Chapter 35
TWO MONTHS LATER
The land of gods was ethereal. Just as mountainous as home, equally stunning, but so different in its experiences.
August in Srinagar would be summer — touristy, warm, Dal and Jhelum melting into pristine blues.
They would get their mattresses and pillows out to dry in the sun, use the AC a little extra due to the rising temperatures with Global Warming and keep ice cream stocked in their freezer all month-long.
Iram saw the rain in front of her eyes — a sleet, drenching the land of gods.
Chains of mountains rose and fell in the distance, covered in glistening emerald green, looking deeper, darker, a shade she didn’t remember ever seeing back home.
Almost too much for the eyes. The Chinars back home would be already on their way to paling this time of year, their leaves losing that sunlit swagger.
Here, the deodars stood like quiet sentinels, unmoved by season or sentiment, dripping rain from their needles day after day.
The rain slowed and instead of making way for the sun, it made way for a blanket of fog.
Iram stared and saw the change of weather from rain to fog in the span of an hour.
Emerald green turned pale in the heavy fog of white.
The sky lost the last of its blue to grey. And her open windows began to sway.
“Arth’s breakfast is ready,” Shiva hollered from the kitchen.
“I’ll get it,” she called out. The fog in front of her was just as magnetic as the rain before it. Try as she might, she couldn't tear her eyes from it. A small voice inside her reared its ugly head — would she ever be able to see the sun of August in Srinagar again?
Iram tore her eyes from the scenery in front of her and turned away, grabbing the shawl draped over the armchair. She did not drench under a cold rain anymore. And she did not wait for somebody to drape shawls over her anymore. She was the one who draped them nowadays. And she was proud of it.
With a whirl, she covered her shoulders in the warm frayed shawl, bright yellow in colour — a purchase of Atharva when they had scouted the streets of Edinburgh. It wasn't exactly the colour of mango but came close.
Iram got Yathaarth’s breakfast of porridge and banana from the kitchen and went in search of him.
With Noora and Daniyal both here, she never knew what her year-old son was found doing — singing Old McDonald had a farm and dancing to Noora’s toneless lilt or vibing to One Direction while arm wrestling with Daniyal.
This time it was the latter. In Daniyal’s bedroom.
“Don’t you have college, Mister?” She went inside since the door was already open. Atharva and she had made a rule — they wouldn’t enter without knocking on a closed door. But if it was open, it was fair game.
“Going, Bhabhi, going,” he laughed, splayed on the carpeted floor, pretending to throw Yathaarth off his chest as the toddler sat armwrestling with him. Iram smiled at her son, trying to make growly noises and ending up with wheezes instead. He couldn’t even frown properly yet!
“Breakfast time, Arth, let Dani bhai go now,” she rounded the two of them, setting the bowl on the bedside.
“Dani fut! Dani fut!”
“Dani what?”
“Fudge,” Daniyal sat up in a whoop. Iram narrowed her eyes at him. He cradled Yathaarth close — “Dani fudge. I got walnut fudge yesterday…”
“He does not like chocolate.”
“Yeah, but he heard me talk about it.”
“Daniyal.”
His eyeballs went everywhere but at her.
“You taught him F.U.C.K?”
“No! I didn’t!”
“Then how does he know it?”
“I was talking to somebody on the phone.”
Iram widened her eyes.
“I am sorry.”
She bit her lip, whooshing air through her nose. “Just don’t let your Atharva Bhai hear it. And do not use that word in front of him. Or the others.”
“Is shit allowed?”
“Shit!” Yathaarth bellowed.
“You are not ready to learn Iram, and these you pick up like the plague,” she grabbed her son and jostled him playfully. He chortled, showing her his gummy smile with three teeth now full and out.
“I am out, I will be late today, Bhabhi…”
“Eat and take your tiffin from Shiva.”
“I am not hungry.”
“You have to start with breakfast.”
He made a face. Iram had discovered in the last few weeks that Daniyal Qureshi did not eat breakfast. In fact, he did not eat anything until lunch, when he pounced on anything put in front of him with a single-minded vengeance. She had tried converting him but to no avail yet.
“Fine. But don’t forget your tiffin. Shiva was grumpy all day yesterday because you left your tiffin with him.”
“When is he not?” Daniyal swung his bag over his shoulder and grabbed his wind cheater. “Bye bye, Yati!”
