The Lavesh started walking, and out of habit, he fished his phone from his pocket. The screen blinked—battery 79%—but there was no network icon, no signal bars. For a moment, that number felt like some kind of comfort, as if the device could still offer something familiar. But it couldn't.
He slipped it back and walked on, his boots scuffing the packed earth, when a voice called from behind—bright, familiar, cutting through the odd silence of the place.
"Lavesh! You here, too?"
He turned. For a strange heartbeat the world narrowed to one face: Poornima, a classmate from college. The sight struck him with an awkward, almost private recognition. They hadn't spoken since graduation. Never close, only acquaintances. Yet here, in this broken village in an alien world, that small connection felt strangely reassuring.
"Poornima?" he said, trying to keep his tone even.
Her smile held more relief than surprise. "Hey. Small world, huh?"
There was a moment of silence—one of those pauses filled with everything two people never said. Lavesh felt the familiar distance that once existed between them, and the absurdity of it now.
He said, lightly, "You said you wouldn't call after college."
Poornima rolled her eyes. "Life got complicated. And here? Everything is complicated." She nudged his shoulder, wrapped in a scarf. "And you—you're still chasing calls and messages, I see."
"I was joking," he said. She laughed, a short, clean sound that loosened something inside him.
"What are you doing here? Hunting?" she asked.
"No," Lavesh said. "Just wandering. Observing the place. The architecture, mostly." He shrugged. It felt natural to say—he was an architect, after all; lines and layouts stood out to him even when the world didn't make sense.
Poornima's expression brightened. "Really? So what do you think of the layout here?"
He glanced around. The village had a kind of rushed order to it—circular pathways, wide lanes, homes with scaffolding marks. "The roads are at least eight meters wide," he said, easing into the familiar logic. "Most houses are two-storey. Windows face north—lets in indirect light. Ventilation's decent, considering how fast this place was built."
"So you're still doing architecture?" she asked, half teasing, half impressed.
"Yeah. But not in an office anymore." They shared a look that quietly acknowledged everything that was gone.
Poornima grinned. "Which shelter did you pick? Have you seen Chaitya? She's been calling you 'Grandpa'—says you'll be the steady one."
Lavesh remember. "Chaitya called me Grandpa?"
Poornima told him, "Wait—there are others here. Vaibhav, Ansh."
He turned back, surprised. "They're here?" A quick, sharp flicker of unease passed through him. Faces from another life, ones he hadn't expected to find in this strange place.
"Come, I'll show you," Poornima said.
They walked together through narrow lanes until they reached a shelter—an improvised apartment built against the side of a larger communal structure. Inside, the air was warm and crowded with salvaged comfort: blankets thrown over crates, a battered lamp, torn maps spread across a table.
On the sofa sat two figures—one cross-legged, the other half-leaning against stacked sacks. They straightened when they saw him.
One sprang up, hand raised. "Jai Shree Krishna!"
The other dipped his head. "Jai Swaminarayan."
Two greetings, two traditions—yet somehow they both felt like a flag of normalcy planted in this strange world.
Lavesh responded without thinking, "Jai Osho," and for a brief moment, the room felt like an ordinary evening.
"How's life? How's your study?" someone asked—the kind of question that belonged to another world.
"Still joking?" one of them said, half amused, half scolding. "You haven't changed."
Lavesh held up both hands, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. "I was just trying to keep things calm. Make it a little less tense." light was turning soft, the kind that made shadows longer and the air a little too quiet. The sky above the village shimmered faintly in silver haze. Lavesh looked around at the small group of familiar faces inside the shelter and allowed himself a short laugh.
"Didn't think I'd run into four of you here," he said.
"Guess the world's smaller than it looks."