Chapter 20
I think I am in love with life because I am in love with you, he thought, opening the door of his bedroom and finding his wife asleep with their son beside her.
She was curled on one side of him, the other side — his side, barricaded with pillows.
Atharva smiled, unzipping his hoodie noiselessly and stepping inside the room.
He closed the door with a soft click, then tiptoed to the curtains to pull the tiny crack closed.
The room was still lit with the diffused morning coming in from the sides.
Yathaarth made a happy little noise. Atharva turned and walked back to the bed, looking down at his son, wide awake, flailing his arms and legs, having been let out of the swaddle by Iram some time after he had left for his jog.
Now his son made eye contact with him and flailed happier hands, expecting some swing time.
Atharva chuckled quietly, feeling lightyears ahead of where he had been last night.
Mountains had grown on his back in these last few months.
He had forgotten to feel joy, even with his son here.
Now, even with one part of them… Hayat, lost, he still began to feel like he could love life again.
With Iram here, he would fall in love with this life. It was already pulling him in.
Yathaarth tried to arch his back and Iram’s hand on his chest moved, patting, even in sleep.
Atharva took a few quiet steps back, not about to step in.
Yathaarth tried to move over and his face banged into her breast. He began to root for milk, his smart boy.
And Iram came awake. Atharva’s heart settled on its lowest pump rate then, when her sleepy face softened, eyes on their son.
She caressed his hair — “Hi, good morning.”
His head fell back, and big eyes blinked up at her. Iram caressed the space between his brows and his eyes fell closed. Then popped open again, finding hers and fixating. Atharva stared, enraptured.
“Do you know you have the prettiest eyes in the whole wide world?” She cooed in the softest whisper Atharva had ever heard. His son blinked those pretty eyes, just as enraptured.
“Mmm… just like Baba. Big, grey, naughty…” she nuzzled his nose, making his mouth fall open.
“And kind. So kind. You are going to grow up to be such a kind boy. Your little hands,” she tickled and kissed the centre of his palm, “will always be ready to help. Your little mouth,” she kissed it, “will always carry Baba’s smile. ”
Atharva couldn't afford to miss even a millisecond of this in a blink.
He stared. He wanted to do nothing but stare.
Like he had always done where she was concerned.
Stained glass windows of Jamia had brought the sun to her eyes once.
Today, she was the sun burning herself to light up their son.
And Atharva had been the blessed man to witness that journey.
“These little feet,” she let him kick both his feet on her palm, thumbing them softly. “Will always run towards something good, something right.” She leaned down and kissed his toes. She didn’t see it, but Atharva saw their son’s face open up in her tickling hair falling all over his toes.
“You will be so good to the world,” Iram came back and lay down beside him. “And you will be even more good to everyone who loves you. Mama’s Arth…” she lay a featherlight kiss on his cheek and his face fell into her breast.
“Oh…kay!” She laughed. “Back to business, you say?”
Their son closed his eyes and began to root for her nipple again.
“Singleminded like your father…” she began to unbutton her top. “Arth,” she chided playfully, pushing up to sitting and startling back when she saw him.
“Atharva! You scared me!”
He walked forward.
“When did you come back?”
“It’s been a while.”
She reached for their son with practised ease. After just one night of independently handling him.
“You heard everything?” She asked, shifting to the middle of the bed and reaching for her half-open top.
Her eyes went to the clock like reflex, checking for his meal timings.
Now that he was enjoying a mix of breastmilk and formula, and Iram was feeding healthily, they needed to start managing and setting a better meal rhythm.
But his son was famished as usual, looking extra happy at the sight of his newest favourite meal.
“Eyes up here.”
Atharva snapped his eyes from her breast, hidden by Yathaarth’s head, and met her gaze. Gone was her momentary startle, replaced by eyebrows that were raised. His eyes widened — “I wasn’t staring at that!”
She bit her lip, holding back a smile.
His body relaxed. So her sodden habit of putting him on the spot was back. And worse — now looks did what words used to.
“You are panicking as if you were caught staring at somebody else’s wife.”
