After Annihilation: Would you want to survive?

by Gauri Mittal

  We were sitting in the cafeteria, her husband taking care of their two younger kids. Bramhari was short, with thin black hair tied in a braid.

  I listened to her for a while and an idea started taking shape in my mind. Here I was with a chance to immerse my energies into something I was quite certain I would enjoy: teaching. As always, I thought first about myself. The fact that it would solve the problem of a school education for kids only sparked after the initial selfish thought to make my life better. Maybe humans were inherently selfish. That’s what I told myself to justify it.

  “Bramhari,” I said, “there must be other parents looking for something similar for their kids. No?”

  “Yes, of course, almost all of them,” she said. “Especially the ones with young kids.”

  “Fantastic.” I clapped my hand together in glee. “I am thinking of starting a combined class for all ages. Like a school with a single class. I can teach some subjects and will get my friends to teach the others. Would you and the others be interested?”

  She nodded vigorously.

  “Then talk to the interested ones and get an estimate of how many are willing to support this project,” I said, smiling.

  “Yes, ma’am.” She smiled back.

  By the time I got back to my room, I was bubbling with excitement. There was something to be done. Something to be created. A possibility of change.

  At eight-thirty the next morning, I was at the administrative office to find Vishwaroopum, but I was told he was at the hospital. I headed right over and found him standing by Geetika, helping her manage the tougher and rowdier patients. He was also translating local dialects. His face was soft every time he looked at Geetika, but she was too busy with the injured, noticing nothing.

  After fifteen minutes, Vishwaroopum noticed me sitting on one of the side benches. He came over, and I got up.

  “Ms Madhavi,” he said, nodding.

  “Hi. I have something to discuss,” I said.

  “With me?” he asked.

  “With someone in authority,” I said.

  He nodded slightly. “I have a room in the admin office building,” he said. “Let’s meet there in twenty minutes.”

  The administrative office was sparsely crowded. It was dimly lit compared to the hospital. It had a false ceiling almost twenty feet high, white, with lights fixed at intervals. Beyond the entrance was a desk with a middle-aged woman wearing a sari sitting behind it.

  Where did she get a sari? How many coupons did that cost her? I wondered curiously. She looked up briefly, then went back to reading the documents at her desk.

  I took a right, and further in were five rooms along a corridor. There were no names, only positions mentioned on the doors. They were labelled as “Prime Minister”, “Cabinet”, “Defence”, “PMC”, and “Lounge”.

  Confused as to where I was, I looked around for a while. The door to the fourth room labelled Defence opened, and Pranav came out.

  “Madhavi!” he exclaimed.

  “Hi.” I pressed my lips together.

  “Did you come to see me?” he asked.

  “Uh, well, actually…” I began awkwardly, but was interrupted by Vishwaroopum’s presence.

  He nodded to Pranav and motioned for me to follow him into the last room, which had “Cabinet” on its door. Pranav looked on quizzically as followed Vishwaroopum in. I sat down at the desk opposite him.

  “Yes, Miss Madhavi?” he asked.

  “I have been thinking of implementing a small project for our city,” I said. “I just thought you might be the best person to talk to about this. Although, I admit I don’t know what it is exactly you do and the position you hold in this city.”

  “Go on.”

  At first I hesitated, but then, seeing his supportive gesture, decided to go on. “A lot of people who work with me on the farms are families,” I said. “I have been working with them for one year now, and I’ve realized one the biggest concerns they have is the lack of a facility for education, for their kids. I was thinking of starting a class for some of the kids in the city, the ones whose parents are interested. I would teach, and I could ask some of my friends to teach there as well. We can build it up slowly.”

  Vishwaroopum sat there, thinking. Finally, he said, “That is a fantastic idea. I wonder why I didn’t think of it?”

  I relaxed. I had been afraid it would sound too stupid and presumptuous of me to propose it.

  “When would you like to start?” he asked.

  “Well, can you make it happen?” I asked. “People say you are the ‘inspection officer’. If you do not mind, may I ask what exactly that means?”

  “It is as it sounds. I inspect the nitty-gritty ground details of the city,” he said vaguely.

  “Pranav told me when we first met that he contributed to the building of this city,” I said, “but I have always suspected you have a similar role. You seem more at home here than any of the others. Some people from the local village told me you’ve lived in this area for over two years, before this city was built. It all seems like half information, and I would like to know more about it before I accept your help.”

  “You are very meticulous and straightforward in your approach,” he said. “First, I have a question. You could have gone to Pranav for this school project request. He is a member of the prime minister’s committee in the government, once the prime minister returns to power. At present he is only secretary to the general, but he still has some influence. Why did you approach me?”

  I shrugged. “I just thought you seem to be well connected to people on the ground level and would have a better understanding of their problems. Also, with Pranav, we are good friends, and if he didn’t like my suggestion, he might hesitate in declining it.”

