Chapter 46
“Do you believe in god?”
Amaal startled.
The silence of the warm night was broken by the click of his knee as he limped into the hall.
She tore her eyes from the dark street below and turned in time for him to come closer to her in the dark space.
His chest was covered in a thin dark T-shirt but the space of his neck was open.
His skin was visible. Light and red streaks like it had been torched to melting.
Wrinkled, like he had lived for a hundred years.
Leathery, like it wasn’t skin anymore. Was it painful?
Of course it was. New skin pieces had been pasted all over him to patch the gaping holes left by burnt skin.
She knew the theory better than most experts after how much she had read and heard about it.
“Hmm?” He asked, tipping her face up to his with his finger.
Amaal gazed into his eyes — dark, but here. Sleep made them milky, but his voice was sharp.
“Why the question suddenly?”
“You said you prayed for me to come back to you.”
She nodded, needing to take a peek at his neck again but aware of how it made him self-conscious.
“I believe there is god,” she cleared her throat, turning back to the window. The street under them was so quiet, no human in sight. No stray animals. No sound. Just small streetlight spots. Stillness, which she craved in their relationship now. Some semblance of calm.
His heat came closer to her back and she broke the silence between them before he could break it with something that would shake her night any further.
“When I was little, I used to see Mom do pooja in our small temple in the house and Dad go to the masjid every Friday for Juma Namaz. And I asked her one day, which one is the real god? She took me to the temple, and showed me the photos and idols there. There was a Shivling, a little Bal Gopal, my favourite, a frame of Hanumanji, a tiny miniature Ganpati and a large frame of Sharda Mata. She asked me, which one is the real god?”
“What did you say?”
“I said all.” Amaal smiled at a moth flying closer to the streetlight.
It buzzed there, went farther, then came back again.
“All were gods after all, in different forms. That’s what Mom had taught me.
So then, she said, all are gods. Allah is Dad’s god.
These are her gods. I asked her what are my gods and she said, all of them, and whichever I choose for myself, whenever I need them.
She said, all roads will lead to god, as long as I walk them with faith that they will. ”
“Which god did you pray to for me?”
She chuckled. “It’s strange that as I grew up and became a busy adult with life going just as I had imagined, I did not see god in different forms but as one being. And that being was in any god I looked at.”
Samar’s hand touched the ball of her shoulder. His fingers squeezed. She could feel the unevenness of his palm on the bare skin of her arm.
“Do you believe in god?” Amaal turned her head and asked the curve of his hand.
A moment of silence lingered.
“I didn’t, all my life. Now… I keep hearing my mother singing Shiv’s name to me.”
“Tonight also?” Amaal turned. The glow of the light outside kept his face in fairly clear vision for her.
Samar nodded, his hair mussed on his forehead and falling forward.
She palmed it and pushed it back up, caressing the curve of his forehead and down to his temple, stroking his cheek that had roughened with a heavy stubble. His eyes fell closed.
“What does she sing exactly?”
“Ashutosh shashank shekhar…” he chanted, half-crooning. “Chindambara… Koti naman digambara… jagat sarjak pralay karta shivam satyam sundara.”
Amaal reached for her mobile on the sofa and Googled the broken words.
“It’s a Shiv stuti from Puran, from Shiv Puran,” she read out. “Are you sure you have never heard it in your life?”
Samar shook his head.
“Do you know the meaning of these words?”
He shook his head again.
“Ashutosh is the one who is easily pleased, Shashank is the one who holds the moon, Chandramoli is the wearer of the crescent moon, the dweller of Chidambaram,” she read.
“Nirankar is unchanging, Omkar means the eternal sound of om, Avinashi is indestructible.” Her voice settled, as the meaning of the hymn settled into her.
“These are all names of Shivji. Devadhidev is the god of all gods. Jagat sarjak is the one who creates the world and pralaykarta is the one who destroys it. Shivam, satyam, sundara… the auspicious one, the truth, the beautiful.”
