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  ‘Let’s pray the lights come back soon, otherwise we are in for some tough times.’

  As we rode back into our society, having failed in our mission, and having seen that things were spiralling out of control, I realized just how right Pandey was. I had never been very religious, but now I was happy to send up prayers to whichever god would listen that things got back to normal soon.

  THREE

  ‘God, it’s quiet.’

  Pandey was speaking to nobody in particular but I looked at him, sitting next to me on a stool, facing the gate, drinking hot tea to keep awake. I also had a cup in my hand and looked out beyond our gates at the darkness that was broken only by the handful of buildings that seemed to have their lights on. Yes, it was quiet. I had got so used to the sounds of cars and bikes going past, of some idiot loudly honking his horn, of people chattering, that it was indeed uncanny to hear none of those familiar noises. Now, there was not a soul out on the roads—everyone seemed to have retreated to the assumed safety of their homes—and of course, there were no cars or bikes. The only sound we could hear was the odd dog barking, though dogs also seemed to have hunkered down, perhaps aware that something was very different, and very wrong.

  ‘Pandeyji, what happened at R City? Do you think…’

  I didn’t have to complete my question. The same thing had clearly been on his mind.

  ‘No lights, no phones, no police. It was but a matter of time before some idiots got ideas and started looting. At least we saw some cops there. So someone was brave and honest enough to try and do their job in the middle of this mess.’

  I wondered if any policemen would be on duty now, and also if anyone would look at the few tall buildings with their lights on and get ideas. I hoped not. Security was something we had learned to take for granted. We had come to assume that, while in our apartments, we were somehow cocooned from the world outside. Normally, guards appointed by the company that had constructed the society would ride about on their bikes across the entire complex at night; each building had its own security guards; and the cops were always a phone call away. Now, there were no bikes, no cops to be reached and just two guards still at our building. The others had left an hour ago, and we could not really blame them. The manager, Anil, was also nowhere to be seen, and I guessed he had also set out for his own home. They had families of their own to worry about and, given the circumstances, it was only natural for them to want to get back home and look after them. Pandey and another guard, Raju, who had no family in Mumbai, were the only ones to stay back, and they both looked too scared to instil much confidence in anyone.

  I hadn’t been able to get any sleep back in my apartment and so, about an hour ago, I’d decided to come down. I was going crazy trying to turn on my tablet or TV every few minutes, hoping some connection to the outside world had been restored, but there was no such luck. I’d joined Pandey downstairs, and we had been watching the darkness, chatting to keep ourselves busy, and to stay awake.

  ‘I wonder what happened in the Test match with Australia in Delhi. I was hoping to watch the last day of play.’

  I looked at Pandey, a sinking feeling coming over me. The words came out slowly: ‘What if Delhi’s the same way we are?’

  His eyes widened as he took in what I had just said. I thought of Baba and then tried to suppress the worry. There was nothing I could do to help him and honestly no way of knowing how things were outside our immediate vicinity. Worrying about it would just drive me even crazier than I was already rapidly becoming.

  ‘Do you think that could happen?’

  ‘Pandeyji, I don’t want to scare anyone here so I’ve been quiet, but this is not just a power outage. Cars don’t stop with power outages. We all see that, we all know that, but perhaps we aren’t ready to acknowledge that something is going on that is much more than just a power shutdown.’

  ‘So what could it be?’

  He had me there. I shrugged and took another sip of the by-now tepid tea.

  ‘Solar flares?’

  We both turned to see Nitish, who handed over a thermos of fresh, hot tea, which we took gratefully. He grinned at me.

  ‘Since you’ve decided to be the watchman and I can’t get any sleep either, I thought I’d give you guys some company.’

  When he’d sat down and poured himself a glass, I asked him what he meant by ‘solar flares’.

  ‘I was thinking about it, and remembered that I’d read somewhere that a sudden and intense solar storm could throw out enough radiation to take out all our power and fry all electrical circuits. Sounded like science fiction back then, now I’m not so sure.’

  I started to say something, but then shut up. I didn’t know enough about what Nitish was saying to really have a point of view, but it did sound like science fiction. Surely somebody had thought this through and would have some way of dealing with it, wouldn’t they? Besides, we had more immediate, and less celestial, problems to deal with. I told Nitish about what we had seen in R City. He had been pretty confident when fixing the generator, but now he was beginning to look pale.

  He sighed deeply and said, ‘The lights better come on fast, or we’re going to be really screwed.’

  ‘Nitish, I think our lights are pointed the wrong way.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I gestured beyond the gate of our society, which Pandey had closed and tied shut with some ropes he found.

  ‘We’ve chosen to use our generators to light up the common areas at night, but if there is going to be any trouble, we need more lights pointed out so we can see who’s coming at us. Right now we can barely see a few feet beyond our gate since none of the streetlights are working.’

  Nitish was now looking really worried.

  ‘You’re overreacting, man. Let’s just sit tight tonight and tomorrow we may well feel silly for having had this conversation.’

  As he walked back to the lift, clearly not enjoying our company as much as he had hoped, I looked at Pandey.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘If there’s one thing I learned in the Army, it was that if things can get screwed up, they usually will.’

