Chapter 19
My heart was a hollow place.
But then you came.
Flowing like water.
Falling wherever you wanted.
Without invitation.
Without limitation.
You tore it open.
Went and poured inside.
Filling every inch of space.
Leaving it full.
But, my love.
You didn’t realise.
That now you are the shape of my heart too.
A piercing cry jolted her awake. Iram squinted, blinking in the dark. Where was she? The cry intensified and she startled up.
“Arth…” she called out softly, hoping to reach him through his loud howl. It wasn’t a cry but a call for a change of nappy. Iram began to turn to Atharva when she remembered that she had to do this. She immediately sat up and realised Atharva wasn’t even here beside her.
“Atharva?” She called out towards the bathroom.
The door was open. She would worry about her husband later.
Right now, she needed to get to her baby.
But first, she needed water in her eyes.
She didn’t trust herself to lift him in the light of day.
This was night, dark, and her eyes were still half-slits.
Iram rushed to the bathroom and threw water into her eyes, scrubbing frantic hands down her face before running to the cot. Yathaarth was bawling out with his own eyes narrowed to slits, trying to lift his back up.
“Shhh, shhh, shhh… It’s too soggy, isn’t it?” She crooned quietly, reaching her hands down and easily slipping them under him. His body instantly arched higher and she used that momentum to scoop him up.
“Yay!” She whisper-shouted to herself, giddy with the victory even as he went on protesting. “Shhh, shhh,” she immediately sat down on the bed first, getting her grip steady
under him. Once she was sure of her hold, she slowly pushed to her feet and padded to the changing table.
Iram smiled at the setup. Atharva had already arranged the mat, a spare pair of nappies and another onesie, in case he soiled this one. There was warm water in a flask that she should have thought of before going to sleep.
She knew the drill. Had done it in the daytime.
This time, he was still making howling noises but she went on, pushing her way through his heart-rending cries as she changed him.
She snapped the closure on one nappy and wasted it but the next one sat snug on his hips.
She threw some powder on his tummy playfully and his cry turned into giggles.
His eyes blinked open. Iram stared, mesmerised.
He smiled serenely at the ceiling, then promptly went back to sleep. Silent.
One moment there, the next — gone. Like his father.
She stood and absorbed that moment. Her son, changed by her, sleeping soundly again, his cries silenced.
Iram reached down, puckered her lips and pressed a soft, featherlight kiss to his navel.
She nuzzled her nose there, working to forget all the bad as it came rushing down the maze of her mind.
She saved you. She gave you to me and went.
Tears dampened her eyes and she immediately straightened, closing his onesie, picking him up and gently depositing him in his cot. The muscles of her forearms throbbed but it was the best kind of pain.
“Thank you for staying, baby,” she ran a finger down his cheek. He went on breathing slow, deep, sweet breaths. Iram tore her eyes away from him and stepped back. She left the bedroom door open and strode to seek Atharva on the terrace. He wasn’t there.
Iram was more torn now. Yathaarth was asleep inside. Should she go down and leave him alone? She quickly tiptoed to the top of the stairs and peeked down the bannister. The downstairs light was on. Atharva was down. She glanced back and waited. No sound was coming.
Iram rushed down the stairs and ran to Atharva’s office.
She threw the door open without knocking.
And there he was, sitting on his chair behind his desk, turned towards the windows.
His house of cards was lying on his table, glued together.
He had the remaining stack of cards but hadn’t started a new one.
“Is everything ok?” She asked. “Atharva?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“Turn and look at me. I need to run up.”
“Why?” He turned immediately. “What happened to him?”
“Nothing happened. He is alone up there,” she bounced on the balls of her feet. Atharva’s face burst into a reluctant chuckle and he held up a baby monitor — “I’ll know if he cries again.”
“Oh,” she began to relax when her eyes widened. “Wait! You must have heard him cry earlier!”
“I did.”
“And you didn’t come,” she stepped inside, even giddier than she was while lifting Yathaarth. “You knew I would take care of him.”
“I did.”
She stopped in the centre of his office, those two words repeated, and repeated so solemnly.
“You really did?” She wanted confirmation. He nodded, grey eyes not moving from hers. “How many nappies did you break?”
“Only one,” she smiled shyly. “But I was still in sleep…”
“One strike on your bad children name, but you pass for today.”