Amaal raised her eyes to his. He was staring at her mobile.
“Your mother was a Shiv bhakt?”
“Can’t remember.”
“Did your fath…” she stopped, then restarted. “Did he tell you anything about her?”
Samar’s eyes met hers. “No. He raised me thinking I had forgotten about it. She was never mentioned again except when any relative took her name.”
“Did he raise you well?”
He scoffed, looking down at himself — “What do you think?”
“I think he raised you to be emotionally so independent that you cut yourself off from everybody and only invested your emotions in one or two people.”
“What is that supposed to mean?!”
Amaal snapped her mouth shut.
“Go on.” He softened his voice.
“It’s too late. Let’s go to sleep. You need to spend as much time sleeping as you can for healing…”
“Say it, Amaal.”
“Samar…”
“Say it, let me hear what you think about me.”
“You can’t throw it in my face!”
“I won’t.”
“You can’t make it your truth and…”
“Just say it.”
She sighed.
“I think,” Amaal said. “That you became emotionally dependent on Atharva after he became your rock in SFF. Just like you were dependent on your mother, like every child is. When Iram came into the picture and he went out of the shape of your idea of Atharva, when you saw him move towards your enemy’s daughter and lost sight of the man you knew and trusted and depended on, everything shifted.
I remember how disturbed you were in those days…
don’t look away, look at me. If you want to listen, listen to this looking into my eyes. ”
Samar nodded.
“I think, you lost the emotional anchor of your life twice. Once in your mother, and then in Atharva. And when that happened, you resorted to things that had no redemption, you turned into a four year old who did not see any reason or repercussion. You acted out of instinct and out of pure need to protect and get back that emotional anchor any way you could. But…”
“Is there even a but in all this?” He laughed bitterly.
“But,” she took his face between her hands and pulled it down.
“You are out of it as well, and at the right time. You woke up from it and moved away from the need to anchor into another person. You built your own life, your own routine, your work. You built a party on your own in another state, away from Atharva. You grew yourself out of it.”
He gently extricated himself from her hands, moving to hold the windowsill and stare out. She saw that the move was more to balance himself after standing without support for so long than anything else.
“I didn’t realise you think so little of me.”
“I don’t!” Amaal slapped her hand on the sill beside his hand. “You said you won’t throw it in my face or make it your truth!”
He remained silent.
“Samar.” She called out to him. “Samar!” She set her hand atop his. He did not look at her.
“It happened, but it was not your fault what it did to you. I am saying that you were strong enough to rise out of it. The life you made, the life we were planning to make before this happened was a good one…”
“But now that’s not the life which will be.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I cannot stand without support for more than two minutes. You think I will be able to work and travel like I used to?”
“It is still early to say that. Let’s be patient…”
“I am practical.”
“And crooked!” She cursed.
“What?” Dark eyes found her.
“Crooked! You take somebody’s words the wrong way, you say your own words the wrong way, you act the wrong way, you just perceive every damn thing the wrong way.”
“One more shortcoming that you are enduring.”
“Samar, I don’t want to fight. Please.” She folded her hands to him. “And next time, please don’t ask me anything about yourself if you don’t have the patience and the power to listen to it objectively.”
He turned to her but she whirled around and stalked to the sofa. “Go to your room.”
She didn’t hear any movement behind her and began to shake out her bedding. Amaal lay down on the pillows, pushing the third one between her legs and turning away from where he was still leaning. She pulled the thin covering over her and closed her eyes.
Minutes ticked by. Then, she felt a weight settle on the sofa behind her back. His hand came to her hair.
“I know you are awake, and I know I am making this impossible for you. I am sorry that I am doing this… my own realities are exploding. They don’t stop exploding.
And you refuse to leave me. I lived for you but I don’t know what to do with this life anymore because I didn’t think how it would be worthy of you.
