Chapter 24 Touring Ladakh was like stepping back into the SFF…
Touring Ladakh was like stepping back into the SFF. The same rugged mountains, the same broken craters, the same white desert, the same unforgiving climate. And the same smell of vastness. His nostrils, though, only smelled blood. Memory was a bitch like that.
“Daaxsaab! Daaxsaaaaab! One down!”
“Take him!”
“Suction!”
“Daaaaaaxsaab!”
“Go, go, go!”
“Samar, quick!”
And then, out of nowhere, a waft of lilies would float across his nose.
“Is that why you walked away from me four years ago?”
Samar startled, eyeing the crowd in front of him.
The ground was packed, the air cold, the night falling fast. He stood on the sidelines, feeling the reverberations of the public’s euphoria thump through his ears.
For all his faults, Atharva knew just how to get a rally going.
He knew how to get people going. He knew how to get a stagnant situation going.
This afternoon, they had discovered that CM Mohsin Sheikh had filed multiple cases against their dummy candidates with the Election Commission.
If that wasn’t enough, he was coming for a rally in Leh tonight to challenge Atharva.
Atharva had just said — “We cannot start cross-firing but counterfire is ours.” And then gone on to attract a crowd double of what they had expected for this big show.
The mobile in his pocket vibrated. Samar pulled it out and saw a horde of missed calls. From different contacts, including Faris, and his informants from Awaami. But the contact that made him snap to attention was Amaal.
He didn’t even do it consciously. His thumb pressed her contact for a return call, and he plastered it to his ear, turning away from the noise and towards the stage. Two rings. Three rings.
“Hello?” Her voice was broken, muffled with all the noise in his other ear.
“You called?” He yelled into the phone, pushing a finger into his ear.
“Yes, I was not able to get through to Atharva o…r ureshi…”
“They are at the ground's gate… You are breaking up.”
“Hell…o? What?”
“I said they are at the ground’s gate!” He turned his volume up. “Rally!”
“Mohsin…kh is…”
“Can’t hear you!”
“Dead! Dead!”
Samar stilled.
“Dead?” He confirmed.
“Yes! Acc…dent while coming to his rally in Leh… eck security measures Samar!”
“Yes, yes…”
Atharva and Qureshi came striding towards the stage, smiling, waving, with a bubble of security and KDP members around them.
Samar began to move towards them, hoping to catch Atharva’s ear before he walked up the stage.
But he had already turned and began striding up the stairs.
Samar ran, tearing through Qureshi’s team of members and Qureshi himself, catching up in time to cover Atharva’s right, the side facing the crowd. He pushed ahead of Atharva.
“Atharva, listen…”
They were on the last step and about to step on the stage when he registered something hurled in the air.
And then his collar was snatched by Atharva before they both fell down.
A loud boom tore through the air. The crowd erupted in screams. Samar rolled over and saw smoke near the stage.
His back felt locked. But Atharva was already on his feet, swaying. “Where?”
“At the foot of the stage!” One of their security guards was yelling. “Two bodyguards and one member injured. First Aid is on their way to you sir.”
“What is the intensity?” Atharva barked. Samar found his bearings and jumped to his feet, his back forgotten. Atharva was wiping blood off the back of his ear. His nose was bleeding.
“Roof of a photo studio opposite. MANPAD used from the second floor we think.” Their Security Head informed as a bubble closed around them.
“Any more?”
“No, this looked like a threat to break the rally. We are sweeping the place… How many?” He barked into his walkie.
“Any more?… Good. Hold them for me… Out.” He tucked the walkie-talkie in his pocket and turned to them — “Three men in mid-twenties, found with a make-shift catapult, they had three more petrol bombs but they have been ceased. We are good.”
“Are you sure there is no more threat?”
“Positive.”
“Evacuate the ground!” Samar ordered, grabbing Atharva’s bicep that was grazed. He caught Atharva by the neck to tilt his head, but Atharva pushed his hand away.
“Let me see man, you hurt your head when you fell. You took my body weight as well…”
“I am fine.”
He clearly wasn’t.
“Order immediate evacuation,” Samar bellowed to the security behind him.
“No!” Atharva cut him off. “Can’t you see? It’s going to be a bigger stampede if they order immediate evacuation.”
Samar turned. The crowd was going berserk in front of them, held back only by barricades and manned exits.
“We can’t possibly do the rally now…”
“Hell with the rally,” Atharva strode and climbed up the broken stage.
