Chapter 31
“I have resigned.”
Iram was on her way to lower Yathaarth into his cot.
Her hand tightened on his head. She glanced up and saw the man who hadn’t come home in two days.
He was already on his way to the bedside table, emptying his pockets.
Phone. Wallet. Keys. Folded papers. He straightened and reached for the top button of his shirt, eyes trained on the bay window as he went on unbuttoning.
The Srinagar summer night came and lit up on his face, the moon full and bright tonight. He did not flinch in its light.
Iram swallowed, but before going to him, she lowered their sleeping son into his cot.
Yathaarth mewled, trying to pucker his lips for his pacifier.
She was trying to wean him off it for sleeping but he began to fuss around.
Iram reached for a spare one, opened it and popped it into his searching mouth.
The moment he quietened, she glanced up again.
Atharva had peeled his shirt off and was now unbuckling his belt, eyes still on the night sky. The muscles on his bunched with the movement of his arms. She wanted to go to him. But her feet wouldn’t move. As if there was a bubble, an aura around him, preventing anything from coming near him.
Resigned. I have resigned. Those words began to settle inside her.
Resigned. From the position of Chief Minister.
The Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir. If that wasn't Atharva then that position was… empty. Iram gaped at her husband’s bare back, the belt slowly being pulled out of the loops of his pants.
She had seen many Chief Ministers in this state in her time here.
But just three years of Atharva and she could not think of another.
His neck bent. She could feel the strain of that solid column in her own neck. Being the Chief Minister had been his big goal. He had given it 15 years of his life, 12 of them to just work and get ready for it. He had sacrificed a whole lot for it. His mother had passed in the tussle to reach here.
Resigned. I have resigned.
Just like that?
“Atharva.”
“Hmm?” He was looping his belt neatly around his fist, eyes still lost outside.
“Can I come there?”
His face turned to her over his shoulder, a frown and a smile playing together in those tired grey eyes.
His arm stretched out and his hand opened up for her.
Iram walked the distance between them and placed her hand in his.
His fingers clasped around her hand and she went into his warm chest. She embraced him, breathing in the musk and Old Spice, holding the back of his head and pulling it into the crook of her neck.
She smelled of khus tonight. And she felt the deep inhale of his nose, the pucker of his mouth on the hot skin behind her ear, the squeeze of his arms.
And then she felt his body loosen its taut tension and give itself away into her embrace. No tears, no rage, no silent scream. He just remained there, mouth and nose in that place where they always found liberation.
“You want to come down and eat dinner?” She asked.
“I want to take a shower.”
“Come.”
Iram pulled him back from her, took his hand and led him to their bathroom.
She left the door half ajar in case Yathaarth woke up, switched on the geyser and reached for the top button of his pants.
Atharva, surprisingly, remained quiet, letting her work the last of his clothes off.
She let her own clothes fall. And led him to the shower, turning the knob to a full blast of hot, steaming water.
She began to turn the cold water knob on but he reached around her and held her wrist.
“You don’t like scalding showers in summers,” she protested.
“You do.”
“Atharva.”
“I want scalding today.”
Iram glanced into his eyes, his scar looking pronounced and darker and deeper running down his left cheek today. She cupped the cheek and thumbed it, running her digit down the line. The things this man had sacrificed for her.
Her body was pushed under the shower and she pulled him along, the water scalding their skins, plastering their hair down their faces.
Iram rubbed her hands down his body — his chest, his stomach, his sides, his arms. Without soap, without shampoo, she went on rubbing her bare palms over the water sluicing down her husband’s body.
Slow, languid, cleansing. Her fingers reached his back and crawled up, rubbing circles until they reached the back of his neck. His head fell back.
Iram reached up and pushed the hair plastered on his forehead back, caressing his temple.
“I don’t know where I go from here, myani zuv.”
“I don’t know if I should drown in my guilt first or rise for you, Atharva.”
“I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“I don’t know how to make this bearable for you.”
“I don’t know if another peak will ever come in life.”
“It will!” She cut him off vehemently, scrunching her fingers in his hair and pulling his head down. Shocked grey eyes popped open.
“Atharva Singh Kaul — you may be a soldier or a Party President or a Chief Minister. You may be a trader or a gardener. You will always be at the peak of that point in life.”