  There was one silver lining to what had happened. I didn’t need to worry about waking up on Monday morning and getting to office. Pandey nudged me awake, and I woke up, groggy and disoriented, to find myself sleeping on a chair in the guard cabin. Pandey and I had chatted till late, and then he asked to me to get some sleep. I told him I wasn’t sleepy, but had crashed out within seconds of sitting inside the cabin. Pandey had a broad smile on his face and I stood up, suddenly hopeful.

  ‘Have the lights…’

  ‘No, nothing like that. But there is something you should see.’

  I followed him out and when I saw the scene inside the parking lot, I too burst out laughing.

  Mr Suri was there, wearing a suit, carrying a laptop case, and kicking his car.

  I walked up to him, careful to wipe the smile off my face, remembering the little showdown we’d had at the meeting the previous day, but when he looked at me, he broke out into a sheepish grin.

  ‘I woke up, got dressed on autopilot and headed down to go to office.’

  ‘Didn’t your family tell you that the lights weren’t back?’

  He looked down.

  ‘Wife and kids were all asleep. I guess they’re pretty tired from everything that we’ve been dealing with. I was just so sure that things would be normal today.’

  ‘I’m sure they will be soon enough. Look at the bright side—you have a day off.’

  He walked away, grumbling to himself, and Mrs Khatri passed him as he entered the lift.

  ‘Aaditya, we’re calling another meeting in an hour. With the lights still not back, we need to discuss what we’re going to do. Can you please put up a notice on the board and pass the word around?’

  As she walked back into the lift, I looked at Pandey. ‘When did I become the guy who does all the running around for the committee?’

/>   He smiled. ‘You volunteered to do something. That in itself counts for a lot.’

  Everyone was gathered in the meeting room within an hour. Judging by the dark circles and yawns, I guessed that not many people had slept well the previous night. Mrs Khatri motioned for Nitish to come up and report on the fuel situation.

  ‘Well, we were able to get just one can of fuel last night, and when I looked at how much we’ve consumed over the past night, we can run our generator for three more nights if we use it the way we did.’

  I heard a buzz throughout the room as people took that in.

  ‘Damn, I can’t even take a hot bath!’

  I wasn’t sure who said that, but it was apparent to me that people were not grasping how difficult a situation we might be in. Lack of hot water was the last thing on my mind. Then I saw that Nitish was looking at me. What he expected me to say was not clear, and if he thought I could somehow make people less nervous, he was very wrong. Still, I soon saw that all eyes in the room were trained on me. I stepped to the middle of the room, going through in my mind how I was going to say what I had to without creating huge panic.

  ‘Look, last night we saw some looting going on at R City and at least a pretty large part of the mall was on fire.’

  Now I had their attention for sure.

  ‘I don’t want to panic anyone, but with the lights out and with no news on when it will be back, we should perhaps be a bit cautious. For starters, at night I’d like to cut power to some apartments and use the generator for a few lamps we can set up as searchlights near the boundary walls. I’m not planning to stay in my apartment anyway and we are short on guards, so I’d also like to have some people volunteer to do the rounds at night. That may free up a few lights that we don’t need in the apartments. Also, I’m hoping some people can volunteer to sleep without the fans on. It’s October and it’s not really hot at night anymore.’

  Suri was standing up now.

  ‘Don’t scare people. There are kids here and they don’t need to be spooked any more than they are already. Let’s just wait a bit longer before we start getting totally paranoid.’

  Someone else spoke up.

  ‘Shouldn’t we start getting a bit paranoid? There are no cops around, and by now the bloody police station may well be abandoned.’

  A few more voices chipped in till it was hard to make out what anyone was saying. I tried to butt in but nobody was in a mood to listen. Finally, everyone was shocked into silence by a loud banging sound. It was Pandey hitting the top of the table with his stick.

  ‘Shut up, all of you. Listen up and pay attention!’

  I saw him now in a new light. Just a day ago, he was a ‘mere’ guard who would never have dared raise his voice to any of the people living in the society. A few people glared at him, but he did not back down. The rules of how we engaged with each other and who got a place at the table were already changing, and it had been just over a day since we had woken up to this new reality.

  ‘Aadi sahib has some good ideas, and we would do well to listen to him.’

  ‘Who made you the bloody leader of this group?’

  It was Suri, shouting at Pandey. I could see Pandey’s grip tighten on his stick and I stepped behind him, gently tapping him on the shoulder.

  ‘Pandeyji, I’ve got this. Thanks.’

  ‘Folks, let’s wait till nightfall. If the lights are still not back by then, I would advise that we start thinking of some of the things I mentioned. I hope that’s fair.’

  Suri and a few others grumbled, but a decision delayed seemed good enough for them to declare victory and walk out. I overheard a few of them murmuring about how I and Pandey were the resident Nazis, which I chose to ignore. I decided to head out on a bicycle and figure out what was happening in our neighbourhood.

