by Gauri Mittal
There was a faraway look in her eyes. She didn’t even get a chance to know what had happened to her family. I couldn’t imagine the pain she was in, and still she worked diligently, taking care of the patients, setting aside her own pain. She was an inspiring, strong woman.
“You are an engineer,” she said, “you might be able to get a job in the communications department with the army group trying to re-establish internet and cell phone connectivity with the outer world. Can you help me find out about some people in Tribhuvan when they do?”
“What group?” I asked.
“You haven’t heard about it?” she asked back. “Did you not tell them your educational background?”
“They never asked. They only asked me if I was a doctor or an agricultural worker. When I said no, they sent me away.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, I need to find four people, and you need to find some too. I’ll let you know if patients from your parents’ home state show up, and you help me where you can. If you get into the communications department, it will probably help us both in the matter.”
I nodded and thanked her, both for taking care of my health needs and giving me important information.
Aarav and I proceeded towards the registration office at the first entrance of the city, but the guards wouldn’t let us exit the announcement hall without a signed permission letter from the administrative office. I was feeling hopeless and told Aarav about the chance to get a job at the communications department.
We made our way back to 3rd Street. I was moving a little slowly, my legs sore from the excessive walking of the past day. We ran into Pranav at 3rd Street. He was standing in front of the administrative building with Vishwaroopum.
“Are you okay?” Pranav asked. “What did Dr Geetika say?”
“She said I will be fine,” I replied.
“Vishwaroopum’s room is adjacent to mine. He’s also a part of the administration with me.” Vishwaroopum was looking away, over our heads, busy with his own thoughts, unconcerned about our conversation. “You can let us know if you need anything.”
I nodded in acknowledgment.
In the administrative office, around fifty people were lined up in front of a small desk. Each was being issued a document, and their name was being registered under whatever department they wanted to work with.
Aarav and I inquired on whether we could get into something related to communication, stating our professional qualifications, but the slender, serious-faced lady sitting behind the desk only looked at us with tired eyes and said no, so farming it was. The hours were flexible, and we could work together.
The city lay at a stretch of ten kilometres on all sides. It was a marvel the news of its construction had not reached public ears, but then this was a very secluded part of the country, with barely one village in near vicinity. It had been made as an establishment for the preservation of the powerful and the rich, the ones who had paid for it. A private and government enterprise. Initially, it was to house top government officials and the wealthiest of the country. The total capacity it could support was not more than five thousand for ten or so years, by which time the Earth’s environment would have become suitable once again for human residence.
But fighting against the laws of nature is an ignorant exercise. In the survival of the fittest, who was to say who really was the fittest? Would coincidence and luck not be a part of the great universal design, working smoothly like a Rubik’s cube that always maintained its harmonious colours, however much it was distorted? Because ultimately, it was a piece of a whole. The colours were only an illusion, meant to distract. The cube was always perfect, however much distorted. Those who survived were not the most powerful, neither were they the richest, but those who had the capacity to grow and evolve within themselves would lead to the betterment of all that surrounded them. It was the universal design that had chosen the survivors as the fittest of the lot, not mere human intelligence.
How many survivors were there was a question of great distress for the thousand and more pouring into the city continuously.
Two days later, I got a notice to go to the farms to start working. Aarav and I went together. It was a large area, the ceiling lined with multi-coloured LED lights. If not for the rocky ceiling above, it could’ve been any other farm on the surface of the Earth.
Some people were already bent over the soil, digging and making rows. I started to go back. Aarav reached out and held my arm tightly. He knew me well. “Don’t think of escaping. We have to do this.”
“I’m going to go back to where I came from,” I said and started to manoeuvre my arm out of his grasp, but I was no match for his strength.
“I hate it. I hate it here, Aarav. I can’t take it anymore. I am feeling suffocated here,” I cried, jerked my arm out of Aarav’s grasp and ran back, out of the farm area.
Aarav stood motionless, taken by surprise, but he did not follow me. I knew I was acting like a brat. But, I was panicking and lost control over my emotions. Aarav and most of the people in the underground city had gone through the same if not worse trials than I had, but in that moment I felt so suffocated. I wanted to die. I saw no purpose in living. My parents were lost, all I had known and built in my life was gone. Looking at the vast expanse of nothing but barren farms, with gloomy men, women, and even children bent over them, all stuck here for an unknown duration made me break. The realization that I was stuck in this enclosure, deep inside the earth, for no one knew how long, had hit me like a brick.
I ran into something hard right before the entrance to 1st Street. Vishwaroopum was standing there, his face set in a grim line as always.
“Sorry,” I said. He was dressed in a dark-coloured shirt and black pants. His face was hard-set.
“Ms Madhavi,” he said, acknowledging me. I started to be on my way, but his words stopped me. “It’s not only you who has lost something precious.”
I turned around slowly, afraid he would hit me if I didn’t.
“Everyone here has lost their world,” he said. “Everyone is… struggling.”
“Are you struggling too?” I asked simply.