His wet eyelashes blinked.
“Understood?”
They continued to blink, solemn and lost.
“I said, understood?” She gripped his hair tighter.
He nodded.
“Say it.”
“Understood,” he let go in a quiet breath.
“Understood what?”
His tight mouth curled on one side. Just a smidge.
“That my wife will make sure I find another peak in life.”
“No,” Iram pushed him back and onto the nearest wall.
She pinned him there with one hand on his chest — “Nobody will make sure you find a peak. Whatever you do, whatever comes to you, you will give it so much that you will rise to its peak. You are Atharva. You will rise. There is no other way for you.”
He nodded, the dying spark slowly lighting to life in his eyes.
“Now stand straight under the shower. Let me wash you.”
He laughed quietly, following her under the pelt of the shower and standing straight as she reached for the soap.
“Do I get the spa treatment every day now since I am free?”
“Just shut up.”
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He didn’t eat much. Iram knew he wouldn’t eat much.
He hadn’t been eating much these last few months.
Thankfully, he was eating right, which hadn’t caused much physical deterioration for him.
She sat beside him on their dining table as he finished the small portion of rice on his plate and began to scrape the last of the dal from his bowl. He never wasted food.
“Did you speak to Qureshi?”
“No. I have tendered my resignation to the Governor today. It will be made public tomorrow morning. I will be at the party meeting to choose the next CM then. I’ll see him there.”
She frowned — “You do not run from confrontation, Atharva…”
And it clicked.
“He has been running away from you?”
Atharva nodded, reaching for his water.
“Let me call Sarah…”
“No. Don’t bring this between you two for now. Let us deal with this like two professionals. He can be a coward and stage a coup behind my back. I will not bring our wives into this just to get him to talk.”
“Will you two… fight?”
Atharva gaped at her. Then broke into a chuckle — “No. No, myani zuv. What gives you the impression that the two of us, at almost 40 and 50, will get into a fistfight?”
“You fought with Samar when he tried this.”
“I fought with him for entirely different reasons, the top of them being you.”
“This is also because of me only. Have I ever given you anything good?”
“You.”
She began to open her mouth to ask what that meant when it clicked. The night, and this news, was making her brain power stumble.
“Arth.”
“Atha…”
“The threats of reaching new peaks in life.”
She smiled.
“This has snowballed into bigger things, Iram. It started because of the PoK visit but now I see it. The vultures were waiting to pounce. Time turned for me and everybody else did too. I had my moment upstairs and now I am going to get my bearings back.”
“After you have officially stepped down from the CM’s chair, will this inquiry go away?”
“I am trying. Yogesh Patel will get a win at the centre. Momina Aslam will have a new enemy — the new CM to discredit.”
“But you just said that her MLAs were going to get together with Qureshi to pass the Motion of No Confidence against you.”
“The moment their collective goal is achieved, they are back to their individual goals. Politics.”
Iram sighed, glancing at the dark hall in front of them.
The hall that had been alive with KDP members once, where it had all started.
Where logistics had spread out printing materials and media team had partied it up after the Kishtwar victory.
Where they had pulled all-nighters on coffee, kahwa and naan, where the result of election had been announced in the midst of the same people who had turned today.
Great things had happened here, and she had been a part of them. And then she had washed it all out.
“Hey, myani zuv?”
“Hmm?”
“Look at me.”
She turned her face and met his soft eyes. Atharva reached for her palm and set it on his cheek, over his scar. He pressed it there, holding her gaze — “You were feeling my scar after months today and guilting yourself.”
She chuckled bitterly.
“What will a thousand Kashmirs mean to me without you?”
Iram slapped her fingers over her forehead, rattling with laughter.
“Isn’t it?”
“I didn’t want it to come to this. If I had known, if only I had thought before… so much has already been lost because of my one decision.”
“Jo beet gayi, so baat gayi.”
She peeked at him through her lashes — “I should be the one rising for you, telling you all this.”
“You did,” he rolled his eyes upstairs. “I am still a little terrorised by that threat.”
“Good. Be terrorised and believe in it.”
“Yes, Madam.”
“If you are not Janab, then I am not Madam.”