Iram laughed, pushing her face up to drink back her tears — “You’ll think I have come back with an open tank.”
“No,” he got up and rounded his table, covering the distance between them. His hands held her face and tugged it straight to wipe her eyes. “I don’t think that.”
Iram stared at his face, counting today as a big win for her. As many small wins, truthfully. But then her eyes remained on his, and the shadows behind his smile began to slowly slip out. In the quiet of the night, his breaths were audible to her, as loud as her own.
“Why did you leave the room?”
His eyes blinked, that smile still on his mouth.
“Honesty, Atharva. My win is your win today, and your loss is my loss.” She cupped the side of his face and pressed her thumb to the corner of his eye. It wasn’t wet but she knew the beginnings of his tears.
“Tell me. All of it.”
He shook his head, his head bowing in her hand — “I have never been this man to keep looking back. I don’t know what’s happened to me.”
She cupped the other side of his face and pushed it up like he had done to hers just minutes ago.
“We both have grown into newer people who don’t seem to conform to their old moulds.
But I promised to love all the people you will become, Atharva.
Tell me. Is it me? Did I do something? Are you angry? Sad? Thinking about Yamma?”
His hands came over hers, patted, then pulled them down.
Iram began to push with more words of encouragement but he tugged her hand and led her to his couch.
They sat down side by side, their shoulders pressed.
Silent. Iram let him ruminate on whatever was churning inside him.
She sat there without another question, without another nudge.
His chest expanded in a deep breath, then relaxed.
And she let her head fall on his shoulder.
His chest relaxed some more. The tic in his breath slowed down.
“Can you hear about her?” Atharva asked. One of those rare times he asked her to be his crutch. How could she deny it then? Truth be told, she didn’t want to.
Iram nodded. “Yes.”
He did not say anything for a long time. And then, quietly, his words began to flow.
“She was five pounds and seven ounces.”
Iram closed her eyes, feeling her chest cave in but holding it steady for him.
“Fully formed. I hadn’t seen Yathaarth yet, when they showed her to me. They were supposed to show me my alive baby before they showed me my dead baby, officially. But I raged and pulled my weight to see her first.”
“Was she… you said she was wrapped,” Iram opened her eyes, tears already pouring down untethered. She knew her tears were draining into the sleeve of his shirt. She did not stop.
“She was wrapped but they gave her to me. I held her. Her swaddle wasn’t too tight. And the nurse opened it up to let me see her. Her hands. So small,” his voice broke. It went to half his pitch. “Pink fingers. She was… her nails were also formed.”
Iram held her chest tight lest it begin to rattle with how her insides were shuddering.
“What did she look like?”
“Like those dolls in toy shops. White skin, tiny lips, her eyelashes were like that unicorn toy Ada brought home the last time she came. Long, thick, closed. She would have been alive… if only she had breathed she would have been alive… I was supposed to hold her, talk to her, name her, grieve her, say goodbye to her. They did not set a time limit on it but I was running on borrowed time. Altaf and Captain Husain were combing the street cameras for you, a team was sent to Leh to Mama’s house, Budgam was being sealed…
and I had to see Yathaarth across town in Dr. Shankar’s NICU.
I couldn’t even hold her longer than fifteen minutes,” he broke down.
His body curled over itself until his head was rattling on his folded hands, loud sobs echoing in the room.
“How I hated you in that moment. How I hated the world for tearing me away from even a minute extra in my daughter’s presence.
” He sobbed. She curled herself over him, holding his broad shoulders tight.
“I was torn in three parts and this one refused to leave her. I had to leave her and I had to go. It felt like I was leaving her alive to die there.” His body rattled.
“It felt like if I spent just a little more time with her she would open her eyes, she would come back to me, be mine…”
Iram held him tighter, her tears stopped now to let his flow.
She inhaled sharply and pulled his head on her chest, lying back on the couch to let him cry.
He buried his face there and cried — loud, unfettered, his hands holding onto her with claw-like anchors.
Like he had once held after the passing of his mother.
“I haven’t cried…” he sobbed. “I am sorry…”
“Cry,” she embraced him. “Cry, Atharva.”
“I was so alone.”
“Cry.”
“You left me.”
“Cry,” she patted his hair.
“She left me.”
Iram pressed her mouth into the top of his head.