Chapter 1
Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir
“You are Elena’s son! Jump now, come on, Athar!”
“It looks deep, Grandma…”
Atharva splashed the water on his face and ran a hand down its hard contours. He straightened and stared at himself in the mirror, the cool basin water now frigid thanks to the incessant autumn rain outside. It was morning, the sun was beaming, and yet the clouds weren’t letting up.
He picked up the napkin and patted his face dry, the rough weave of the terrycloth chafing against his cracking skin.
He didn’t have lip balm now. Or, he did have it on the dressing table of his bedroom but nobody to put it on him.
He blinked at his own eyes, exhausted grey that did not have the right to look even tired.
He cracked the kinks in his neck and rubbed his eyes clean, widening them to wake up enough to go through the day.
The patter of the basin water made his eyes whirl down and he quickly shut off the faucet.
The basin had flooded again. He had to get it repaired but always forgot.
Atharva reached into the pool of water and ruffled it to get it moving.
And saw his own faint reflection there. Elena’s son.
Standing in the cool exteriors of Yorkshire, torso bare, the biting stretch of swim trunks feeling tensed on his waist. A child on the edge of a stream. Lower Cartrake vivid in front of him.
It was there that he had learned to jump into water. He had not known how shallow the pool really was. And the lack of that knowledge had taught him courage, to face anything head-on, to jump into pools that he didn’t know the depths of. Jump and think later.
Now, when he peered into the pool of water in his basin that looked endless and was nowhere close to draining, Atharva wondered — would Elena’s son still jump?
“What is the baby doing alone here? Where is the father?” Amaal’s loud holler made him startle. Atharva tore out of the bathroom, clawing his hand through his damp hair — “Don’t wake him up…!”
He stopped short. His son was happily nuzzling under Amaal’s neck, held unevenly in the cradle of her arms. Atharva quickly strode to her and adjusted Yathaarth into a sleeping position.
“Learn to hold him or don’t touch him,” he warned, no bite in his rebuke.
She just pushed her nose down to Yathaarth’s and popped a kiss in the air. “He is happy.”
“Because he doesn’t know his neck might give away if not held right.”
Amaal’s playful gaze snapped up to his. Glared.
“Tone it down,” he warned.
“Stop.”
“Stop what?”
She sighed. “Fine, I am sorry. I know you are paranoid…”
“I am not paranoid.”
Yathaarth whimpered and Atharva reached for him — “Did Amaal hit you?” He cooed to his son. “She’s a bad girl.”
“I’m about to show you bad,” she strode to his visitor’s chair and lowered herself on the seat, crossing one leg over the other and getting comfortable.
Her eyes went to the house of cards he had in the making, now half down thanks to the wind she had brought with her.
She reached for a playing card and scratched the edge — “What’s this new interest? King of spades…” she eyed the card.
“I don’t remember inviting you to my home office,” Atharva bounced Yathaarth in his arms, glancing at the clock.
It was still early. He had woken up at the crack of dawn because little Janab had not felt like sleeping.
Their milk-poop-pee party had lasted till six.
And then Atharva had just showered, gotten ready, and come down to his office to work.
Or build a house of cards — whichever made him pass the rest of the hours.
He had instead fallen asleep sitting and only just woken up.
The clock struck 9.
“I wanted to speak to you outside of the Secretariat.”
“Amaal, my decision will not change.”
“Sit. Let’s talk.”
Atharva rounded his desk, the three walls of windows bright and watery with the weird weather outside.
He gave it one cursory glance but Yathaarth’s eyes fixated there.
So he sat down and half turned his chair, keeping his son lying in the cradle of his arms so that he could observe all the pretty nature.
Trees swinging, wind changing the sleet of the rain from one side to the other, the sun smiling.
“Like it, Dilbaro?” He murmured into the top of his son’s head. His sweet baby shampoo and formula milk scent assailed his senses and his exhausted insides bloomed to life. Atharva smiled into the wispy, smooth hair.
“Atharva…”
“How is Samar?”
Amaal huffed, her eyes going soft even as her mouth opened — “Barking orders.”
“Which means, on the mend.”
He knew the exact condition of Samar Dixit as of early this morning.
Second degree burns — healed but ‘itching like a bitch.’ Third degree burns with grafts and surgical procedures, still on the mend and looking nasty but ‘nothing we aren’t used to.
