Chapter 39
It was a whole month before they met again. And they met in a whirlwind, for a moment.
Amaal sat for a regular scheduling meeting with Adil and Qureshi for government and party obligations in Srinagar.
Samar was optional on the table, because he did not need scheduling with the Press Secretary.
And he wasn’t even in the city. He had been travelling through Gurez and surrounding valleys for the Panchayat elections, pushing pro-Indian agendas and KDP membership drives along with promoting the free clinics and diagnostic centres that the government was opening up in every district.
She spoke to him whenever the network was within reach for him, which was once every few days.
Their last conversation had been two days ago, an exchange of update messages.
Reached? Reached.
When are you returning? Next week mostly.
That was why Amaal sat up, zapped when she heard his voice behind her.
“Good morning.”
“How was Gurez?” Qureshi asked.
“The same. Anti-India, pro-Pakistani,” he relayed, closing the conference room door and walking on quick footsteps that played in sync with her heartbeat. Amaal moved her fingers around on her trackpad, keeping her eyes on her laptop screen until she could bring herself under control.
“What’s the use of you running drives there if it doesn’t turn?” Adil quipped.
“The CM should do more events there.” Samar came around the long horseshoe-shaped table and sat down in front of her. Amaal looked up quickly at him and flashed a polite smile for the other two occupants’ benefit.
“How are you, Amaal?” Samar took off his specs and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. She looked at him again. He looked tired.
“Good. You look tired.”
“Hmm. Long weeks. But I am pleased to inform that KDP membership in West Kashmir has crossed the one thousand mark. And it’s distributed across all districts. No place is left without KDP.”
“That’s unprecedented.” She sat up. “But if you ask for the CM or these ministers for more events…”
“Actually, I do.” He sat up too, putting his specs back on, eyes challenging.
The door pushed open and she heard Atharva’s voice as he talked to Singh Sir quickly. Nowadays he was always running.
“How is it that Atharva has no minute between two meetings and you have half an hour to spare, Qureshi?” Adil asked as Atharva still talked at the door.
“Difference between CM and Commerce Minister,” Qureshi deadpanned. “And let’s ask your secretary if you even go for meetings.”
“Look at this entire system,” he pointed to the state-of-the-art screens running the length of the old-school conference room. “Multiply this by all government offices of the state. That’s me.”
“Hello, thanks for waiting.” Atharva closed the door and strode in, Zafarji on his heels.
“It’s just us, you can drop the formality,” Adil pointed. Amaal smiled at Atharva as he took the chair at the helm.
“Then take this meeting off the record,” Atharva nodded at Zafarji.
“Yes, sir.” He went and sat down on one of the secretary chairs lined up on the side of the room.
They were just the six of them in the massive conference room now, no mics needed.
Like old times. But the temperature of the room was not as warm as the old times.
Because Atharva and Samar were present in the same room.
“Ok,” Amaal broke the silence. “We are here to schedule for the next three months. I have spoken to each of your secretaries and we have five overlaps that need to align, non-negotiable. They wouldn’t agree and I got the honour of all four of you in the same room.”
“You know what’s important and what’s not, Amaal,” Atharva cut to the chase. “Feel free to override my secretaries.”
“REALLY?” She made an amused sound, eyeing Zafarji over her shoulder.
“The CM only does what the CM wants to do.” Zafarji deadpanned.
“Same.” Adil raised his hand.
“Same.” Qureshi added.
“Then why did I even schedule these 15 minutes?” Amaal rolled her eyes, a gesture she could get away with off the record in a room that was Atharva, Adil and Qureshi and not the CM, the Commerce Minister and the IT Minister.
Atharva glanced at Samar. “I read your report.”
“It’s still preliminary.” Samar spoke for the first time since the meeting started.
“Are you writing these from first-person experience or passing on from others’?”
“You think I am bluffing?”
Atharva paused. What were they talking about?
“I think it’s not practically possible to have this high number of intakes in the first round of membership drive for a new party.”
“We are an established party with a government in this state.”
“But new for Himachal.”
“I will not put your words in my mouth and say the numbers are false.”
“I did not say they were.” Atharva opened his iPad and pulled on his glasses, reading something. “I think they look inflated because so many territories together cannot grow together.”
“Maybe they are and you don’t want to accept it.”