“Hey,” he pulled her bodily towards him. “I am leaving the chair of CM, not the title of Janab.”
She went one step ahead, letting herself go into his arms and falling into his lap. He caught her sideways, lost grey eyes now amused.
“What about Maverick and Ghalib?”
“Altaf won’t be using them anymore because no Z+ security. But you were my Ghalib way before they started calling you that.”
She slipped her fingers into the hair at his temple, massaging them in his scalp. His eyes fell shut, like she knew they always did. Iram reached his ear with her mouth — “Ji, Janab.”
He got up with her in his arms and took her up the stairs, a dark night for them lit with moonbeams and her silent laughter.
————————————————————
Atharva strode into his party headquarters at sharp 7. The news about his resignation was not live yet. It would go live in an hour.
The atrium was empty, save for the security and some junior members setting up for the day.
He nodded at them, their wariness not hidden from him.
He did not stop to ask if Qureshi was in.
Atharva knew he was. The moment he had gotten news of this coup, Atharva had stopped being lax about his partners.
His spy network, the personal one, had been activated.
He knew exactly where Qureshi had been last night, who he had met and where he had spent the night. Not at home.
Atharva depressed the handle of Qureshi’s office and pushed the door in. Qureshi’s eyes rose to the door and the receiver in his hand slipped. Atharva stepped inside the room and closed the door.
The windows were bolted, the blinds halfway down, leaving the room only partly illuminated in sunlight. Fitting for a man who was between two shades himself
“Good morning,” Atharva nodded.
“Sit,” Qureshi got his bearings together, replacing the receiver back on the cradle.
His eyes were small, having spent a long night arranging his ascent to power.
Atharva knew from experience that even when your chips fell where you wanted them to, until the moment you swore that oath — you were vulnerable.
Atharva sat down on a visitor’s chair and crossed one foot over the other knee.
“You were my choice,” he said.
Qureshi startled.
“When Yogesh Patel had started to toy with President’s rule, you were my choice. In the event that I would have to step down, it would be you.”
“You would not go and the party is losing traction in all local elections…”
“You thought I would choose Samar,” Atharva went on.
“Last time, you were relieved that I chose Iram as Party President in my absence. She was no threat to you. This time, you thought Samar and I had reconciled and my obvious choice would be him. You foresaw it way before any of this began. When my conversations with Momina Aslam were not even public knowledge. You started turning my MLAs before anything was publicly wrong.”
“I did not turn your MLAs, Atharva. You have been neglecting them. They have legitimate concerns and your decisions and arbitrary actions are not helping them. They are not helping you either.”
“And you couldn't tell this to my face?”
His mouth behind his beard tightened.
“At every stage of decision making, you have been consulted. Before anybody else was aware, you have been made aware. You either console yourself with this reasoning or keep it for members of KDP who will start asking tough questions. Don’t sell the bullshit to me,” Atharva smiled calmly.
“See, I made this as harmless as possible. You have served three good years, I will make sure the momentum only goes up from here. After the miserable year that we have had, a fresh start will help the party. A fresh face to write off all that you have done.”
“I do not mind you leading this, Qureshi. But I do detest the way you did it in.”
“I am sorry. This was the only way I saw fit.”
Atharva got to his feet.
“You already know it, but my resignation has been accepted by the Governor. It will be made public at 8.00 hours today. I will not be taking any press — written or recorded. A statement on my behalf will be released by Amaal. You will have no say in it. By 11.00 hours, KDP will announce its new CM face. You. I will not, in any way, publicly endorse you. You will have my vote in the party, that is it.”
He could see Qureshi’s throat work down a swallow.
“I wish you had faith in me to talk about your desire. I still wish you luck in running this state. We started it all for Kashmir.”
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Office of the Chief Minister
GOVT. OF JAMMU & KASHMIR
Press Statement
Date: 5th June, 2017
After due reflection and in light of the evolving political and administrative circumstances, Shri Atharva Singh Kaul has tendered his resignation from the post of Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir.
He expresses his gratitude to the people of the state for their enduring trust, and to the institutions that supported his tenure. He remains committed to the peace, integrity, and future of Jammu & Kashmir.
Additional Secretary to the Chief Minister
CMO