, and his mind remained occupied with her presence the entire evening.
The next day, she was back to her old self, her hair knotted up at the crown of her head, her face devoid of bold colour. But Aarav was already smitten. Why had he never noticed how feminine she looked before? All this time, he had missed the small dimple in her cheek when she smiled, the depth in her eyes.
But Madhavi behaved with him as she always had. Asking him sarcastically if he had already finished studying for the test, wanting to show everyone he was top of the class. She had expected an equally insulting response from him, but instead, he looked hurt. She stared at him with a confused expression and was careful about how she spoke to him for the next few days.
He missed their unrestrained banter, and thus he decided to behave as he always did, not showing any change in his behaviour towards her and not letting her know he had started feeling more for her. Over the next two years, his feelings for her grew deeper, and he became more afraid of ruining their friendship, lest she reject him and stop talking to him. He never confessed.
*
The day of the bombings, Aarav restrained himself from moving from the relative safety of the basement. While everyone around him had been calling him paranoid, arguing that there was no way a nuclear war would happen, pointing out that humans were not that stupid, Aarav had registered on a small online group, whose goal was to regroup in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
The group was formed by someone anonymous who went by the username of “admin”. Aarav had found a few other similar groups, but After Annihilation which went as AA for short, seemed to be the only genuine one—the others were mostly for entertainment. AA had to be accessed by submitting proof of residence in Iddis, and it seemed to change its name and domain address often, as if protecting itself from getting tracked. It asked for information that was relevant, asked for no suspicious money transfers, and mentioned the location and route of a final safe house after one had successfully registered. It gave no guarantee that one would be picked up. The route could be changed in accordance with the site of bombings. It had specific instructions for everyone to stock up.
Once Aarav had registered, he was offered an online course on surviving a nuclear attack. His address and 2 possible safe houses were registered. The basement of the current building being one and the other was the basement of his office building. Aarav had hidden a bag full of supplies in each place. The latest he remembered, there were fifty members of the AA group. Aarav knew none of them.
Aarav had tried on multiple occasions to convince his family and friends to become a part of the group. Some had listened patiently, some had mocked him, while some had agreed to join but had procrastinated. Dhruv, being his roommate, was the only one who got unsolicited training by word of mouth about surviving a possible attack through all that Aarav learned.
When Aarav took the job and rented a shared flat in an apartment, he had registered the basement of that building as a potential safe house for himself. He had asked Madhavi to do the same, even offering to do it for her. But she had never paid much attention to the matter.
*
It had been forty-eight hours since the bomb had stuck. He had regained consciousness an hour after the attack. Now stuck in the basement, his head raced. Would AA come to rescue him? Was admin alive? Would he be left out, or worse, was it all a scam? Had his parents survived? What had happened to Dhruv, Sonakshi, and Divya? As soon as Madhavi’s name came to mind, he felt something in his gut constrict. She never knew how much he loved her. The image of her face got stuck in his head, smiling and looking at him with a curious gaze.
He had to find her and his family. If he didn’t, he would lose his mind. He looked at the motorbike in the corner, the one he had brought over three months ago from his home. He had been working on its repairs for the last two months. He made up his mind then.
He tested the machine. The dust-covered bike in the basement came alive with a roar. He covered his face with a white cotton cloth, tying it with a knot at the back of his head, and slipped the black helmet over his head. Next, he hung the bag of tin cans, water bottles, torches, and batteries over his shoulders and onto his back as he swung one long leg over the bike’s body. He remembered the route and the destination to the safe house.
If AA was not coming to get him, he would find his own way.
He left the relative safety of the basement. At the entrance to the basement, there was no lobby left. One wall remained intact while everything else was rubble. He manoeuvred his way through the concrete and reached out of the broken apartment complex building.
The sky was hazy. A burning stench permeated the air. From his peripheral vision, he saw a figure approach him. Burnt flesh! The man’s face had melted, his skin hanging like loose cloth. The smell of was overpowering. Aarav retched. The motorbike fell over as he tumbled to the side and vomited all over the ground.
Komaldil fell to the ground, his hands outstretched towards Aarav. The skin from his hands had melted away too, and it was hanging from his fingers. Raw red flesh was exposed. His eyes were filled with a
desperate pain. Aarav got up and stumbled to Komaldil’s side. He fell to his knees.
“Water,” the security guard rasped softly.
Aarav helped the man to water from his backpack. He tried to hold him up, but the man shook his head. “It’s over. I want to be at peace. Leave me.”
