Chapter 34
Kehte hai gyaani, duniya hai faani,
Paani pe likhi likhayi.
Atharva turned the indicator on and activated his foglight, taking the sharp bend up the steep slope.
One side was dark, deciduous thickets rising up with the mountain; the other was fenced, falling down into the valley.
As the car’s floodlights moved over the bends, he got his first glimpse of tall, dark deodars, swaying in the wind.
The rain was pelting here, the night sky deep blue with lightning trailing across its surface.
“Are we there?” Iram startled awake.
“Two minutes,” he croaked, his voice hoarse after being silent for the last four hours.
They had started after dinner at Pathankot, and Daniyal had tried to take the wheel.
Atharva had talked him out of it. Shiva and he had both dozed off then.
Iram had, after unsuccessful attempts at playing DJ to keep his spirits up, succumbed to sleep too.
Only Yathaarth had stared ahead, his pacifier in his mouth after an extra tumultuous dinner time, wide eyes blinking at the dark interiors.
He had been quiet. Every time Atharva had met his eyes, he had felt guilt roll through him.
His happy baby, thinking he had an outing of a few hours before he would go back to his home, having spent cooped up in this car for 16 hours, would now enter a place that wasn't home. He would celebrate his first birthday in a house that wasn't his great-grandfather’s.
“Arth,” Iram cooed softly, reaching back to tickle his chin. Their son did not smile, looking zapped, lost.
“It’s been the longest drive for him,” Iram covered up.
Atharva was grateful she was so upbeat about this, shouldering his own morose mood with her rare positive attitude.
It was like she had taken up the mantle of being the bright side of his soul, the one that he seemed to have left behind in that moment when he had been banished from the home he had given his everything to.
The injustice of it all crashed down on him as he turned the car right and into the already open gates of Briarwood Bungalow.
The fenced gated entry led a short way up the driveway, where he noticed the porch light on.
A frail old man stood hunched, balancing himself on a long stick, shielding himself under the porch roof from the rain.
The driveway was small. A security convoy wouldn’t fit here.
There was no pole to hoist the flag. The bungalow was two storeys, not three.
The dark and rain blanketed most of the house from his eyes but Atharva knew the skeleton of this structure.
Had seen the photos. Deep green sloped roofs patent to this part of Himachal, dull white facade, crossed windows with Deodars framing the back. Beautiful, but not home.
Black lampposts glowed all the way up to the porch and looked iridescent in this damp weather. A perfect holiday home. Except, this wasn’t a holiday.
“The house looks exactly like we saw,” Iram leaned up towards the windshield. “Samar had it ready in record time, isn’t it?”
“Hmm.”
Atharva parked the car under the porch and the pattering of rain on the roof silenced.
He stared at Briarwood Bungalow, bought by HDP through one of its local members.
Now rented out to him. The current lease was locked for twelve months, but who knew?
It could be terminated in two or be extended for another twenty.
Atharva held himself back from thinking longterm. Instead, he sucked in the silence.
The music was off. Three quiet passengers in the rear silent.
The car itself became an eerie box of vacuum.
Atharva stared at the entrance of the house.
He had spent a lifetime without a home. Iram had asked him once — where would you live if you could live anywhere.
He had answered — everywhere and nowhere.
There is no one place for me. And that was true before he met her.
Before he began to value the weight of his heritage — his grandfather’s hearth, his gramophone, his father’s letters, the Chinar of his backyard, the grave of his mother.
Before he made a home out of that old house, where not only memories but countless dreams and broken promises stayed.
Even the ghosts of that house were his. Even the ghosts of Kashmir were his.
The bad of that land was as much his as the good.
And a part of him was tormented that the land he had accepted with all its shades had banished him so easily.
Logically, he knew the facts. Emotion had no place in politics.
Emotion had no place in this mess he had entangled himself in.
But looking at his one-year-old son blinking blankly at his dark surroundings, uprooted from his rightful home, Atharva could not not feel.
The injustice, the loss, the helplessness.
“Sahab,” the old caretaker knocked on his window. Atharva snapped out of his thoughts and unlocked the door, stepping out into the damp air of Shimla. It smelled of wet greens and hot mud. After 16 hours of driving, his muscles were stiff, going stiffer under the cold rain.
“Harishji,” he addressed the man.