’ And neuropathic pain ‘killing me every time I try to bring a cigarette to my mouth.’ In short, Samar was in excruciating frustration sitting at home, wearing compression garments, doing out-patient rehab, physiotherapy and being a patient instead of a doctor.
“He fought with me for throwing a sunscreen at him,” Amaal’s words brought him back. He had developed this nasty habit of snapping off and wandering in his head. Atharva hoped it wouldn’t happen in professional conversations.
“You threw a sunscreen at him?”
“The man has hyperpigmentation on half his body. Sun exposure can make the colour and the burning worse!”
“Soldiers never cared for looks.”
“You two should be married.”
Atharva smiled — “Adil and Qureshi would tell you the same thing.”
Amaal rolled her eyes, the bright blue returning not on his eyes but on his scar. They lingered there, and as if the moment of reprieve was gone, Atharva exhaled.
“You moved fast,” Amaal started.
“What did you expect?”
“Some time!” She sat up. “Two weeks? You got news two weeks ago and you already have your application going to the MEA and the DEA and the Home Ministry?!”
“You want me to wait for Diwali?”
“No, but look around! Look at the current condition in Kashmir.”
Atharva did not blink. He knew better than Amaal the conditions, considering he chaired every security meeting that she did not have the clearance to. Lucky her.
Usama Aziz’s death had only been the start of a fuse that had been lit long ago.
Weeks into his death and the fire was roaring, so much so that, every Friday, stone-pelters were gathering around mosques and starting their parades through downtown Srinagar.
Mischief-makers were targeting army bunkers, torching gardens and raising anti-India slogans. Everything was a black mess of chaos.
When the army was given permission to use tear gas, the stone pelters came with E600 masks.
When they were permitted to use water hoses, the pelters started climbing buildings and terraces to attack.
That led to domestic crimes multiplying exponentially.
Homeland and police forces were stretched thin.
It was the prelude to civil war — disguised as civil unrest. Atharva saw it, from his manual-driven military brain, as well as from his experience in politics.
And he was going slow — firm, but slow.
The figurative political suicide for him, though, had come when he had let the Central Government intervene.
Yogesh Patel’s pressure had finally strained the KDP government because the Janta Party MLAs had refused to cooperate in the house.
Their threats hadn’t meant anything as Atharva was sitting on a majority that could go on even in the wake of Janta Party breaking their alliance.
But he knew it was political suicide to burn the bridge with the Centre at such a crucial time.
Especially with Momina Aslam and Awaami Party rallying tirelessly against whatever he did.
Then had come his literal political suicide.
He had silently supported the Central Government in letting the army use pellet guns last week.
He had seen the ground reality. Gotten firsthand reports of malicious intents behind every stone pelting — starting that civil war.
Pellet guns were the only viable option left to maintain civilisation in a rapidly depleting social order.
After all, school-going children had been brought to the hospital stoned due to these Friday shows. He couldn’t allow that.
Atharva had been silent but explicit in the support of the move, knowing that was the only way they were holding the state together and keeping innocent citizens safe.
But those sitting outside wanted a pound of his flesh.
All those media vultures, all those fake NGOS, all those pseudo-human-rights organisations that had not been patronised by him during his two years’ term had come clamouring to his door.
Articles, reports, editorials, op-eds, videos, news reports — there was a whole campaign being set to shape the narrative against him.
There was also one more fact: over the last three decades, as many times as the pellet guns had been used in the valley, the ruling government had fallen, and fallen hard.
At this time, though, he did not care for a longer term or even a repeat term as much as he did for Kashmir to remain alive. Atharva had tightened his fist. And held his silence.
And that had made him into one of ‘those Indian army.’ The narrative? He was Pundit, Hindu, and from the Indian Defence fraternity. Kashmir was again beginning to talk in ‘us’ and ‘them.’ It was slow, in whispers, but Sufiyaan Sheikh had managed to light this spark all the way from his grave.
“Atharva?”
“Hmm?” He startled back. Shit. He would have to stop doing this. It had never happened to him before. Why was it happening now?
His son’s wiggling hands banged on his stomach and Atharva rocked him up and down, leaning back to get him comfortable.
“What’s wrong?” Amaal’s voice softened.
“Nothing’s wrong.”