Aarav couldn’t move his eyes from the raw red burnt body in front of him. He sat on the ground motionless as Komaldil’s life left him in front of Aarav’s very eyes.
Scarred and wanting to be out of the hellish atmosphere, he got himself up and drove like a madman, roaring out of the broken entry gate of the apartment complex. Little did he know he had entered the gateway to hell. The streets outside were lined with dead bodies. Most were burnt beyond recognition. Some lay at odd angles with grotesque injuries, all lifeless. Aarav’s mind became numb to the stimulus his eyes were inputting. He rode the motorbike as if in a dream.
He knew not for how long he had been on the move when a baby’s shrill cry made him stop, waking him up as if from a trance. A lady sat under a tin shade, one hand bloody. In the other she held her crying baby. Leaving his motorbike on the ground, he ran to their aid.
“My husband went out the night before the last to see what the commotion was about outside. I was inside our shop. Then the blast happened. He hasn’t come back, and my baby hasn’t stopped crying since then. Please make him stop.” She leaned towards Aarav, holding out her baby to him, desperately looking into Aarav’s eyes for a sign of hope. Aarav felt guilt wash over him as blood trickled down her arm. People everywhere were dead and injured, but he was unharmed.
He took the water bottle and cleaned the slash across her arm. Then, tearing a part of his T-shirt, he bandaged her wound.
“C’mon, get on my bike with your baby. We’ll find you shelter,” he said.
Gratefully, she got on.
The main area of Varshi was unrecognizable. There was smoke everywhere, and massive buildings had disappeared into thin air. A sea of suffering that was now eerily silent. Aarav saw masses of what seemed like trash strewn everywhere in the smoke and haze. He got off the bike and went closer to inspect. He broke out into a cold sweat as he realized what he saw lining the market roads was not garbage blown out. They were bodies. Burnt and disfigured. He wanted to scream and wake up from this horrible nightmare.
He would’ve collapsed from shock if it wasn’t for the woman with the child. She put her hand on his shoulder. “Please, let’s go. I think my baby is sick,” she said. “Why isn’t he crying anymore?”
He turned around and focused on the baby, telling himself the image behind him did not exist.
He checked the baby’s pulse. “He’s fine. We’ll find help. Let’s go,” Aarav said.
Running to the bike, something wet fell on his neck. He swiped at it and looked up. Black rain. He got to the bag on his bike and took out a plastic sheet.
“It’s raining!” the lady shouted. “I’m so thirsty.”
“No!” Aarav said. “It’s black rain. It’s the radioactive contaminant in the air. Get under this plastic sheet now!”
For twenty minutes, they stayed under the plastic sheet. “That rain has ensured the soil gets poisoned,” he whispered. Moving to and fro on the balls of his feet, Aarav did not let himself look in the direction of the market full of dead bodies. He hummed a tune, his eyes shut, Madhavi’s face the only thing existing for him during those nightmarish twenty minutes.
Once the rain stopped, they got on the bike, driving toward the army cantonment. They crossed over the river, which had, till two days ago, been filled to the brim with garbage. Today it carried in it the bodies of the same humans who had almost killed it. In their last moments, the people had come to it to quench their desperate thirst while their city burned.
They arrived at the cantonment area. The lush greens were now brown and black. Two army trucks stood at the entrance of a broken building. Six army personnel were helping load up the trucks with crates.
Aarav zoomed his bike onward to the site. From inside the building, some men were being brought in on stretchers. As he neared the trucks, he caught the attention of the army men and came to a stop near them. Two men came forward and helped the lady with her child off the bike. Aarav parked the bike. “The market. It’s full of people. I don’t know if they are dead or injured. Please help me bring them.”
A massively built man with a handlebar moustache spoke. “Get on the truck. We already have twenty civilians in the other truck. Around two hundred left in the early hours of the morning.”
“Did you see the market? There are thousands there!” Aarav was unable to get the horrific picture out of his head. He couldn’t help but talk about it. He had to let it out in some way.
“Yes, sir, we have. They are dead, all of them. Now, please get in the truck. We still have a few supplies we have to load.”
The man with the handlebar moustache got busy commanding his men.
Another man in uniform came out of the dusty broken building. He was clean shaven, and the men called him captain.
“Sir, please,” Aarav said, “is this truck going to Shunya?”
The captain looked at Aarav with surprise. “How do you know that? We haven’t discussed that with anyone.”
“Please tell me which places have been bombed,” Aarav asked.
The captain sighed. “The better question, I believe, would be what place has not been bombed.”
Aarav gulped.
