After Annihilation: Would you want to survive?

by Gauri Mittal

  I nodded, suddenly feeling nervous in his presence. I was walking alongside him, not looking him in the eye. He said nothing. His maturity sensed my need to be silent, alone with my thoughts. When we reached the cafeteria, Pranav was there, along with Geetika and Vishwaroopum. Geetika seldom came to meals with us, even though I invited her many times. She preferred to have them on her own time in her room at the hospital. I was happy she had finally come today, though I wondered what had been the driving factor. She raised her hand, calling a greeting to us from afar from our usual table.

  The concoction of watery dal and rice, along with two vitamins and one calcium pill, was far from enticing, but the very fact that it was still to be had was a blessing. I ate with a voracious appetite. I had survived the past three months in a turbulent state of mind, wanting every day to run away back home. But today was different. There was nothing to dampen my appetite.

  The dawn of the sun had arrived in my heart after the heavy months of darkness. Its little light had saved me from drowning, but if I wanted my existence to be considered a life, there was still more I had to do. I took it one tiny step at a time.

  I looked up from my metal plate to see Pranav staring at me. I cocked one eyebrow. “What?” I asked.

  “You seem different today,” he said. “I thought you would be distraught. I got the restriction on your leaving the city removed, but Aarav”—he turned his head to look at Aarav sitting by his side—“he came over to me, we had a good fight. I hope you wouldn’t repeat the same mistake again though.”

  “We agreed to not talk of this matter again,” Aarav said. He was looking at the food on his plate and at nothing else. His left hand was fisted on the table. He was angry and trying to control it.

  “Fine, fine. Chill, mate,” Pranav said.

  Aarav had gotten the restriction put up against me at the city entrance barrier, when one day I had not shown up for work and he had found me at the registration office, inquiring about available transport to leave the city. He had been furious and I had followed him sheepishly. Pranav did not think Aarav had any right to restrict my free will, though he did tell me what I had been trying to do was stupid.

  Aarav and Pranav had called a truce after two months of not getting along for no understandable reason. I figured it was because they had a common friend in me and sacrificed whatever differences they had because of the realization they had to have their meals together for the sake of company.

  When he was the admin, rescuing people, Pranav had been cold and crisp to the point of rudeness, but now that he felt safe, his demeanour had changed. He was carefree, even nonchalant at times. He held an influential and powerful position in the city, and he loved to flaunt it.

  There were others I’d met in the city. People from various walks of life. Some considered themselves lucky to have survived, while some had lost so much, they considered life to be a burden they did not wish to bear any longer. There were some suicides. A story circulated of a man stealing the gun off some patrol guard and shooting himself. There were some cases of people going mental and one guy running on the street shouting that Heaven was disappointing, and he wanted to go back to Earth.

  During the third month, I started interacting with other people and forming new acquaintances. I met one man, Taqbeer Singh Yadav. He was around eighty years of age and seemed to have left his life’s energy back on the surface, his eyes always looking far away. The skin on his face was almost completely hanging. His nose was small and button-like, and his lips were thin and sunken inwards due to the absence of all his teeth but one.

  One day as I worked in the field, I saw him, looking extremely thin. He wore a very loose shirt that hung on his shoulders as it would on a hanger, along with pants that were held around his waist with a makeshift belt. He was slightly bent, ploughing the soil with a small shovel, slowly removing the blocks of soil and making a row with trembling hands. I watched him for about an hour, working on the row next to him.

  “Sir, you seem to be tired. Do you want some water?” I asked.

  He looked at me and spoke very meekly. “No.”

  I kept looking towards him, hoping he would say something else. His short reply and meek manner made me think I was intruding on him. He looked so tired and weak for the work he did that I wanted to help lessen his burden in some small way.

  Finally, when the clock struck one o’clock in the middle of the street, I wiped my hands on my apron and got up.

  “Do you know how I can go back?” an old, weary voice asked me. The old man was standing behind me.

  “You have to get permission from the administrative office first. Then go to the registration office at the entry barrier,” I told him.

  He kept staring at me with big, forlorn eyes. “I want to get away. I didn’t want to live, but they brought me here by force. And now I don’t know how to end this life.”

  I didn’t know what to say. For the first two months I had felt what he did now. Since the incident at the wall at the end of 3rd Street, I had started to find meaning in my life again. It had driven me to surface feelings for Aarav that I had long buried. Those feelings were now driving me onward. Getting up in the morning seemed worthwhile because I could spend it with him.

  “Please, sir, come with me,” I said. “Let’s have lunch together.”

  He was still looking at me with a bleak light in his eyes. He said nothing but started walking with me towards the cafeteria. He had lunch with me and my friends, at first hesitantly, but slowly he seemed to feel more welcome.

  We started visiting him regularly. Sometimes Pranav would arrange extra coupons from the admin office so that he would not have to work so hard, but he still had to leave his room, even when he felt sick, due to the general’s orders. We would then arrange a few chairs without armrests together in a line in the cafeteria for him to lie down on. Slowly, he started becoming more cheerful and spoke less about not wanting to live.

