Chapter 10 One morning if I come knocking at your door… #2
Amaal looked conflicted, glancing behind her shoulder. Iram followed her gaze and found Atharva standing there, Yathaarth in his arms, cool eyes on Rahim Chacha.
Amaal cleared her throat — “Atharva might want to talk to him.”
“I’m done,” his clear voice reverberated. “Take him.”
“Don’t talk like that standing outside, all of you.” Begumjaan’s firm voice sounded. “Iram, come. Atharva, take Iram inside.”
He did not move. Iram stared at him. An extra second passed and he nodded to the door — “Come.”
Before he had said that one word, she hadn’t realised that he gate-kept the house she had inhaled as her home just a few minutes ago. Not her father’s house, not those forts and palaces of Nagar — Atharva’s house had been her home.
Their son in his arms, grey eyes sleepless, Atharva walked across to her and began climbing up the steps.
She joined him, feeling a throb in her C-section stitches.
They often burned while climbing stairs, but this was a different throbbing, as if the ghost of those stitches was grabbing her nerves, reminding her where it had all started to end.
She stopped at the threshold, seeing the backs of her husband and son step inside the house without a care in the world.
She wished it were so easy for her to move.
But when Atharva’s steps began to slow as he realised she wasn’t with him, Iram quickened hers.
She crossed the threshold and reached his side before he could realise her absence.
The smells of her home enveloped her. She consciously looked away from the kitchen, from that morning when she had eaten a chocolate from that fridge and puked it all out.
She concentrated on the big hall instead, reminding herself of all the KDP meetings, all the election campaign days, spent with strips of winter sun blazing inside through the windows.
That was a happy time, not because it was giving but because she had come with zero expectations.
She would realign her life to that policy.
Whatever came today was a bonus, including the downy head resting in the crook of Atharva’s neck.
“Let me take him,” Begumjaan began to reach for Yathaarth.
“It’s alright, I’ll put him to sleep, Begumjaan. You all go for lunch.”
“What about you?”
“I am not hungry. I will put him down and then leave for the Secretariat. Amaal, are you here for lunch?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Come with me when I leave.”
Iram waited for him to say something to her. Something like ‘go shower’ or ‘come up and see this’ or just — ‘go eat lunch.’ He did not. He turned, nodded at Altaf with one of his gesture signals and began to climb the stairs.
“Everybody is tired,” Begumjaan smoothed the ruffles over. “Come, Iram. You must be hungry. Did you both eat on the way, Amaal?”
“I was too swamped to eat properly. Iram and I shared a sandwich though…”
Iram felt her mind zone out of that conversation, reeling from so much. This house was home and yet parts of it haunted her. The solace had walked away. She inhaled and decided to follow it.
“I will change and come,” she muttered to them. “Please start without me. Sorry.”
She didn’t wait for either of their assents, knowing she sounded frantic as she rushed up the stairs.
Ghosts abounded here. They tried to haunt her, but she willed herself to remember better memories — of Atharva coming back from Kishtwar in one piece, massaging her leg for her.
She smiled at the memory, brandishing it in front of the thoughts of that panicked rush down on that fateful day.
Iram reached the corridor on the first floor and switched on the better lamps of her memory.
Of writing on the terrace and Atharva always finding her without socks, of using the corridor bathroom and giving him mini heart-attacks with her soaking wet hair, of coming up here after their wedding and entering their room for the first time.
She passed the alcove where he had caught her and flirted with her during their KDP days.
She passed the door to his gramophone room where so many nights had been spent listening to his grandfather music, settling the kids in her belly.
The rush of loss was quick but she quietened it, moving onto the closed door of their bedroom. She began to open it but stopped. The voices inside sounded… too good and too private.
“…because now we have Mama here.”
Iram slapped a hand over her mouth.
“No, no… eh, Dilbaro, no…” a mock animal growl and Yathaarth’s squeal. “I swear you do it for entertainment purposes only.”
