Chapter 11 #2
Samar remained silent, his controller held between two firm hands, between his lean but muscular thighs. She averted her eyes before she started imagining how they looked. She didn't need to imagine; she had seen them in the gym.
Double Dragon flashed in bold before them, and on the count of three, the game began. Billy’s (in this case, her) girlfriend was kidnapped. And she had to find her along with Billy’s brother. Enemies were coming in from both sides and they had to beat them up.
She was all maniacal, attacking every button on her controller, throwing punches, elbows, and kicks in random order.
She did not look left or right. Samar, on the other hand, was meticulous, jumping more than attacking, picking up fallen knives or guns and killing more at once.
His points were multiplying like the plague, hers were…
“Daaxsaab, this is not the SFF, itne saleeke se maroge toh kab marenge?![73]” She tried to nudge him with her knee. He did not pay heed.
“O, Daaxsaab, left side se aa raha hai![74]”
She thought he would look to the left; instead, he kept punching the one on the right.
“He came he came he came…” she tried to distract him, and a punch landed on her. “Fuck!”
“Sa-mar Bhai-ya! Sa-mar Bhai-ya!!” “Sa-mar Bhai-ya!”
“Oye!” She hollered at the traitors behind her. And in that momentary distraction, her player was knocked on his arse. “Oh shit!”
Samar was there, though, kicking the next assailant away before she got pummelled.
She jumped back to her feet and went behind the assailants who were trying to attack him.
Thereafter, she stopped baiting him. They beat the bad guys up one after another, having each other’s backs without even asking.
“Sa-mar! A-maal! Sa-mar! A-maal! Sa-mar! A-maal!”
Amaal felt giddy.
He kicked the final guy, and they landed inside a vault. The tent went silent. The girl strutted out. And suddenly the screen exploded.
Now, they were pitted against each other for the girl.
“Fuck I forgot about this.” Amaal raised her eyes to the man sitting beside her, gaze on the screen. The tent was deathly silent now.
“Samar is not competitive at all,” she announced. “Right, Samar?” She jiggled her thumb on the joystick to come closer to him. He was standing straight, no movement. Amaal glanced at the man beside her again. “Samar?”
“Ooooooh!”
She glanced at the screen, and Billy was flat on his arse. His brother had punched him. She gaped at Samar. The side of his mouth curled.
“Haww!”
She knocked the joystick on her controller and jumped to her feet, only to be kicked back down. “SAMAR!”
The tent erupted.
The laughter was loud, the boos louder, the cheers for him even louder as he kicked her again.
“Sa-mar Bhaiya! Sa-mar Bhaiya!” He pummelled her to the chants. And continued to pummel her even as she knocked her joystick all ways to get a few punches in. He blocked them all. She groaned, getting half up from her chair, nudging the joystick like a lunatic.
Samar landed one jumping punch.
And then Billy was dead.
The girl walked to his brother.
And Samar set his controller back on the table between them.
“Sa-mar Bhai-ya!” “Sa-mar Bhai-ya!” The chants became a song. “Sa-mar Bhai-ya!” Sa-mar Bhai-ya!!”
Amaal huffed.
A hand came and opened in her field of vision. She glanced at the taut arm that led to honed muscles and a lean neck. The stubbled chin and the black eyes. Smiling now.
Amaal grunted, but stood to her feet and put her hand in his for a shake.
“Well played.” He said in his military voice, shaking her hand more than the one-pump that she had become used to when it came to them. Amaal found herself smiling begrudgingly.
“Look here, smile!”
Their heads turned, and a flash went off on her iPhone that Suchi was using for candids.
“One more.”
Amaal smiled, her hand still in Samar’s.
“I’m next, I’m next!” Someone pushed her, but her arm was pulled by Samar’s in time, his hand closing around her back and safely parking her aside. They stumbled to a corner, watching another war break out over who was going to play next.
“They are all drunk animals today.” Samar smiled, a rare expression on his face. It looked tired, but more alive than she had ever seen it.
“You are a sober ghost today,” she retorted. “Actually, you are a sober ghost every day.”
His chin dipped, dark eyes staring down at her.
“Do I need to ask if you ever worked in my office drunk?”
“What if I say I did?”
“You are giving me reasons to fire you.”
“You cannot fire me, Atharva is my boss.”
His eyebrows rose, glancing at the space around them — Jammu KDP, his area, where he was her boss.