  Within a few minutes of my bicycle-borne recon trip, I realized that we were hardly the only ones feeling lost and anxious. Almost every society I passed had groups of people huddled near the gate, and once again, it was telling for me how modern, urban living meant that we’d had virtually no interaction with them. They lived within a few hundred meters of us, but now, even though we all faced a similar crisis, it didn’t occur to us to reach out to each other. Even within our building, there were more than a few people like Suri who did not see the issue as something that we should face as a group. To be honest, I had always prided myself on being an individualist, of never following the herd blindly, of having a mind of my own. But at a time like this, I began to question whether being part of a bigger community was a benefit that we had overlooked in our own narrow pursuits of career and strictly-defined social circles.

  I stopped by one of the societies and called out to the guard at the gate. ‘How are you guys doing? Have you heard anything about what’s happening?’

  The guard looked at me suspiciously. ‘Sorry, move on. I’m not supposed to say anything to outsiders.’

  Outsiders?

  Had we already started carving out boundaries? Was that how fickle our definition of civilization and society was, that once you turned off the lights, people fell back to their most basic, tribal ideas of identity?

  I didn’t press the guard though. Moving on, I saw that Central Avenue looked like something out of a ghost town, with not a single shop open and hardly anyone outside. The Haiko supermarket still seemed to be open, or at least there was someone inside as the shutters were half shut and I thought I glimpsed someone moving between the aisles. I wondered what would happen once people’s stocks of food began to run out and they descended on the store. Then I stopped myself with the thought that things couldn’t continue like this for that long, could they?

  I rode past the Meluha and Rodas hotels and saw a clutch of anxious-looking foreigners outside them. I could only imagine how panicked they must be, to be so far from home in a situation like this. The hotel security guards seemed to be on overdrive and waved me off when I lingered for a second outside the Meluha’s gates. I had to assume that word of the looting at R City had gotten around. I rode on and turned towards the Powai Lake, making for the police station. What I saw there really hit me like a punch to the gut. The station was not just abandoned, but looked to have been ransacked. Windows were smashed and papers were lying strewn around the floor. A large man was sitting on the sidewalk nearby, drinking straight from a bottle of Black Label, which seemed totally incongruous with his filthy, torn clothes. He looked at me, smiled and slurred, ‘No fucking police to push us around and nothing to keep the bloody rich pigs safe anymore. Welcome to our world.’

  He laughed and I saw that he wore a Rolex watch on his wrist and had a few gold chains around his neck. As he continued laughing, a loud voice rang out from deep inside the police station.

  ‘I asked you to keep watch. What the fuck are you laughing about?’

  Three men came outside, all dressed in filthy clothes and carrying an assortment of weapons. One of them had a sword in his hand, and its blade seemed to be covered with blood. Our eyes locked and I felt my heart pounding as adrenaline kicked in on overdrive. He screamed out to the drunk on the pavement.

  ‘Get him!’

  But by then I was pedalling away as hard as I could and when I got back to our building, I nearly collapsed into a chair in the meeting room. Mrs Khatri, Nitish and the others came up anxiously, asking me if I was okay. I looked at them and then at Pandey. I stood up and pulled Pandey aside.

  ‘What exactly did you do in the Army?’

  Turned out that while Pandey had been out of the Army for almost two decades, he still had skills and experiences that would be more than useful. For one, he had spent two tours in Kashmir as an infantryman, and had seen a bit of direct action in firefights with terrorists. Also, he knew a fair bit about what it took to guard a camp against incursions and how patrols could be set up for maximum efficiency. Finally, as it turned out, he had a thing for getting into fights, which had in part served to shorten his career in the Army, but the scrappy old ma
n was the best resource we had. The rest of our apartment building was occupied by bankers, teachers, accountants and executives, all of whom did very valuable and respectable jobs and were highly educated, but whose skills and degrees counted for absolutely nothing if we had to defend ourselves against the kind of goons I had just seen.

  Lunch was a tense affair. Everyone had once again pooled together their food, but unlike the party atmosphere of just a day ago, people were silent and sullen as they contemplated what the hours ahead held in store for us. I had shared what I’d seen. When I’d decided to tell them about the fire at R City, I’d worried about panicking people, but now I thought it was best that they knew exactly what was going on. There was no point in pretending trouble didn’t exist, because when you did that, trouble usually sought you out when you least expected it.

  Nitish was sitting in a corner with the Guhas and Mrs Khatri, and they all looked stressed. I walked over and sat down next to them. They were barely picking at the rice on their plates. The same scene was being played out across the many small groups gathered around the meeting room and common area on the ground floor. Even Suri, for all his proclaimed independence, was there. Everybody seemed to have come down, seeking comfort and security in the company of others.

  ‘Mrs Khatri, we need to think about food and water stocks.’

  When she only looked back at me helplessly, I continued. ‘Look, I spent many years in the NCC, and we learnt that in a flood or earthquake, the biggest worry becomes water and then food running out. The shops are closed, people’s food stocks will run out, and stuff in fridges will soon spoil. Our water tanks will empty soon, and if all electrical grids are down, will the water pumping stations work?’

  Nitish looked at me and shook his head.