  In my mind was another thought. Pranav might consider it a favour and start expecting me to reciprocate his feelings, which I was by now convinced he harboured for me. That was the real reason I had not immediately approached him.

  Vishwaroopum looked satisfied with my answer. “I will tell you about myself and how this city got built, but it’s quite a long story. Are you sure you want to listen?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Very well,” he said. “I hope you will keep it to yourself. I do not like to draw attention to myself.”

  I nodded.

  He started his tale.

  “It was me who first dreamt of this idea. A long time ago, I was an intelligence spy for Iddis. After a particularly harrowing experience and an injury to my spine, I was let go. I was given a different identity and relocated to a different city, but I developed post-traumatic stress disorder. I had no family. And I wanted to get away from society. I left everything and came to these mountains when I was thirty-five years old. I stayed in different villages, adapting to their way of life. I felt at peace. Then, around four years ago, I met Pranav by chance.

  “I was living by myself then, in that cave I told you about, beyond the path that opens from 3rd Street. I stayed there a few months in further solitude, away from the villages. I had money in the bank. My pension. There was a village at the edge of the forest that the cave opens into. From there, I would get my morning meal and dinner. Going to the village and buying the meals was my only connection with society. I slept in the cave by the bank of the lake. The rest of the time I would explore the outside mountains, the inside of the cave, and the underground path that led here, into this place we currently sit. This underground cave where Shunya exists was not as big as it is now. It was expanded when the city was constructed.

  “After two years of peaceful existence, people from various oil companies started infiltrating the area. I hated people. They always destroyed whatever they stepped foot on. They would put up camps and go about poking their noses in the business of villagers. When they began bombing the mountains, I was forced to wake up from my slumber of two years and go back into the world. I couldn’t remain in solitude anymore. I had to know what was happening. />
  “The very next day, I went to the village at the edge of the forest. Hearing the villagers discuss the ways to drive them away, I came to know the extent of the oil crisis the world was under. Apparently, a third world war was a possibility.

  “I made a trip to the city. I went to the bank and accessed the locker where I had stored some important contacts and got in touch with a friend I used to work with at the intelligence agency. I asked him about the situation, and he let me know in cryptic terms the real scenarios at hand. The government did not want to seem incompetent, and the truth was being suppressed by the media. Three or four bunkers had been set up with capacity for no more than a hundred people, storing precious records, gold, and hiding high government officials with resources to last barely a year.

  “But they were not sufficient enough to ensure survival in cases of long-term inhabitable conditions on the surface of the planet. We needed something with a capacity of at least ten thousand, along with numerous ones in the remotest parts of the country, where the enemy would never suspect our presence.

  “I made some more calls from a public phone to my overseas contacts. Ones who had been informants and plants, all of whom I knew personally. A week of gathering information later, I knew war was an inevitability and understood it was a certainty that it would be nuclear and universally destructive. I could not believe how apathetic the government was being about the situation. It was as if they themselves were not ready to accept reality.

  “If Aarkans attacked Iddis to seize control over the state and consequently over the West Iddis Sea area, which contained oil, all hell would break loose. In such a situation, Iddis would retaliate, and so would its allies. A full-out nuclear world war would mean there would be need of big underground shelters. One that could sustain a large population for an extended period of time. Now, I knew the government had been working in secret with Rehaar for the past years, developing its nuclear potential to levels Aarkans, Pinaar, and Calam had never imagined. If Shunya-like shelters had not been set up elsewhere in the world, then at least one in Iddis was vital for the continuation of our species.

  “I returned to the cave a week later and spent another three days there. I thought about what could be done to stop the war from happening, and if it did happen, how to ensure survival. Small bunkers wouldn’t do. What we needed was a city, but time was short, and finding an appropriate place even more difficult. The idea clicked that I was literally sitting on the solution. The path that led to the underground cave from within the very cave that was my home—it would be perfect for the plan that was taking shape in my mind.

  “The next day, I cleaned up at a nearby inn and took a train to Rajgar, the capital. I was going to visit my former boss at the intelligence agency about my idea, but when I got there, I found out he had quit. As I said, when I was let go from the government agency, I had been issued a new identity. I could no longer identify as an agent and ask to meet anyone. I went to the defence ministry to see if I could talk to someone there.

  “Sitting outside the office of the minister of defence, I met Pranav for the first time. He was a young man, not quite twenty-six years old at the time. He held a briefcase and looked haggard but determined to go inside and meet the minister. We sat together for an hour, and he introduced himself. He was originally an architect, but he lost interest in his work and dedicated himself to becoming a construction tycoon.

  “He had tasted fast success and was now facing rapid failure. The last government tender had been given to someone else, even though Pranav’s company had signed the contract. He was there to discuss the matter. He did not offer the last piece of information on his own. I learned of it from a phone call he made.