Amaal rolled her eyes — “Tomorrow I move back to Srinagar, so, Atharva is my boss. Your boss time stops at…” she looked at her watch, then squinted.
She was buzzed, not drunk. “Is this the minute hand or seconds hand?” She showed her wrist to him.
And realised that his hands were still around her — one holding her hand in a shake, the other around her back to protect her.
Amaal’s heartbeat picked up just as the hand on her back slid away.
But he leaned in, eyeing her watch.
“Both hands point to sleeping time. If you have eaten, go sleep. What time is your flight tomorrow?”
“Ok, Daddy, you go haunt the building. I am going to go have fun.”
“Amaal.” He tightened his hold on her hand before she could jump back into the party. Her heart was now running like some time bomb. Tick-tick, tick-tock, whatever ticked like it was about to explode.
“It was nice working with you.”
She gaped at him, waiting for more. Nothing came. She still kept quiet, hoping he would fill the silence. But when had he ever?
“That’s it?” She provoked.
He nodded.
“Are you sure?”
He chuckled — “Drink some water, or coffee. Let me see if somebody is sober enough to make it for you.”
She shut her eyes, shaking her head.
“What happened?” His free hand came and steadied her. That’s when she realised that she was swaying, only a smidge.
“I don’t want to go up so soon.”
“Then sit somewhere.”
He helped her to one of the many, many empty chairs at the back, because everybody was huddled around the game.
She had a splendid view of the screen from here, the game going on in full swing.
The violence, top-notch. Something pressed into her hand, and she felt the small plastic glass of water with a straw inserted.
Amaal pushed it into her mouth and sipped, raising her eyes to the man who had gotten it.
His chin tipped, and he began to move away.
She caught his wrist — “Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back.”
Samar left her there, with the promise of a return.
And strangely, in the year that she had been with him, around him, she corrected, she had discovered that he spoke very few words, but kept each and every one of them.
She turned to see where he had gone, but he had again vanished into thin air.
Amaal got to her feet, everything stable after the water.
Some clean night air would make it even better.
She walked out of the tent, the warm air inside cooling down to the October night of Jammu.
The premonition of winter was heavy in the scent of the night, the crispness reminding her of London’s autumn.
She had been cut off from London for a long time.
In the last week, she had also been cut off from Mom and Dad.
Their messages still popped up, but she had been unable to reply to them more than once a day.
The last leg of the election had been draining.
She patted her pocket to message them now, then realised it was with Suchi.
Amaal took a deep breath, feeling like hardly any time had passed since she had taken this job with KDP.
Today, 10 months after joining, she hardly called it a job.
She had amalgamated so seamlessly here that…
life with another party, another leader, another company looked impossible.
She knew she would have to jump if she wanted to grow.
But that was for the future. Right now, she was just 24, still picking up the tricks of the trade, enjoying herself, planning her future house in Srinagar, being with decent people in this dirty field…
“Hoye!”
She jolted out of her thoughts, squinting in the dark. Sounds of a scuffle came from somewhere. Leaves rustling. Something thumped. The noise behind her was background noise now. Amaal took quick steps towards the main gate, crossing her arms across her chest. It was deserted.
“… apne Atharva Kaul ko bol dena, yaha jor laga liya hai, Kashmir mein yeh kiya na toh usko zinda jala denge waha.[75]”
Amaal rounded the pillar of the gate and gasped. A man, in the dark, as tall as Samar, was trying to pin him to the wall with his forearm. Samar knocked his knee into his stomach and decapacitated him. He doubled over, roared, and charged forward.
“What is happening here?!” Amaal yelled, walking out of the gate. “I am calling the Police.”
“Ae, Police, andar jaa.[76]” The man began to advance on her, but Samar was quicker, pushing her behind himself with one hand while grabbing his throat with the other. His face came under the streetlight and Amaal gasped. He was from Awaami. She had seen him. He was their Jammu Youth Leader.
Samar did something to his throat, and his flailing arms suddenly fell to his sides.
“Ab nikal.[77]” Samar shoved him so hard that he stumbled a dozen steps back. “Go inside,” he told her.
“I am here.”
“Go. Inside.”
His voice was low, but his tone was menacing. Amaal stumbled back a few steps too, enough to leave his peripheral vision. She did not run inside, though. She stood just at the edge of the gate, out of their sight.
“Tum ch****o ko Sufiyaan Bhaijaan hi theek karenge. Tum keede makode ho unke liye. JMC mein jo haath-pair maarne hai maar lo. Aur kuch nahi milna tumko.[78]”