  As days went on, my feelings for Aarav deepened. I wanted to tell him I was in love with him. Had been in love with him for more than four years, but his presence in my life was the sole reason I was holding on to my will to live. If he rejected me or worse, stopped talking to me, I would lose my only reason for living. I couldn’t say anything.

  One day, after the tenth month, I finally decided to confess to him. I was sitting in the cafeteria, waiting for him to join me. I would then ask him to stay back after breakfast to talk to him.

  Aarav strolled in, along with Geetika and a girl I had never seen before. The girl at Aarav’s side was tall, beautiful, with a white kurta and her salwar hugging her ample curves. She was also not more than nineteen, almost six years younger than him.

  “Sitting alone?” Aarav said.

  It was a casual remark, but it annoyed me. Pranav soon joined the party and was quick to ask, “Well, hello, who do we have here?”

  “Let me introduce Ashima Saxena,” said Aarav. He smiled at Ashima. “I met her early in the morning. She just came in only yesterday from a bunker near Varshi. She was lost, trying to find the cafeteria, so I helped her out.”

  “Hi, everyone,” Ashima said. She was strangely calm and composed in the face of her predicament. We greeted her and introduced ourselves.

  “Oh, yes, Madhavi,” Aarav said, looking at me. “Her room number is 453. I told her you’d help her adjust on 1st Street. Show her around and all.” He smiled.

  He was smiling way more than he usually did. It annoyed me even more. “Sure.” I smiled back tightly.

  It was an unspoken rule among the members of our city that no one asked the new members where they came from and what had happened. We knew from experience how painful it could be. If the information was volunteered by the person, then we discussed the matter, otherwise not. So none of us asked Ashima about her past.

  We avoided talking about the tragedy all together. Most of us pretended that things were fine, when we all had no idea what lay in store for the future. What if the shut
ter equipment the lake used to make electricity stopped working? We would have no electricity to filter and pump oxygen down into the city. None to keep the temperature in control or light up the LED lights that provided UV rays for the crops to grow. What if the two lakes dried up or were somehow contaminated or flooded? What if Iddis’s enemies were still alive and thriving, having already taken over the oil reserves in the sea, planning to annihilate this city too?

  Although every new member was welcomed in Shunya, at the back of everyone’s mind there were always troubled thoughts. The city’s capacity would be met at five thousand. The hospital was already overflowing. More people would mean more stress on the city’s supplies.

  Moreover, we hardly had any doctors other than Geetika and one junior doctor who had stumbled into the city by chance. Both of them were under immense workloads. Most people who entered the city died four to five days later from radiation sickness. Some had horrible wounds. Some had become mentally disturbed. Medication had an expiry date. The current supply would last for three years, and then it could no longer be used. I had no idea if we could produce more.

  In conditions such as these, security was a grave issue. Two hundred citizens of the city were made up of army men and women, at a ratio of 20:80. They were armed with rifles with limited ammunition. Around twenty were employed to keep vigil on the streets at all times, in six-hour shifts. The rest were stationed at the entrance of the lake and more at the registration office near the outpost. Groups of bandits would sometimes try to enter the city to rob our supplies, and there was often news by word of mouth of a fight and of how the army had kept out another set of intruders.

  Although I didn’t like Ashima, she never did or say anything wrong to me, but her proximity to Aarav bothered me, and I tried my best to avoid her. But seeing her struggle in the new environment, I soon realized I was being petty and helped her settle into 1st Street. I helped get her new clothes from the storage building. There were rolls of unstitched cloth in storage that was used sparingly by the people who worked as tailors to make basic clothing. Everyone was allowed only a certain number of clothes per year, and new sets cost a lot of coupons.

  I told her which patrol guards to be wary of and whom she could talk freely with. I taught her to use the toilets and bathrooms early in the morning if she wanted them at their cleanest. I had actually started enjoying teaching her the ways to live a more comfortable life. She wasn’t very friendly, but she learnt everything I told her quickly and gave me a sense of satisfaction of having been useful.

  She made me feel odd at times. We could be standing together with only each other for company in a crowd, and she would suddenly walk away and start talking to other people, leaving me alone and feeling awkward, with no effort to welcome me into her new group. She would then act as if there was nothing wrong.

  At first I thought she was just unreliable, but later when she had done it multiple times, I realized she wanted my company only when she had no other option and would likely stop being friends with me after she had had her use of me. Thus, I obliged her with her wish.

  In the afternoons after lunch, I would walk with Aarav around the lake many times, but soon Ashima started intruding on that time. She would ask Aarav out to help her get some job done or the other. He never seemed to deny her, saying a nonchalant “See ya” before leaving me to go with her.

  I stopped going to the lake with him, even when he was not busy with Ashima, and instead began going to the hospital to help Geetika for an hour or so. There were many times when Pranav and Vishwaroopum joined us to lend her a helping hand.

  My friendship with Pranav began to deepen. I soon had the inkling he wanted more than friendship, but I was already in love with Aarav, and although I was angry with him, I could see a future with no one else.

