Chapter 32 #2
The quiet of her house was eerie after days of continuous hammering by Atharva.
This had been the longest the house had been quiet ever since his sabbatical started.
Iram took full advantage of it. She put Yathaarth to sleep on the sofa in the hall instead of the room farthest from the backyard.
She sat beside him with her laptop, as was her ritual every night.
He had started to doze off nowadays, then wake up for a top-up of milk around midnight, then go back to sleep — only to rise with the sun and his father.
Iram wanted to wean him off his midnight snack.
They had even tried. But it was proving difficult.
And then she would see, half asleep every morning, how Atharva would grab his freshly-awakened son and quietly leave the room, bouncing him.
She did not know what the duo did in those hours every morning.
She suspected there was running around involved in the backyard.
She just hoped Atharva was keeping their son away from the half-finished treehouse.
All in all, she was a little biased towards that time they both got. If that meant putting Yathaarth to bed early and keeping on with his top-up for a few more weeks, she was ready to do it.
Iram stopped typing and glanced at her son, his head close to her thigh, full of soft dark curls that matched his father’s waves.
He was sleeping so soundly, in that deep part of his sleep.
She couldn’t resist running her fingers through his hair.
In this phase of his sleep, he never stirred with her caresses.
There was a strange kind of joy in seeing your child sleep peacefully.
Iram couldn’t stop eating up the joy. With the impossible place their life was stuck in, with the struggle both her and Atharva were enduring to keep their everyday going as smooth and as happy as possible, with the haze covering their future, it was this sight that made her chest open up marginally.
Everything outside this could collapse. But if this remained, she pushed the stray curls back from his temple; if this remained, everything else would remain.
Her silent phone buzzed. Iram glanced at the ID. Sarah.
She ignored it. She did not have the energy to speak to her. Iram was in a place where she wanted to sympathise with Sarah but being a politician’s wife, in the world of politicians, she couldn't help but wonder about intensions. Or about another ear on the other side of the call.
The buzzing died down. Then started again.
Ok, this wasn’t a casual call. She left her son’s head and picked up the phone.
“Hello?” She spoke softly.
“Iram,” Sarah was panicked. “Listen, please trust me. Meer did not have anything to do with it. Tell Atharva, make him understand…”
“Sarah, Sarah… wait. What are you saying?”
“Atharva didn’t tell you?”
“He is not home yet. What happened?”
“You didn’t see the news? Nobody contacted you?”
Iram’s heart began to thud.
“What news?” She searched for the remote. “What is going on? Where is Atharva?”
“He left from here an hour ago.”
“From your house?”
“Iram, he was caught taking some files from a bureaucrat of the CMO. He says Meer set him up but trust me, Iram. Meer did not. I swear to you he did not…”
Iram finally located the remote and put on the TV, instantly switching the volume to mute. The channel was set on a local news channel like it always was nowadays. Some rain forecast was playing. She changed the channel and nothing.
“Sarah, there is nothing on TV…” Iram stopped at a national news channel.
brEAKING NOW
J&K ex-CM CAUGHT TAMPERING WITH HIS INVESTIGATION EVIDENCE
The ticker flashed red. The reporter went on talking on mute. Iram stared, dumbfounded.
“Where is Atharva?” She asked into the phone. “Where is he?”
“He left for home, nothing has happened to him, nothing will happen to him. Meer will ensure that, Iram… Iram? Iram?”
Iram was busy reading. The ticker was now flashing quickly.
ATHARVA KAUL’S PoK FILES MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARED
S.I.T. CONVENING FOR AN EMERGENCY HEARING TOMORROW
A car door banged shut and the door of their house was pushed open. Iram glanced up and saw him stride in, enraged, the cloud of the night behind him. His eyes met hers and he stopped short.
“Iram? Hello? Iram, Meer wants to talk to you…”
“I have to go,” she ended the call.
“What is this?” She asked, feeling Yathaarth turn over and holding him with one hand on his chest.
Atharva’s nostrils flared. Like he was ready to set something on fire.
“Atharva?”
She couldn't get up. There were no pillows here to bank on the other side of Yathaarth.
“Singh sir betrayed you?”
