Chapter 54 #3
“Copy that,” he said. “Proceed with caution. Terrain unstable. I’ll maintain position and signal. Over.”
“Why did Atharva go alone?” Adil yelled. “Where are you?”
“Medical situation. Captain Husain, this is Samar. Update on visual. Do you have contact?"
“Approaching target structure… standby… beacon acquired.”
A crackle.
“Target locked. Preparing descent for extraction.”
“Confirm headcount.”
“Seven civilians plus one additional male. Repeat, eight total.”
“Atharva is there.” Adil relayed, laughing. “Of course the fucker is there!”
Of course the fucker
is there, Samar exhaled with a laugh, tension draining from his shoulders.
————————————————————
It took a long night to check the seven people rescued.
The oldest of them, Dharmi fufa, was already half-dazed after the pump and epinephrine shot Atharva had administered.
Samar still sat with him until his breathing had stabilised enough to let him eat some soft, hot rice.
The village had mostly finished eating and everybody was sitting around, laying down, some already asleep as rain continued to batter outside.
Samar walked out to the back of the temple, and found Atharva sitting there on the floor, bandaging a little girl’s arm, one of the seven rescued.
She showed him her other arm and he cut a small piece from the roll and wrapped it around it.
Then held both her biceps up and patted them, saying something in her ear.
She fell back giggling, rolling, and he got her to sitting and hugged her to his chest, squeezing her to elicit more giggles.
“Yeh lijiye…[194]” A woman came and offered Atharva a bottle of water. He accepted it, relenting the little girl who jumped to her feet. “Chalo, Krishnaa, uncle ko aaram karne do, beta.[195]”
“Aalam kalo, beta.[196]” The little girl patted Atharva’s head and ran away before he could grab her. He laughed, their eyes meeting over the running girl’s head. Samar walked out of the temple and towards him, nodding at the girl’s mother.
“All good?” Atharva asked as he sat down beside him. Their feet dangled out of the temple’s verandah as rain continued to pelt. Nothing was visible, everything pitch dark except the isolated crackle of lightning.
“Hmm.” He crossed his legs, hissing as his joints began to groan now that the adrenaline was drained. “Cute girl.” He looked past his shoulder at the little girl still running around in the main area. Her mother was unable to catch hold of her.
“Hayat would have been like her.”
Samar glanced back at Atharva. His eyes were fixated on the girl too, joy and pain all in two eyes. Samar could read it so well, could read Atharva so well after years of their distance.
Atharva looked at him, and smiled — “I never said it out loud to anybody but Iram. I named her Hayat when they asked me to name her. You saved my Arth and Hayat.”
Samar’s throat tightened.
“How did you accept her loss?” He croaked, looking away from him towards the unyielding dark sky. Nothing but rain and desolation in the distance.
“There was nothing else to do,” Atharva said matter of factly. It had always been easy for him to accept, to make peace, to move on. He wasn’t cursed with Samar’s constitution of getting himself tangled in the in-between. He was either on one end or the other.
“She came into our lives for a reason, and went away for a reason. We had to believe in that. Or those who were left behind would be affected.”
Silence lingered between them then. A long silence. Rain continued to pelt, the murmurs of people going to sleep behind them continued to punctuate the rumble of clouds, the temple slowly settling down to silence even in this noise.
“My mother died when I was four,” Samar told Atharva what he had already told him once long ago.
“But she did not die by falling from the roof,” he enunciated, blinking ahead. “My father killed her.”
When no sound came from beside him, Samar turned his head to check if he had gone to sleep. The fucker could sleep anywhere.
“That is why you returned the day of his antim sanskar itself when he passed,” Atharva observed, very awake.
“Hmm.” Samar looked out again. “Even that was more than he deserved from me.” He took off his specs and rubbed at his eyes. Fatigue was so real that he wanted to lie down here and sleep forever. Not just the fatigue of this day but this entire life.
“Amaal…” he found the word flowing out of his mouth.
“She thinks I fixated on my mother’s passing as my only anchor passing and haven’t gotten up from that moment.
Or something like that. My therapist said similar things.
PTSD, early maternal loss, insecure anxious attachment, unresolved grief…
the entire bouquet.” He put his specs back on.
“I am a mindless, ruthless bastard to her on my bad days and downright mean on my neutral days.”
“Surprising.”
Samar laughed, eyeing him — “You know something about that too.”
“You being a mindless, ruthless bastard to me? Add asshole too, most times.” Atharva slapped his thigh. It was a joke, but it hit too close to home.
“I never did anything to you with bad intentions,” Samar confessed. Atharva stilled, the smile falling off his face.