“Atharva, Samar,” Qureshi intervened. “Let’s take a step back here. The problem is inflated numbers or membership in Himachal?”
“The problem is funds,” Atharva scrolled on his screen. “Himachal does not generate any right now, so we are pumping in from J&K KDP.”
“What did you expect?” Samar scoffed. “It takes time to penetrate a new state.”
“Then start by wooing potential donors.”
“We started KDP by self-funding,” Samar countered.
“Because Kashmir politics had kept its doors tightly locked for us and our ideology. Not the case for Himachal. There is no secessionism, no separatism, no anti-India sentiment.”
Samar seethed, but kept quiet.
“I suggest you go to these areas and do a random sampling. If 5 places work, then I am ready to accept these numbers.” Atharva set his iPad down.
Samar shot to his feet — “I am the President of this party, not your bureaucrat. Since this meeting is off the record, you can openly tell me this is punishment for making you unhappy.”
“This is not a punishment.” Atharva cut coldly.
“Tell yourself that if it makes you sleep easy.” Samar stepped back and pushed his chair in, his eyes roving the room and landing on her.
“Schedule however you want the ministers in KDP engagements, Amaal. If there are any gaps, we will manage from our side. The party’s karyakarta will know how important they are for the CM who won on their shoulders.”
With that, he walked out of the room.
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Samar parked his car on the slope and turned the wheel. He pulled the handbrake and got out. He hiked the way up to his destination. The gate to Atharva’s house was a distant beam, security cooped up inside at this late hour. He glanced at the gate closer to him. Aamir Haider’s gate.
The security here was not as tight as the other house, of course.
He knew the CCTV setups here, knew the security wiring, and he was no stranger to stealth climbing, thanks to Atharva’s drills.
He hesitated, for just a second, before bracing himself and jumping a wall.
Samar climbed trees and walls, treading under the radar until he had jumped and landed outside her window. She had initially rented the top floor, then shifted downstairs because of water issues. Samar knew too much about Aamir Haider’s house’s plumbing and heating at this point.
The lights in her room were off.
What a waste.
He had a desire to knock nonetheless. To call her. Wake her up.
But she was running on just as much fatigue as he was.
He turned around and sat there, under her window, leaning back against the wall. He would leave in some time.
If he had ever thought that he would find himself sitting outside Amaal’s window in his dead enemy’s house, Samar would have run as far as he could, as fast as he could from her. But here he was, not only unable to run from her but unable to leave the vicinity where she slept.
“Just for a minute,” he told himself, inhaling the hot Srinagar night.
The garden was ripe with so many flowery smells that it was getting difficult to decipher them all.
Jasmine was the heaviest, and he realised why.
The shrubs were planted right there in a bed under her window.
He wasn’t sure if she had a hand in that, but knowing about it gave him joy.
She deserved to get time for her gardening.
She deserved flowers and leaves and muddy hands that she could rub all over him.
Samar smiled, and began to reach for one white flower, then stopped.
“Oye shaitaaneya, raat nu phull na toddein, biba.[123]”
His stomach flipped.
Mummy
The window over his head stuttered open. Samar glanced up, and Amaal’s happy face peeked down at him. Their eyes met. The tired colour of her skin suddenly brightened, and her smile kept growing until she was beaming.
“Still coming to yell outside my window?”
“How did you know?” He circled his arm around his folded knees, getting comfortable. She climbed over and leaned out, her hair falling down the sides of her face. “I opened my window to air the room, and a thief was plucking my flowers.”
Samar felt his smile wobble but held on — “I did not.”
“Because I caught you red-handed.”
“I thought you had gone to sleep.”
“I was at Atharva and Iram’s…”
His smile dropped.
As did hers.
“He told you about his funding threats for Himachal?”
Amaal paused, looking conflicted.
“Talking about this with you feels like betrayal to him…”
He sighed. “Fine. Let’s never talk about them.”
“Don’t get like that…”
“I am serious, I am not throwing a fit.”
“I cannot ever imagine you throwing a fit.”
He smirked, and tipped his chin — “Come out.”
“Why?”
“Let’s go out.”
“Right now? Aren’t you sleepy?”
“I can drive for a while.”
“How about I drive for a change?” She climbed back from her perch. “I took a nap while Noora was narrating his woes with the new KDP president.”
Samar tipped his chin again — “Come out.”
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