His teeth gnashed together. She could see his jaw tick even from this distance. The rage that she had awaited in him all these days was now suddenly roaring.
“Atharva.”
“They are planning to extern me.”
“What does that mean?”
“Make me leave.”
“Leave the party? But you are the founder…”
“Leave Kashmir.”
Her jaw locked.
“Come here, please,” she managed through the pulse ticking at the base of her throat. “I cannot get up.”
He looked like he would turn and walk back out. But she must have looked just as wretched because he strode to her and stood over her head, a shadow on her and Yathaarth.
“Sit.”
He did not move. His fingers were rock-hard fists by his side.
“Atharva, please. Sit.”
He took a seat on the edge of the coffee table in front of her, his eyes going to Yathaarth.
“They want you to leave Kashmir. And go where? Jammu?”
“Jammu & Kashmir. The state.”
“Why?”
“To prevent me from tampering with evidence.”
“Qureshi?”
“He is not directly doing this but there must be some approval of his. Awaami Party is demanding it.”
“Surely they can’t demand and have Qureshi fulfil it. He said he will make you leave?”
“Yogesh Patel got in touch after this afternoon,” he sounded marginally calmer.
“What happened this afternoon?”
His eyes boiled again.
“Singh sir had gotten old files for me. All the last papers that had discrepancies, which I hadn’t been able to clean up with the way Qureshi ousted me. A raid happened.”
“At Singh sir’s house?”
He nodded.
“Are you sure he did not betray you?”
“He is in as big a trouble as I am. Thankfully, we destroyed the papers before the raid.”
“Then what proof does anybody have that there were papers in the first place?”
“Qureshi’s new Principal Secretary sounded the alarm. He is going around waving an index page that has more entries than counted inside the cabinet. It’s as if Awaami was waiting to pounce on this… or possibly they had planned it with Qureshi. They are calling for my externment.”
“What did Yogesh Patel say to you?”
Atharva stared unblinking.
“Atharva. Say, please.”
“He says that there are two options now — to fast-track SIT because the media is getting difficult to handle and nationalist sentiment across India is pushing back.”
“On you?”
“On all of us. And if SIT is fast-tracked, the report will have to come out. The report will say that I was targeted in a foreign land. The Centre will have to take some action. If not war, a strike at least, to give back a proportionate response. That’s exactly what Dilshad Khan wants.
He may have kept quiet under Faiz’s leverage but this would be his big goal.
To pit the two countries when already there is so much internal unrest in Kashmir. ”
“What is the other option?”
Iram hated asking this. Because she was smart enough to calculate it.
“To prolong the SIT and wait for this to die down. But now, that will have to happen with me banished from here.”
“Is it… is that even legal? To throw us out of our home… our city?”
“It’s legal. And not us. Just me.”
“You are crazy if you think I will let you go alone.”
“I meant I will be legally externed, not my family. You will be able to come back here.”
Her mouth dropped open — “You mean you won’t be able to…”
“Not until this investigation is concluded or the scrutiny dies down — whichever happens first. Legally, I will be persona non grata here until an order comes otherwise.”
“So the price you pay for bringing me back home is to leave your home?”
His mouth pressed tight.
“Is there no other way? What if you… leave public life?” Déjà vu. She was having the worst case of déjà vu from the night when he was going to get arrested.
Atharva’s head dropped into his hands. He was breathing — slow, steady, the muscles under his shirt angry in their flex. No noise sounded in her house. Except for her son’s silent snores and his father’s angry breaths.
Atharva finally rubbed his hands up and down his face and sat up straight. Grey eyes bore into hers.
“It might be sooner than I think.”
“What?”
“If the order comes tomorrow, it may not give us more than three days to leave.”
“But Yathaarth’s birthday is this Sunday…”
She saw Atharva’s eyes fill with horror. Then the horror went, replaced by rage, which was slowly dead in the fumes of blankness. It hit. Now it hit. Iram felt a shiver set inside her bones.
“Where will we go?”
They weren’t alone anymore. They had a son.
“What will we take along?”
Their son was tiny but his things were many.
“How long will this last?”
Should she pack for one month’s trip or an alternate household?
Iram met his eyes. And he had no answer. Neither of them had any answer between them.