Iram’s face screwed, tears there but not flowing. Frozen.
“Do me a favour and please show Mama some mercy, she doesn’t know about your perfect aim yet…”
Iram’s chest shivered.
“O-kay, here we go — smelling of,” a deep theatrical whiff. “Baby powder and formula mix, and I am,” another deep whiff — “Again smelling of your pee… no wait, no rolling yet. Slow, slow, grow up slowly, Arth. No rolling yet… Yathaarth.”
The sounds and squeaks stopped. As if that one last word of his had made their son stall. Iram waited for more but long seconds passed with nothing except things being lifted and put down. Some hissing sounds of a machine.
“Hmm… mmm kararvinden padarvindam…” Atharva crooned. Iram tightened one hand on the door handle, orienting herself in the now. She rooted herself, lifted her other hand and gave a knock. Then she waited.
“Mukharvinde vinive shayantam…” his strong, deep baritone came closer and the door was pulled open. He was bare-chested, his shirt bunched in his hand. His eyes widened. Iram froze. Did he not expect her?
He blinked. She waited. At the threshold of her own bedroom, her husband and son inside, she waited.
“Can I come in?” She finally asked. His eyes lowered, but he stepped aside, holding the door open.
Iram stepped inside her bedroom and it wasn’t hers anymore.
The sweet scent of milk powder and baby powder was ripe, a whole baby table taking up one side of the room.
The rocking chair and the bed and the lounger were the only parts of this room as she had left.
But there was another part of her that was still there, not the same as she had left.
He was splayed in the middle of their bed, on a blanket, his arms wide, jumping in tune with his kicking legs.
His mouth was open in a giggle as he stared up at the ceiling.
The hissing sound came from a boiler. A bottle filled with milk was getting heated.
Powder milk. Her breasts began to feel heavy.
She waited for them to leak. Nothing. Iram tensed, worry clouding her.
When she needed it the most, it wasn’t coming.
“Is he… is he hungry?”
“He is mostly full,” Atharva’s flat voice sounded with the click of the door. “This bottle is to put him to sleep.”
“He needs milk to go to sleep?” She whirled, hoping to bring that life back in his voice.
“He won’t drink all of it. It’s to soothe him.”
“Can I… try?”
“Sure.”
“Feeding… breast milk… actually, no. I don’t know how to and I don’t know if it’s…”
He did not look at her as the boiler pinged. Iram stood out of his way as he navigated to the changing table, rolled the bottle on a napkin, squeezed a drop on the back of his hand, licked it clean, then shook the bottle.
“Then I suggest you speak to Dr. Baig and Dr. Shankar first before trying,” he answered clinically, moving to the bed. Iram drank the disregard and decided to jump headfirst into the life she had left behind.
“What if I try right now?”
Atharva popped the lid off and Yathaarth’s eyes zeroed in on the bottle immediately. “Let’s take it slow. He is tired after a long journey.”
Iram stepped closer to the bed, coming into her son’s field of vision. Atharva had just popped the bottle into his happy mouth when his eyes met hers. Tiny grey almonds full of laughter and mischief. They held hers, blinked, and he spat the bottle out with a piercing wail.
Iram recoiled five steps, his loud cries razing whatever little confidence she had bolstered.
“Shhh,” Atharva instantly swung him up. “Shhh, quiet, Dilbaro, who’s a good boy now?” He rocked him up and down, taking him away from her towards the window where the sun diffused through the sheer curtains. “Who is my good boy?”
Iram slapped a quiet hand over her mouth because this time, tears were streaming down her face. No, no no no no. He did not want her. He still did not want her. Neither of them did.
Yathaarth kept wailing, Atharva kept swinging him up and down, and Iram kept stifling her cries at the end of the room, her husband and son’s backs to her. Even if Atharva had opened the door and seen her, he did not have room here anymore.
Before her quiet sobs turned roaring, Iram whirled on the balls of her feet and escaped their bedroom.