“Why don’t you get inside the truck. We are indeed off to Shunya. It’s the only hope.”
“I can’t. I need to get my parents and my… friend,” Aarav said.
The captain looked at the young handsome boy standing tall and brave in front of him. Blood stained his torn T-shirt and jeans. His hands were grimy, and his eyes looked haunted. But he stood with courage, looking the captain in the eyes.
“Can you give me a map?” Aarav said. “All landmarks would have been destroyed. I need to go to Mridnagar and then to Rajgar. I won’t be able to find my way without a map.”
The boy had a bag with him and a sturdy bike. The captain kept his hand on Aarav’s shoulder and smiled in spite of the situation. “You give me hope. Looking at you I feel like we may just get out of this one. But you’ll need more than a map.”
By the time the truck’s supply was full, Aarav had washed and put on a new pair of clothing. The captain favoured him with a canister of extra fuel in his bike’s storage box.
The lady he had rescued shouted as the trucks came to life. “Wait, you’re forgetting that boy!”
“That man has a death wish,” said the man with the handlebar moustache. “Let him go.”
“Ride fast, or you will not be in a condition to return,” said the captain, throwing the map at him.
Aarav thanked the man and rode his bike away.
Chapter 4
Aarav later told me he had written in a message to not get out of the safe place for at least ten days, but I never received it. Anxious to get home, I had left as soon as I regained consciousness, which was two days after the first attack. Vaguely remembering the article Aarav had sent us all a month before our exams, in light of the looming threat of war, about nuclear threat and how to save oneself from it, I knew it was going to rain soon. It was called black rain, which happened soon after a nuclear attack, and it was vital to protect oneself from it.
Though my spirit was crushed, a small glimmer of desire to remain alive persisted, even as death stared me in the face. This desire made me feel guilty and disgusted with myself. How could I be so selfish? At a time when all was gone, I still wanted to live this wretched life? I called myself names and started blaming myself for not having been able to save my parents. I started crying, feeling pity and hating myself at the same time.
It was because I was a horrible person, I told myself. A narcissist, a selfish being. Someone who didn’t try her best to save her parents for her own life. I wanted to run back to the apartments and keep trying
to identify the bodies, but I knew it was futile. The truth, though unrecognizable, had stared me in the face. Whatever life had been in that area was burnt beyond recognition, but I refused to acknowledge it.
I walked back to the cave, imagining myself starving to death. Peaches followed me but stopped on the way to sniff and bite at something in the ground.
“No,” I said, scolding her, jumping to pull her away from the radiation-infested soil. “It’s all poison now.” I whispered it more to myself than to Peaches, frustrated at my inability to do anything about the situation. “The earth is poison.”
This time I did not go inside the dark, oppressive hole but remained near it, deep inside the cave. As day gave way to night and again to the next day, I grew hungrier. I gave some water to Peaches from the water bottle and took some myself, hoping it would soothe some of the hunger. I remained in a foetal position, lying by my side. I wouldn’t let her out of my sight, so Peaches took to foraging in the crevices of the cave for insects.
On the second day, I was exhausted from hunger while Peaches continued feasting on a diet of insects. By the third day, the pain in my stomach was becoming unbearable. I considered going out into the poisonous environment and finding something to eat. Dying of radiation sickness would be better than the hunger pains, I reasoned.
I took another sparing sip of water from the bottle when it struck me. If someone had kept a water bottle in the hole, there might also be some food. It was only when I became desperate enough that the idea hit me. With new energy, I got up and lowered myself into the hole, careful to keep the water bottle with me to get back out. I used my still-alive cell phone as a flashlight to spot any unlevelled contour in the soil, anything out of the ordinary. In the corner where I had found the water bottle, some of the soil on the wall adjoining the floor seemed to have been pasted on after digging. My instincts rose, and I began digging.
My hand struck something hard, and I stopped. It was something round and silver. I did not allow myself to think what it could be, lest I get my hopes up. If I did and it was in vain, it would shatter my ability to hold on in the face of the turmoil I was facing. I took out a tin box that said “High Protein Biscuits”. Slowly, I opened the can with the help of the water bottle cap. It was real. It was full. As the sweet aroma of glucose and protein-laden biscuits hit me, for the first time in my life, my eyes filled with tears at the sight of food. Never had I felt so thankful to the highest power, not even when I had been selected into my high paying, so-called prestigious company. Now, everything else seemed like peanuts in front of this life I was trying to save. All the stress I had taken and put my body and mind though for a better job, more recognition, more appreciation. All seemed laughable.