“Namaste, sahab,” Harishji folded his hands around the walking stick he was leaning on. His thick glasses had gone foggy, the Pahari topi he wore looking crumpled and droopy.
“Namaste. Aapko humare liye jagna pada…[46]” he returned the greeting, hearing Iram’s car door open.
“Iss ummar mein waise bhi neend kahan aati hai…[47] Namaste bhabhiji,” he folded his hands again to Iram. “Ghar saaf kar diya hai, Samar sahab ne jo list diya tha woh sab mangwa ke rakha hai.[48]”
“Shukriya,” Iram’s soft voice had a smile in it, a smile Atharva could not bring to his own face — try as he might. And he had spent a decade practising holding his emotions off his face.
“Atharva Bhai…” Daniyal stepped out of the car, and Shiva disembarked from the other side. Noora’s car climbed the slope behind them and dragged to a halt.
“You did not take me to my Nani’s house…” Daniyal grumbled. Atharva eyed him as he stood squirming, pulling his creased T-shirt straight — “Did you really come with us to go to your Nani’s house?”
“No.”
“Then go find yourself a room.”
His smile was tentative — as if wanting to break free but holding back in lieu of his failed deception.
“Arth…” Iram pushed inside the car from his open door and unbuckled their son. “You are so quiet today that we forgot you are here!” She was murmuring playfully to him. She pulled out with him in her arms, his big grey eyes wide, staring up and down, his mouth sucking on his pacifier.
“He is sleepy but wired from the drive. Let me change him and put him down…” Iram began to move towards the house. “Harishji, can you show me where everything is? I need hot water…”
“There is a heater in every bathroom for hot water. I will come.”
Atharva stood back as Shiva began to unload the back of the Land Rover.
“Do the Innova too, Hari,” Noora tossed him the keys. Shiva stared unmoved at him, letting the keys knock him on the shoulder and fall to the ground.
“I am not your servant and my name is not Hari,” he deadpanned.
“Hari is the most common name here in Himachal,” Noora stretched his arms up, twisting his torso from side to side, yawning. “Now unload the Innova and bring me back the keys. I am going to my room… Aah!” He ducked under his arms as Shiva lifted his metallic trunk.
“Enough!” Atharva put an end to their antics. They froze. Atharva got his irritation under control. Reclaiming his bearings, he exhaled through his mouth — “Both of you, help each other out and unload the Innova. I will park this one and come to help.”
The men seemed to gauge his rare outburst and quietly marched to do his bidding.
Atharva got inside the Land Rover and started the engine.
He let it idle for a minute, staring at the rain.
This was a temporary change. He had lived with change all his life.
Why was this proving so difficult to accept then?
Maybe because he wasn't alone anymore. And he was failing not only himself but also his family.
Pushing the incoming onslaught of thoughts down for now, he turned the wheel. Park the car, go inside, set up for the night, he told himself. He depressed the clutch and released the brake. The rest would come tomorrow. He would take it as it came.
————————————————————
“…and here’s your new bed! Waah!” Iram was swinging Yathaarth in the cradle of her arms over his portable cot, making his tiny chuckles reverberate through the empty house.
There were major pieces of furniture in place — sofa sets, wardrobes, beds.
Nothing else. The walls echoed. Atharva wheeled two bags into the bedroom on the first floor.
“I have got his bags first,” he announced, looking around the master bedroom. It was big, but looked empty. Bed, wardrobes, TV unit, shutters that opened out into the balcony. Right now, with the sound of pelting rain, it looked depressing in the bright white lights.
Iram was happy, though, swinging Yathaarth playfully, making him happy.
“I’ll open them here?” Atharva lifted one bag on top of a vanity unit.
The bag with his clothes that she’d need to give him a bath.
He zipped it open for her and turned, striding to the door to bring in the boxes.
He grabbed the biggest and hauled it up.
It felt dense. Denser than a set of books should be.
Atharva set it down at the threshold of the door and tore the tape open.
His father’s gramophone sat cocooned amid cushions. They were stuffed haphazardly to protect the gramophone. Atharva’s eyes whirled to the other box. The other set of her books. He tore the tape open and found his records, stacked neatly, packed tight.
He climbed over the boxes and strode into the room — “Where are your books?!”
“Keep it down, he is trying to go to sleep…” Iram rebuked.