I am trying to stay afloat in my head but my only way to cope with it is movement, and that is gone, I don’t know if it will ever come back. ”
He sighed.
“At 39, I am moving like I am 89. I know there will be recovery but I also know that practically it won’t be 100%. And I don’t want to become so emotionally dependent on you that I make you another crutch.”
She turned and buried her head into the side of his thigh. The cotton of his shorts had ridden up to expose the leathery skin underneath and her nose rested against it. She thought he would pull away but he stayed, setting his hand atop her head and stroking her hair.
“Sleep.”
“You also go and sleep.”
“I am good here.”
————————————————————
Amaal woke up to the warm scents of tea and coffee and butter.
The sun was streaming in through the windows and the low sounds of the kitchen were punctuating the birdsong outside.
She pushed the covering off her, feeling hot.
The morning was warm but the fan was running on full.
She checked, she had left it on medium last night.
“Good morning.” Samar’s voice made her crane her head to the entrance of the hall. He limped in, carrying a plate of sandwiches.
“Good morning.” She sat up, crossing her legs and rubbing her eyes. Her hair fell down her face and she pushed it all back, clawing it up to wind it in a bun.
“Are you going to take your coffee like this or you prefer it after freshening up?” He asked, coming close to the sofa and standing over her. Amaal looked up at him — “You made my coffee?”
“Sugary milk with coffee powder,” he enunciated. “Yes.”
Her mouth curved involuntarily. His eyes softened.
“Samar…” she whined. “Don’t.”
“Shouldn’t I work to make you forgive me?”
“With sugary milk and coffee powder?”
He smiled — “I state it as it is.”
She threw her head back on the sofa’s headrest. “Is last night swept under the rug?”
“Under the sofa.” He clarified. She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Look,” he grasped the back of the sofa behind her and lowered himself beside her. “I did enough damage these days, made you cry so much. I didn’t sleep last night, thinking about what’s the way forward. And I could think of nothing but a fresh start. You are not giving up on me…”
She shook her head.
“You are also not taking my bullshit lying down.”
She gave him a deadpan look.
“You are not letting me drown in whatever this is on the side.”
She shook her head.
“You leave me no choice but to do whatever I can in my current capacity to make this ok.”
“With sugary milk and coffee powder.” She repeated. His shoulders vibrated. Samar’s hand came to her jaw, and he pinched her cheek. “That sugary milk and coffee powder had become the highlight of my mornings.”
She rolled her eyes, trying to hold onto her righteous indignation a little longer. He pulled her face closer by the jaw and kissed her mouth, passing on some minty toothpaste freshness to her. She kissed him back, shamelessly accepting the comfort.
“I will shower and then have coffee.” She pulled back, working to remain unaffected. “I have to reach the Secretariat in an hour.”
“Ok. I’ll wait right here.” He pressed his forehead to hers. She pulled back and got to her feet. He caught her elbow — “Amaal.”
“Hmm?” She turned.
“This is the first morning we have woken up together in a house.”
“No. We woke up together for a whole week in my house in Jammu.”
“When you were sick and didn’t know day from night.”
Her mouth pressed into a thin line, not wanting to smile just yet. “Hmm. So?”
He glanced at the morning outside, then back up at her. “My hope amplifies seeing you under my roof, even after I botched up last night.”
“That’s because you are sure I won’t be going anywhere.”
“No.” He pulled her closer, setting his forehead on the crook of her elbow. “It’s because even if you went, you will still be the only morning I know.”
Amaal smiled, now that he wasn’t seeing her.
She looked at the top of his hair, at his head bent to her elbow.
How did humans fall in love with humans and sometimes disliked them but not enough to fall out of love?
How did humans stay strong for each other even when the other was hell-bent on breaking the world down?
How did humans fight wars for love on nothing but hope?
Maybe that was god. Amaal pressed her hand into his hair, bent down and buried her mouth into his scent. Manifesting in the endurance for love.