  Still, I had stopped hanging out with Aarav except for the time we spent together with everyone during lunch and dinner. He either thought I was busy because of the time I spent at the hospital and socialising with other people in the city. That or he just didn’t care that I was avoiding him. He had, as usual, found a new girl to hang out with.

  Pranav was spending more and more of his time in the administrative office, where he was working closely with the army general.

  One day, after our first year in the city was over, Aarav announced, “I am leaving this job. I can’t work in the farms anymore.”

  I was taken aback. “So suddenly?” I asked.

  “It’s not sudden,” he said. “I want to work in the communications department. Vishwaroopum told me there was a job opening there, and so I applied, and they took me in. I want to give it a try.”

  “You’ve already taken the job? You never even told me…” I trailed.

  “You’ve been so busy lately with Geetika at the hospital and all those new people you’ve been hanging out with.”

  “But I could’ve tried out for it too,” I said.

  “You wanted to?” he asked. “I thought you loved this job. You are always so chirpy here, always talking with people working around. that lady Lakshmi and playing with her baby. Vishwaroopum told me about this job, and Ashima also decided to get a job at the reception desk in the military office. She got it by chance. She told me she asked one of the women patrol guards from 1st Street to help her get it as a favour. Apparently, you had introduced her to that particular guard.” Aarav was smiling innocently, completely oblivious to the storm raging inside me.

  “Is it?” I asked with a tight smile. “Have a good time, then. You are right, I do love this job very much. I like being outside much more than being cooped up in a dingy building with annoying people.”

  “Wait, are you angry?” he asked.

  “Not at all. Why would I be?” I gave him a painful smile, but its true meaning went over his head.

  And so Aarav left his job at the farm and went to work with the communications department at the military headquarters. What I’d told him was true, though. I really did not want to remain inside a building for more than the time I remained in my room. Besides, the farms were next to the entrance to the cave, which led to the outside. Working there made me feel less trapped.

  I made many other friends after the first year of my stay at Shunya. People were in a state of mind where they needed each other, just as I needed them. I had less and less time to spend with myself or with Aarav, Pranav, and Geetika. Most of my time was spent at the cafeteria or the farms, talking with survivors from all walks of life. I made friends in that time, some of whom I was sympathetic with, some I tried to comfort, and in turn their words comforted me. Just listening to the hurt facilitated the stitching of wounds and cushioned our hearts.

  One of the bravest people I met in the city was a mother. The only family she was left with was her two-year-old child. She was brave not because she never cried but because she was strong enough to not let tragedy wound her spirit. The purpose of her life was her baby, and she smiled for him even as she talked about her lost husband. Her name was Lakshmi Diwedi, and her husband had been a shopkeeper. She had lost two of her older children, one aged four and the other nine.

  I found her one day working on the farm in the row beside mine, humming to herself. I knew the song she sang, and I listened for a long time whilst planting the seeds in the soil. Her child was strapped to her back with a cloth.

  “Where are you from?” she asked me once she had finished planting half of the row.

  “Rajgar,” I replied.

  She nodded and smiled. “How long have you been here?”

  “It’s been almost a year,” I said.

  “Me too,” she replied.

  I asked about her baby boy, and she affectionately talked about him.

  We spent a lot of time talking while working on the farm. She would sometimes hum, and I would play with her baby, entertaining him when he cried.

  One day, I met her after lunch. Her room, I had discovered, was only a few rooms to the left of mine. She invited me in, and we tal
ked about her life. I volunteered information about mine, but only some, since it was still painful to talk about. She gave me some great advice. Eventually I found the courage to ask how she did it.

  “Find something, however small, to live for,” she said.

  She was right. It was the realization I had had nine months back by the cave entry. I had almost forgotten what I had learnt, that I had to find a bigger purpose to hold on to.

  Moreover, the feeling of Aarav apparently leaving my side, at the time fuelled the fire that drove me to immerse myself into building a bigger social circle and work to distract my mind from thoughts that sunk me into melancholy.

  Chapter 10

  Laxmi introduced me to some other people. Families, mainly, with small kids. I started spending time with more people from different walks of life. They all worked at the farms, and they shared their lives with me as I did with them. The loss, pain, and hopelessness. It brought us together as a community. They were mostly families of farmers, shopkeepers, labourers. Some were teachers, bank employees, government service employees. Many were villagers from the local village in the mountains. They were all gentle and progressive people who were willing to adapt to change.

  A month or so later, we talked about forming a small union, where we discussed ways to better the crop yield. But that idea was nipped in the bud by an announcement in the cafeteria the very next day, from the general, that no unions or groups were to form in the city; the reason cited was that they would disturb the city’s functioning. We eventually forgot about the idea and moved into other matters.

  Many times, I would listen to the parents worry about their children’s education since there was no school facility.

  One day, Bramhari, a woman in her thirties, with an older child of around nine said to me, “You know, Miss Madhavi, I worry about Ritik. He was organized, and his mind was one focused when he was in school. Now he troubles not only me all the time but also himself. He has no place to properly unleash his energy.”