He was this close to walking down to her, pulling her chin up and showing her whose wife he was caught staring at. But he was sweaty. And as ok as it was to roll his wife in his muddy, dusty, sweaty self, now it was his tiny son and his delicate mother that needed sanitised hands.
Moreover, Iram needed patience. As did he.
“Let me shower and come back to you on that,” Atharva pulled his T-shirt off, marching towards the bathroom. When he turned, her eyes were trained on his back. They immediately rose to his.
“Good,” he smirked. She reached for the pillow beside her but he shut the door in time, feeling ten feet tall.
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Life as a man with his baggage lightened was like mixing paint in a bowl of water.
A blob, not mixing at first. And then, as you swirled the brush, it started to create patterns.
More mixing and it slowly blended into the water until the entire bowl was coloured.
Atharva saw it with his own eyes — him and Iram, blending slowly into their new life. In swirls.
Their home was alive with Begumjaan’s gardening dictatorship.
Freed up from the heavy-lifting of Yathaarth’s care but staying back because Iram still wasn’t ready to let go, she took up the task of repopulating his estate gardens.
They had last seen a tending touch when Amaal had stayed in his outhouse.
Ever since, Saad bhai had only kept the greens clean and pruned.
Atharva spent his early mornings listening to Yathaarth call out for his breakfast and Iram feeding him, talking to him about lotuses and his old soul and his love for grandfather music.
Then humming the said grandfather music.
While he went to jog, they dozed back off.
Breakfast for them was a livelier affair with Iram and Begumjaan discussing the estate, Yathaarth’s milestones (of which there were many on a daily basis), the kitchen garden that Begumjaan was working to expand, and daily menus.
Shiva did not like the latter and inevitably made his displeasure felt.
Some plates had shattered in his house over the said displeasure.
Noora dropped in uninvited because when was he ever invited?
And those mornings went ballistic, with more plates shattered.
His days at work were relatively easier.
Even as his government came back to functioning on track, the whispers of dissent in the valley were alive.
The world thought Kashmir was quiet. And it was, thanks to the tightened security.
But he knew that the underbelly was moving again.
While one enemy worked in hidden crevices of backwaters and shacks hidden on islands in Dal, the other sat silent in the legislative assembly.
Atharva’s suspicions were growing at the long-drawn silence from the opposition.
After the uproar over his handling of Usama Aziz’s encounter and the resultant disturbance in the valley, Momina Aslam and Awaami had gone relatively cool.
Their spokespersons still went on debates and bashed per usual.
But nothing of substance was said against him, no campaigns created.
It had been two months and even his trip to PoK was not slammed.
Atharva shared his observation with Amaal, and Adil. And they both had the same thing to say — ‘Wait and watch and snoop it out on the side.’
The latter, he was already doing. Momina Aslam’s mother was terminally ill and in the U.S. She was absent from Kashmir for long periods at a stretch. That was touted as the reason for her silence. Atharva still had a nagging feeling that it wasn’t the case.
But he set those worries aside every evening before he returned home. From wherever he was coming — party meeting in Leh or the quarterly PAG audit, he made sure to always come home lightened of his day’s burdens. And it had done wonders — not only for his family’s happiness but also his own sleep.
As he entered his house later than usual tonight, he nodded back at Altaf.
“Maverick is home.” The man and his fleet behind him retreated, done for the day. Atharva spied the light still on in the kitchen, music emanating from its depths.
“Iram! Myani zuv?” He took off his coat and caught a whiff of bread baking. That couldn’t be her. It had to be Shiva. The sound of the music sounded crinkly too. Radio.
“Shiva?” He strode into the kitchen and was proven wrong. His wife was sitting on the platform, brushing butter over some dough balls, humming to Lucky Ali playing on the radio.
“You don’t see any difference between Shiva and me?” She tried to pick one of her fun fights, stray locks of hair escaping her messed-up bun. Atharva strode to her and grabbed her by the waist, twirling her down from the platform. She screamed, the brush in her hand raised high.
“You smell a little better,” he set her down but not before taking a quick whiff of her neck. She was laughing, her body light as a feather. “You also weigh much less.”
“I am putting on weight,” she tried to push her hair behind her ear with her wrist. He slapped it off and tucked the locks tight behind her ears.