The fish start washing up at dawn. By midmorning, the shore is so thick with them that the water no longer flows in waves, sloshing instead against a solid rim of carcasses. Although most of the fish have decomposed or been partially eaten, several still have intact heads, their eyes clear and wide open, as if witness to a sight so shocking it has caused instant death. Given the scarcity of food supplies, some of the townsfolk go up with baskets to salvage the more edible-looking chunks.
The sea soon turns black, putting an end to the foraging. At first, it looks like a vast expanse of shadow, the kind that rolls in under approaching clouds. But the sky is clear, and the shadow turns out to have great density and substance—clumps of ash and filament and debris, as if a giant cremation urn has been emptied into the sea. Larger pieces float in as the tide intensifies—charred lumber and furniture, blackened corpses that joust with the fish for space on the beach, even an enormous banyan, its leafless branches as tarry as its roots, hurled onto shore by the increasingly angry waves. At some point, it starts looking like a tsunami, and residents gather at the fort, abandoning their low-lying houses. But although the sea advances all the way past the waterfront stalls and across Fort Road, it eventually subsides, leaving behind a profusion of listlessly floating objects. A mass one could almost walk across, like ice floes in an Arctic waterway.
Is the debris radioactive? The local government surveyor examines the depth of the char marks and declares it likely. Parents start shrieking at children to get away from the banyan, whose roots have somehow become irresistible playthings to swing from. A woman hysterically tries to vomit up the fish she’s ingested for lunch. A gang of urchins continues sorting through the wreckage for valuables, unmindful of the commotion.
Assuming the soundness of the surveyor’s diagnosis, a city has been hit. The question is which one? The only possibility can be Bombay—none of the other seven places on the list lie on the Arabian Sea. Except it’s October, when the monsoon currents are in the process of reversing. The debris could equally well have floated in from the other direction, down from Pakistan—in which case the city destroyed would be Karachi. Or even some place further, like Muscat, in Oman.
The panic, which bubbled off into euphoria just a few mornings ago, surges back. Nuclear bombs are like potato chips, nobody can stop at just one. Every scenario predicts that a country under attack will launch all its weapons at once to avoid losing them. Does this mean all eight targets on the list have been struck? What about the remaining two hundred or so warheads in the combined possession of India and Pakistan? With even a single missile fired, wouldn’t the two enemies have responded by launching this entire arsenal?
Continuing this line of thought, once such attacks started, wouldn’t other countries be unavoidably drawn in? Could they have set off enough devices to obliterate life on the entire planet?
The true horror of the bodies in the harbor starts sinking in: this just represents a speck of the hundreds of thousands already killed. How many untold more are set to perish?—does Diu have any chance of escape? All eyes turn to the sky, to keep watch for the legendary death clouds. The toxic masses which must now rove the globe like giant dinosaurs, devouring anything that moves in their path. Depending on how many bombs have detonated, the clouds will either dissipate over time or merge together to wipe us all out. Sure enough, the first smudge appears a day later, clotting the air from sea to sky in a sweater-like knit of grey. As some flee and others shutter themselves, the wind intervenes to blow the mass off to the north. A second cloud the next week blusters right into town. But it brings nothing more baneful than rain—perhaps a holdover from the long-expended monsoon.
Reports stream in about towns that have not fared as well—over which lingering palls have triggered ballooning tumors and instant blindness. Babies vomiting blood, cattle driven mad and chewing on their own limbs, well water so toxic it leaks right through people’s throats when they try to drink it. However, no actual refugees fleeing such stricken spots accompany these accounts.
One day, a couple does arrive, announcing they’ve trekked all the way from Ahmedabad. The woman’s face is black and oozing, the man has a stump for his left hand. But they seem in remarkably good spirits. At least two nuclear bombs went off in the air on the nineteenth, they say, describing horrific funnels of death through which bodies melted like wax and fireballs gusted like wind. They’ve walked to Diu to offer a coconut to their family shrine in thanks. They’ll go to Junagadh next to climb to the temple atop the ten-thousand-step hill.
People marvel at their pluck, offer them chappatis and milk. But after their departure, there’s puzzlement about how they could have escaped, drinking tea on their verandah, when everything around them vaporized. Perhaps they’ve embellished things—at the very least, the bombs they saw explode couldn’t have been atomic.
By now, rumors swell unchecked by the day—pouring forth from neighboring villages, alleged radio broadcasts (even some miraculous ones on television), and most prolifically of all, people’s imaginations. Delhi lies in ruins, as does the entire belt of north and northeastern states. The Ganges has evaporated, the Deccan plateau collapsed, the heat has melted the entire Himalayan range. The center of the country has been so mercilessly bombed that seawater now erupts through a hole in the land. Only the southernmost states have been saved, the ones out of Pakistani range. Which means that for the generations to come, darkies will reign.
Vincent tries boosting his radio’s reception with an assortment of improvised antennas. The most successful of these involves a long length of downed power cable strung just so between the papaya trees in the garden. One night, he tunes in to a ham operator warning people to stay away from Delhi, which has been wiped out by at least six warheads. The next day, he chances upon a conversation between two hams in the Delhi suburbs, discussing where one might still be able to buy fresh milk. Over the next few weeks, he collects similar snippets from Calcutta, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Chennai, pointing to contradictory fates. He even believes he “copies” England in the wee hours one morning, but the signal is so weak he can make out little beyond the British accent. Only the sign-off streams in loud and distinct. “Cheerio, old man. G6AQR clear.”
COCOONED IN OUR private loss, Sarita and I remain insulated from the prevailing disquiet. We listen to the Sequeiras argue about the radio broadcasts: despite the frequent claims of destruction, could their rising number imply the country (and by extension, the planet) has been spared? What is the significance of the clouds petering out? How harmful are the growing bouts of diffuse haze? Given that so many had already fled the cities based on the warnings, how high will the death toll rise? Questions that in our benumbed state, seem to pertain to some abstract alternative universe.
I don’t own up to my deception—Sequeira still believes I’m Sarita’s husband, Karun her brother. “Ijaz and Sarita,” he introduces us to everyone. “Getting married against religious norms at a time like this. Truly an inspiring example, a couple whose bravery will lead the way.” He has championed us so passionately to his family (direct descendants of the original Portuguese duke who set up the colony, he claims) that they have embraced us as their own.