He nodded slightly. Suddenly Vishwaroopum did not seem menacing anymore.
2nd Street was not excessively crowded. It was around nine thirty in the morning, and most of the survivors were at 3rd Street working, and a few were entering the hospital for treatment. Only two army men patrolled the area.
I moved closer to where Vishwaroopum stood, looking at him for more words of comfort. When he didn’t say anything, I said, “I hate this place. There is no sun. How can we survive without the light of the sun? And the trees. So many trees have been burnt. How long will we have to go without looking at the moon? Our minds will shrivel and die before our bodies do without their presence.”
He looked at me for a while, assessing me. He moved a little away from where a soldier was patrolling so that we could continue our conversation without her overhearing. I followed him. He turned his head upwards and spoke. “Do you see these air vents?”
I looked up to see a metal tube running the length of the street just below the white rocky ceiling. We were standing right below a vent that was blowing a constant slap of cold air at us. “Yes?” I said. “So?”
“Do you know where this air is coming from?” he asked cryptically.
I looked at him, confused. “From above?” I answered.
“There is another entry to this city,” he said. “One that is not as barren and lifeless as the one we used before. It has remained untouched, even by this onslaught.”
“How?” That wasn’t the question he had wanted me to ask. Vishwaroopum was almost fifteen or more years older than me, and I felt like a stupid kid in front of his domineering presence. He carried on as if I had not said anything. “It is best if you don’t tell people about it. It has to be protected for as long as it can, and people cannot be trusted. It is a cave. A huge cave. That is where this underground city leads to. There is a, op
ening in the wall at the farthest end of 3rd Street, beyond the farms. But no one is allowed to enter it without special permission from a high authority responsible for the safeguarding of the cave and the area beyond it.”
He paused for my reaction, and finding it acceptable, continued. “There is a lake there, and trees. The mouth of the cave is huge and opens into a thick forest. It is deep in the mountains. Those mountains will protect against radiation-laden winds blowing into that sacred area. It has its own self-sustaining ecosystem. After the sun starts penetrating the atmosphere sufficiently again, that is the direction the survivors will move towards. From there we will restart our civilization on land or mingle with whatever will be left of it, but till then, it has to be kept safe.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked.
He said nothing at first. Then his face relaxed by minute degrees, and I even suspected the hint of a comforting smile around his lips. “You might see the moon from there. And the sun. Sometimes birds still sing there too.”
I laughed a little, surprised by this sudden revelation of supposed wonderland and Vishwaroopum’s true nature. I looked at him with appreciation evident in my eyes. “Can I tell my friend Aarav about this?” I said. “I won’t without your permission. Let me guess. You are the high authority responsible for safe guarding that ‘sacred’ area?”
He said nothing, but I saw in his face that I was right. “Pranav knows too, doesn’t he?” I asked.
He smiled, fully this time, but only for a second. It softened his harsh features. “You can tell your friend as long as you trust his discreetness.” Vishwaroopum’s face grew stoic again, and he spoke in all sternness. “If the extent of the damage is as vast as has been understood so far, the Earth is going to need time to recuperate. That is why living underground is the best option for now, more so near an underground lake. Let us just hope the worst does not happen.”
“What is the worst?” I asked.
“Nuclear winter. But I believe we have to almost wiped ourselves off the face of the planet before we could cause damage to such an extent.”
When he saw I was interested in listening to him, he began to explain other things. “The lake you saw when you entered; It is very deep and is being used to power the city. The shutters that cover the lake are coated with bacterial spores. As the water of the lake evaporates, the spores swell up, acting like a muscle and move the boards open and shut in a cyclical manner. Those machines use the energy of evaporation and convert it into electricity.”
I nodded, intrigued. He looked at me in his assessing way for a few minutes of silence. “Stay close to people you trust. People are going through huge mental trauma. Don’t talk to strangers. Keep your door locked at night or when the streets are empty, and don’t open it for anyone except your closest friends, Pranav, me. Not even for the patrol guards.”
I wondered what had caused this sudden concern in his behaviour towards me. How had he suddenly become so talkative? He was acting like a father figure or a brother. Not that I would know, since I’d never had a brother. Or any siblings, for that matter. In that moment, I bitterly thanked some supreme presence that it was only me who had to suffer the loss of my parents and that the excruciating burden of pain was not shared with a sibling. That pain would not leave me. It stayed with me even as I talked with Vishwaroopum. It was always there. At all moments. Simmering, throbbing in the background.
I thanked Vishwaroopum and told him I would keep in touch with him. I invited him to join Pranav, Aarav, and me for meals in the cafeteria. I also asked his permission to tell Aarav about the cave, vouching for my friend’s discreetness, letting Vishwaroopum know that Aarav was a man with impeccable morals and honesty.
I made my way back to my small room, for a break to compose myself before returning to the farms, where I had left Aarav alone and remembering how he had gone back to Rajgar for me.