“Dani-Dani!” Yathaarth waved at him with both hands.
“Hmm,” Iram caught her son’s attention as Daniyal left. “Breakfast here or in front of the window?”
He blinked his big, dark grey eyes at her. He didn’t like breakfast nowadays either and she was sure Daniyal’s habits were rubbing off on him.
“Meh! Time’s up. You don’t get a choice now,” she threw him up and caught him back. His shriek of delight was loud. Iram grabbed his bowl in her free hand and strode out of the bedroom.
This house was big but not huge; five bedrooms with all five occupied — Noora, Shiva and Daniyal downstairs and hers and Atharva’s master bed upstairs with the spare one used to store their things.
Iram had the sorting of their homeware on her to-do list for a month but the time to unpack had never come.
She knew that every time she thought of unpacking, a part of her would protest, thinking that if she unpacked and set things out of their boxes and into cupboards, she would be sealing the deal of this move being more than just temporary.
It would mean accepting that they were here for the foreseeable future.
Iram pushed that thought away. She walked out of the alley and into the Victorian hall done in rich polished dark wood.
Instead of going to the tall window where Yathaarth’s highchair was set, she changed directions and swept out of the hall, down another alley and up the winding staircase that led to the highlight of this Briarwood Bungalow.
It had been built and owned by one Briar M.
, an architect and a passionate landscape designer of the Victorian era.
And he had built this house with a glass observatory.
Yathaarth clung his hands around her neck as she navigated the spiral of steps, balancing him and his food. He remained steady, knowing what he was about to see in 3, 2, 1…
“Look at that rain!” She whispered into his ear as they stepped up and into the transparent observatory.
The clear glass dome was pattering with rain, deodar needles swaying and kissing the curved glass walls.
It was like being inside a floating pod in the middle of pines and deodars.
She twirled with Yathaarth in her arms, eliciting happy squeals from his tiny mouth.
She was glad she had made him adjust to this place.
The beauty of Shimla was unrivalled, but the bitterness inside her and Atharva for leaving Srinagar had not been picked up by Yathaarth.
He was truly in love with this new world.
Iram held his bowl of porridge steady and came to a halt, taking one turn anticlockwise just to keep both their heads steady. And when she stopped, her eyes fell on the silent figure.
Atharva.
Back to them, on an armchair, reading a newspaper. Silent.
Her chest constricted. It had been two months of silence.
Not the literal kind, the figurative kind.
He laughed, played, ate, talked. He did what she asked, climbed up ladders and cleaned glass lanterns, stuffed the top shelves with their extreme winter-wear, put Yathaarth to sleep when she was busy with writing, fed him if she was hassled in the kitchen.
He did everything without complaining, except, being happy.
And she had given him the space to not be happy.
It wasn't her place to keep pushing him to feel a certain way.
Iram glanced at the gramophone sitting silently on the carved wooden table on one side of the room.
She had set it up here last week after unsuccessfully keeping it inside their bedroom in hopes that he would play it.
He was prone to spending his free hours here, either reading the newspaper or scrolling through his iPad — both activities passive and not Atharva-like.
Iram went down the open space and set Yathaarth’s bowl on a small stool in front of Atharva’s chair. Then thrust their son into his lap. He took the weight without looking up, cuddling his son under one arm as he transferred the paper to his other, grey eyes behind his glasses focused on reading.
Iram went to the gramophone, randomly pulled out a record from the open cabinet she had meticulously filed in order of colours, and pulled the vinyl out.
She had also placed his Bhagwad Gita on this shelf — a talisman, a memory, a book that had tied them before love or Hayat or Yathaarth ever had.
He had not picked that up either. She knew it.
The edges were not parallel to the edges of the table, unlike his military precision placements.
Iram moved her eyes to the black vinyl in her hand, looking muted under the watery light of the day.
Having seen Atharva do this tens of hundreds of times, she cleaned the shiny black surface with her cotton kurti’s hem under the shawl and placed it gently on the gramophone.
She lifted the stylus with the pin on it, placed it atop the vinyl and turned the dial up.
Sansar se bhaage phirte ho… bhagwan ko tum kya paaoge…
She saw Atharva’s shoulders tense. Before he could react, though, Iram plucked Yathaarth from his lap and settled on the old settee in front of him, reaching for the breakfast which was now lukewarm.