  “He was ushered inside. When he came out two hours later, he was fuming. He looked over at me, and something sparked in my mind. This guy would be useful. Anyway, I had no other choice, and where would I find someone with such a perfect background in so short a period of time? I decided I would give it a try.

  “I stopped him before he could leave. He said he was busy, but I told him I had a proposition for him. I told him I’d heard what was going on with his business when he was on the phone and that I was there for something not very different.

  “He looked at me with suspicion and curiosity, but he agreed to talk. We went to a tea stall outside and sat down on one of the rustic benches. He had followed me out, and that meant he had lost all hope in whatever solution he had previously had to raise his company from the pit of loss.

  “I asked him what was most in demand, and he said he didn’t know, taking a guess with oil. He said the government had been saying they found oil reserves and mentioned the upheaval with Aarkans was to end soon. Also, he’d heard rumours about there being some in the north-eastern mountains. I told him there was but that it could never be drilled. It was impossible. I’d studied that land. I’d lived there for two years. I asked what he thought would happen next?

  “War, he said. And indeed, that’s what some were speculating. But the government had dismissed it as bogus news. At first, he did not believe me or my credentials. I took out the old badge I had taken from my locker and showed it to him. I told him there was going to be a nuclear war, and it would be on a massive scale. We needed shelters. Big ones and underground, to protect as many people as we can. That was the most urgent need, and if wasn’t carried out as soon as possible, Iddis would perish. All our people would die. I explained how I’d come to talk to the defence minister about the matter, but they wouldn’t let me enter until I told them who I was. I couldn’t do that.

  “‘You just told me,’ he said. I told him I’d decided to take a chance, and after a bit of thinking, he asked what I needed, and that’s when we started to plan. His only stipulation was that he be given an important position in the city to ensure the administration didn’t play around with him like the defence minister had. He wanted to teach him a lesson.

  “Pranav agreed after much thought and deliberation. He had no other way out of his current predicament. He was about to go bankrupt. Even if he did not believe me and the war did not happen, his company wouldn’t have resurfaced. And though they were not ready to accept it publicly and were blocking the media from showing the truth, internally the government knew very well what was going to happen. That was why they were building lone bunkers and fervently trying to dig up oil in the mountains.

  “Pranav was an ambitious man. If the city was all that was going to be left, he would have a place of power in it. He would get that by being instrumental in building it. He had himself covered from both sides. Though initially not completely confident about the idea, as he explored the location and we started working on it, he became more and more involved.

  “Four days after we had first talked, I took him to my cave to show him the underground cavity it led to. We set up a tent, and I led him through the winding path that went deeper and deeper into the earth. I was carrying a wooden flame torch that I had made with an old cloth and kerosene oil I sometimes got from the village. The walls were close around us, and the ground was uneven. Pranav followed me cautiously. It seemed he did not yet trust me. The path opened up into a cavity. We could feel the difference in the air and smell that surrounded us. I waited for Pranav to say something.

  “He asked where we were, standing a few paces behind me, one hand in the pocket of his pants, which I suspected held a knife. I took a few steps forward to get farther away from him and then turned around, facing him. His face revealed no emotion, but a twitching in his forehead revealed it was with an effort that he held himself in check.

  “He asked me again where we were. It was an underground cave. Quite big, but it would need much expansion. The potential of this place laid in the presence of small tributaries that ran underground and connected the three lakes. The tributaries emerged and disappear from fissures and rocks. The first one was the one on the surface inside the cave. The second one beyond the wall at the opposite end. The third was further
underground. It could be heard on pressing our ear to the ground.

  “Pranav studied my face for a full minute. Then, taking his hand out of his pocket, he slowly got down on his knees and, bending further down, pressed his left ear to the ground to confirm what I told him.

  “He asked many more questions about the place and called people from his company to thoroughly explore the area.

  “Eventually, the project was presented to and approved by the government. Many months into the project Pranav said the defence minister was refusing public access to Shunya. That was when I learned the minister had started to recruit rich businessmen around the country who were willing to spend hefty bucks to get a place in. Ten million for one family room.

  “I believed most of it would go into his own pockets. He really was corrupt to the core. But I was also willing to bet none of the people he was taking money from would make it in time. That the money was going to burn in the bank accounts of the defence minister and his cronies once the war had begun, all at the cost of the lives of people who had the potential to be saved.

  “But Pranav said he was right. If Shunya’s presence were known, if people found out it wasn’t just another mining project, it would be bombed. I argued against it, insisting the major cities would be targeted first. But the reason why the government was not very concerned about the war was that in the last five years, they had grown their nuclear arsenal to levels comparable to Aarkans. They predicted that if Aarkans, Pinaar, or Calam attacked, they would simply retaliate and annihilate them.

  “They were naïve. They did not understand that a nuclear explosion in another country would harm their own as well. In their arrogance, they forgot we share the Earth. The prime minister was surrounded by sycophants who were only concerned with the money they stashed in their banks and the influence they held in society.