Chapter 9
We started with the first planting after two months of being in the city. Half of June had passed. Every morning, I would to get up by telling myself the bodies with the unrecognizable faces I had seen at my apartment did not belong to my parents. That there was still a chance I would get to see them. We hadn’t heard about any of our friends in Sikka. I would think about Divya, Sonakshi and Dhruv sometimes and wonder if they too had miraculously survived. We had stopped talking about our miseries, having locked them inside of us. The city boasted a population of three thousand by now. Many had been saved by the hospital by using the experimental drug.
In the evenings, I would generally go over to the 2nd Street or to the hospital to spend time with Geetika. Times of hardship had made us closer more rapidly than times of comfort would have. Sometimes I would hang out with Ayesha in her room, pestering her to teach me to sing, but her efforts were all in vain.
We were all going through a difficult time. The prime minister had still not recovered, and the army general was in charge of the city. His posters adorned the cafeteria, the announcement hall, and the military headquarters.
The general kept making rules that were difficult to follow. He issued an order that everyone had be out of their cabins in the morning and contribute in one of the prescribed jobs. There were people who were old and physically unwell. The hospital did not consider their state as needing admission but, they needed rest in their cabins. These people leaned on younger or healthier people for sharing coupons. They would care for the kids in exchange, while the other people worked.
He forbade people from going out to the lake after the lights had been switched off at ten at night. Going to the lake used to give people solace and some presence of nature. The lake was the place where the lights were always on, and many people, including me and my friends, liked to stroll or sit on the bank and talk late into the night. It had helped people bond and get acquainted with others during their first two months in the city. The general’s orders were not only impractical, they were autocratic.
But no one could say a word against the general within earshot of a patrol guard or a civilian snitch.
A month after I started working on the farm, I tried to go to the end of 3rd Street to have a look at the cave entrance that Vishwaroopum had told me about, but so far I hadn’t had the chance to get near it, since there was always a guard with a rifle posted at the end. As soon as anyone tried to go near, he would become alert, move forward ten feet, and demand a permission letter to be shown to be present in the area, but no one wondered about the reason because no one other than me or occasionally young children bothered to come this far out on 3rd Street. The area was not well lit, and there seemed to be nothing there. I had told Aarav about the cave after Vishwaroopum’s permission and sometimes, he too would stroll near it.
One day, during an impromptu visit to the area, the guard stationed there was absent.
When I was certain the guard was not somewhere in the vicinity, I went closer to the rock and touched it. It was colder to the touch than in other places. I knew the reason. Unlike at the other ends, here it was hollow on the other side. One of the rocks in this wall was artificial and was the entrance into a path that led to a cave at the surface and a different world than the one we were trapped in. One that had been kept hidden until it recovered enough to be able to bear an onslaught of human beings.
I stood by the wall, my hand on its rough surface, my eyes closed and head leaning on it. I imagined what lay behind. In my mind’s eye, I pictured the sun, blazing hot and spreading light in all directions. The sound of the birds chirping. Of trees, their leaves swishing lightly in the air, the sky glistening blue and the serene sound of constantly flowing blue water, moving on and on, the sounds and the sights of nature, an amalgamation which now lay only in the experiences of my imagination.
One day I would break free of these walls that imprisoned me, not only the ones that lay before me but also the ones that lay within my own mind, trapping me in fear, guilt and anxiety. I would live. Step by step, I would proceed,
very slowly, with awareness and control over myself. I resolved this within myself while standing by the wall, beyond which lay the unknown.
Strength lay in having the faith to go on. The coolness of the rock and the vision in my mind of what lay waiting for me beyond it gave me immense strength. In that time alone, I did not feel lonely, I felt my connection with the Earth and knew how intimately we belonged to each other. Maybe tomorrow, maybe after a hundred years, I would be free and at peace. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I felt a sense of stillness encompass my being. For the first time since the tragedy had struck, or maybe for the first time ever in my life, I was completely at peace. I was happy. It was not the usual kind of happiness. Rather, a detached happiness, one in which no thoughts, however bad or good, had the power to touch me. The experience subsided after a while and left me with wonder and a glimpse of the calmness I held within me. It gave me the strength to find a reason to go on living.
By the time, I returned to the farm, Aarav was laying seeds in the soil. I had lost track of time, but I guessed I had been gone for over an hour. Rows of soil had been dug out and furrows had been made. Two other farmers along with Aarav were bent over the ground, doing the same work.
When he saw me return, he perceived the look of serenity on my face, for he smiled in a way he seldom did. It reminded me of our time in college. Days when the only concerns were attendance and passing exams. Those were times when we were still carefree. It was my favourite smile. His face lit up, and the elusive dimple in his right cheek appeared. In the strange surroundings, Aarav’s beautiful smile and deep eyes made an awareness enter my heart. Maybe it was because other tribulations in my heart had temporarily calmed, for as I neared him, his gaze at my lips and the gentle tone in which he asked me to go with him to dinner became noticeable and significant. Feelings I had never visited since the early days of college were suddenly knocking, trying to burst from where they had been suppressed, with the force of newer and deeper ones.