“Before doing something, I didn’t think — Would this harm Atharva? On the contrary, I kept doing things one after the other without thinking if it would harm anyone, as long as it would save you, keep you on the path that we had chosen — at least in my head, that’s what I thought…”
“I believe you.”
Samar’s brows rose.
“I believe you.” Atharva reiterated. Samar snorted — “And still you didn’t give me my militia back. Let’s not go there, Atharva.”
“I saw what leading it did to you. That is why, as far as I am concerned, you are never getting it back.”
Samar snapped to attention. A hard ball of saliva formed in his throat. It would not go down. He forcefully pushed it down, and clawed the next words out.
“I asked Amaal for until next October.”
“For what?”
“For getting over this… mindset, this cutting nature. I know I cannot fully change myself but I am just so frustrated with the way I act, like every time something doesn’t happen to my liking I want to burn the other person with my words because I was wronged and I don’t deserve this.
” Samar gave a little laugh. “Even as I say it I know it’s unreasonable.
But I just can’t stop. I am working hard with HDP, trying to build it up to a place where I can call a success mine.
I am pushing my body to start functioning as healthily as it can for a man my age.
Like a lunatic I am writing letters to my mother.
The therapist says it’s working but it’s not working fast enough!
Five months are already up, Amaal has waited long enough and I have filled one and a half diaries with so much bullshit I don’t even know what else to write.
In fact, I don’t even know I am writing to her anymore.
I didn’t even know her. I am so frustrated right now.
I fought with Amaal today and now I am petrified that she will not pick up my phone again tomorrow, though I know she will.
Where have I caught myself!” He scoffed.
“Amaal says I either swallow the poison and kill myself or spit it at the person in front of me and kill them. But what else can I even do with it?”
The rain badgered unencumbered in the lull left by his words. Samar breathed it in, then out, exhaling all the bad of the day. The static today in his head was of the rain.
“Shivji drank poison to save the world, but he didn’t swallow it.” Atharva’s quiet voice broke that static. “Neither did he spit it out.”
Samar glanced at him, but Atharva wasn’t looking at him.
“He held it in his throat and transformed it until his throat glowed.” Atharva’s eyes came to him, and smiled. “Maybe that’s what we have to learn.”
Silence reigned again. Static of the rain. They stared out at the darkness together.
“Samar.”
“Hmm.”
“Did you do tarpan kriya for your mother and father?”
Samar looked at him with narrowed eyes. He had gone crazy.
“No. Why?”
Atharva was solemn. “Do it.”
“What’s that got to do with this? And I would rather die than do anything for that man.”
“Tarpan kriya is not just for their souls but our grief too. Grieve them, whatever they were. Your father did whatever he did in this life and left. You are still holding onto him. Let him go. He will pay for what he has to, end your karm with him. You don’t deserve to torment yourself.”
Samar opened his mouth to argue but he went on.
“And even if you didn’t know your mother, you knew her soul. Your soul chose hers to come into this world. Let her go now.”
“You believe in all this?”
“It’s not about belief. I did all the kriya after my father passed away, without knowing what it meant.
When my mother passed, I was too broken down in grief when we buried her.
But Iram was there, and with her, I slowly let Mama go.
Hayat too. Now, ever since I shifted to Shimla, I have realised the value of my ancestors.
My Dada used to do tarpan during Pitrupaksh every year.
I didn’t know what it meant then, except what my Dadi used to say — that it is to make the souls of our ancestors happy.
Now I know what it also means for us. It is cycling through every year’s grief and setting it free. ”
Samar stared at Atharva.
“Finish their tarpan kriya. Go home to Udhampur and do it.”
Samar exhaled, then turned when a crack of lightning hit his peripheral vision. It was gone by the time he looked but the rumble reverberated.
“Let’s hope things work out by October next year, or I am a lost man again.”
“It will work out. There is no world in which it wouldn’t.” Atharva said with such confidence, that Samar had no option but to believe it. Like he had always believed Captain Kaul.
“And I’ll send you a book, read it.”
Samar rolled his eyes.
Atharva slapped his thigh again — “You’ve had treatments for everybody, why won’t you find one for yourself, Daaxsaab!” He got to his feet and traipsed inside, pulling out his mobile from his back pocket — “Does anyone have a power bank here?”
Samar stared at his back. The rumble’s echo remained in the sky, and Daaxsaab remained in his ears. He tracked Atharva move through the door and around the Nandi idol, and his eyes opened wide. Samar looked up at the temple’s roof and around at the sculptures. He couldn’t make much out in the dark.
But wasn’t a Nandi idol supposed to sit outside a Shiv temple?