“Atharva!” Samar yelled, looking back at Qureshi already managing the team of volunteers to run down to exit routes.
“Don’t run,” Atharva’s voice reverberated on the mic. “You will end up hurting each other if you run blindly. The emergency exits are opening on three sides. There is no danger here…”
“Run! Run!” People shouted.
“This asshole!” Samar muttered. “Get him down!” He commanded the security guards. They didn't dare do it. Samar would happily do it but what would that look like? Two KDP leaders fighting on the stage.
“I am here, aren’t I?” Atharva bellowed into the mic, standing with his chest out like a bloody sitting duck. Samar panned his head across the tops of all buildings in the distance and kept watch, wishing he had a Glock right now to cover Atharva.
“This is a big gathering, we will have to take care while leaving. Please. Don’t run.
Not yet. The main exits are being cleared.
Give it a minute. Just be calm for one minute.
I will stand here with you until the evacuation starts.
Right here where you can see me. Trust me.
50 seconds… My people of Leh,” the idiot kept talking, stepping to the edge of the stage, “in all these years, nobody has reached out to you, nobody has made you feel theirs. In turn, you have been indifferent to them. Rightly so. But this ends here. 30 seconds more, please, just hang in there,” he went calm.
“Whatever I was going to say to you today is forgotten now. Except, that I see you, I care for you. I am here, I will always be here. And that will not change…” his gaze went to the back, and he raised his hand up. “The main exit has been cleared.”
“Sir,” their Security Head came to his ear. “Two have been neutralised.”
Samar nodded. “Is the ground safe?”
“Yes. But it’s better if we evacuate you all.”
“We are staying.” He took a quick look at Atharva. Safe. Then turned and did what he was always supposed to do in emergencies like these. He ran to the medics tent.
————————————————————
“Cotton!” A paramedic was screaming in the tent.
Samar grabbed a roll and threw it her way, accepting the hand of an injured man and guiding him to the only available surface — a table.
All thoughts, all feelings, all pros and cons, ifs and buts silenced inside him as he got to work on the only neutral part of his life. Medicine.
It was a blur of bloodied hands and cleansing water, pressed cotton pads and gauze, emergency aid and ORS drinks. Time passed without him even realising. As the emergency exits cleared, the chaos inside the tent went controlled. The clamour of injured patients became softer.
Samar looked up from setting a broken arm in a makeshift sling and found there was space to see outside the tent for the first time between bodies. The young college student crying in front of him hugged her arm closer as he finished, getting to his feet.
“It will need an X-ray and a plaster,” he informed her. “Go to your doctor immediately after this.”
She whimpered, pushing her tears away and looking up at him.
Samar staggered with the intensity of her beady blue eyes.
They were liquid, dark, unlike the cerulean ones he knew.
And yet she smiled at him through her tears like he hoped Amaal would one day.
Samar didn't know where that thought came from, but he hoped he would be able to see her smile after crying one day.
It was a strange thought. He snapped out of it and forced himself to return her smile.
“Taken headcount?” He asked the KDP volunteer stationed outside the tent.
“Seventy-one till now.”
“Any deaths reported?”
“I don’t have any updates.”
“Hmm.” Samar patted his back and moved down the now calmer ground.
People were still rushing around, mostly towards the exits, but there was no panic like in the earlier minutes.
Atharva was at the far end of the stage, speaking to a horde of reporters, mics in his face.
Samar marched to him just as he stepped back.
He caught Atharva’s shoulder and pulled him towards a quiet opening. “Has the bleeding stopped?”
This time Atharva obediently tipped his head back — “Check.”
Samar held his forehead and shone his torchlight in, seeing the skin around his nose stained red with how he had been rubbing the blood off.
“It’s drying. You have a handkerchief?”
Atharva pressed one into his hand. He was the only grandfather who still carried those.
Samar pressed the fabric into his nostrils and held his head back.
“Leave, I am feeling dizzy.”
“Wait.”
Samar checked the white fabric. Splotches of dark red, not bright. Atharva suddenly pushed his hand off his forehead and broke into a run. Samar whirled and saw him sprinting towards the barricade between the inner stage and the audience. A policeman was physically restraining Iram. The fuck!
Samar ran behind him, seeing it happen like a nightmare. Iram was let go, Atharva and the Inspector exchanged words, and before he could reach there, Atharva had struck the Inspector so hard that he fell to the ground. The constables were on Atharva, hacking him back.