Chapter 38 #2
He sounded deflated. His eyes began to break away from hers when she held the side of his face and stopped him.
“I don’t expect anything more from you, not because I am unsure if you will be able to give it to me but because I do not want you to stretch yourself thin with so much going on inside you. ”
“What the hell is going on inside me.” It wasn't a question, but an exclamation. His eyes squeezed shut. “I have never felt this… I am unable to even say it out loud.”
“What are you scared of?”
Wary eyes popped open. A beat. Some winking trails of light over them. Then — “Not being the man you thought was strong.”
“Will you listen to me and believe in what I am saying?”
“When have I not, myani zuv?”
“This one you might not want to believe.”
He scoffed bitterly — “Hit me. I am immune to a lot of things now.”
“Then first tell me, what is going on inside you?”
His throat moved. She could see the exact path of the ball of saliva under his skin.
“Say it.”
“Purposelessness. Like I wake up and there is light but it is not for me. Like I start the car and don’t know where to take it for a second.
Sometimes I sit outside with the engine idling, trying to remember the road.
It’s a few seconds, but it spoils the entire day.
” He turned in her lap, his face hiding inside her stomach and arms coming to circle her waist. “I cannot take us back home, myani zuv.”
She inhaled sharply. He wasn't crying, he wasn't sobbing. But his hold on her was his lament. It was cutting her worse than if he had cried. Iram curled over him, holding his head in her arms.
“I don’t know what to do. I never not knew what to do.
Even when I left SFF,” his muffled words began to flow easier in the fabric of her kurti.
“I am a man living in a fraction of my capabilities and nothing makes sense anymore. Not leaving the house, not coming back. Because this is not our home.”
She drank the ball of her saliva and slowly pushed him to his back. He took a deep breath, his eyes not leaving hers.
“This house might not belong to us, this town and this state might not have our roots. But us — you, me, Arth, Shiva, Dani, Noora… we have made a home here.”
“I want to be grateful for that. And I am, don’t get me wrong. You have worked some otherworldly magic in this house, Iram. So much so that Amaal felt this was Srinagar when she came.”
“Your grandfather music helps,” she scratched his stubbly cheek, making him chuckle. A long moment of silence passed. They gazed up at the meteor shower, now slower, as if it was dying down too.
“Do we inherit fates, myani zuv?”
“What do you mean?”
They kept staring up at the sky.
“When Pundits were chased away from their homes, my grandfather somehow cheated his fate and got to stay. Did I inherit his fate instead?”
Such doomsday words did not suit Atharva.
And Iram embraced this side of him too. A little too tight.
Her forehead rested on his, her nose in his hair.
She inhaled — praying to inhale all the dark sucking him down, hoping to inhale all the hopelessness shackling him.
It wasn't possible to wake up tomorrow with a new purpose, nor was it possible to find the next step in such haze. But the spirit, Atharva’s never-say-die spirit… that was possible to find again.
“You did not say.”
“Hmm?” She pulled back up.
“You were going to say something that you said I will not believe.”
Iram let her lips curl into a semblance of a smile.
“Are you ready?” She joked.
“Oh just say it,” he drawled, in that instinctive British tone which was so patent to him in stray moments like these. It made her laugh. And it made him look at her happier.
“You are not a weak man.”
“I know that.”
Her smile widened.
“You are the strongest man there is.”
He did not respond.
“You step up to do things that nobody else dares to. You visualise a world that nobody else can. You live in that world before anybody else would. And you do that without asking or expecting anything for yourself.”
He remained quiet.
“You said you would believe me, Atharva.”
His mouth compressed but his eyes were amused.
“I would have said this even if you were not my husband.”
“There is no world in which I would not have been your husband.”
Her face stretched — in a blush and a smile and a grin. The said husband was coming back already.
“You are just reacting, not acting,” Iram held his face in her hands. “And that’s ok. That’s defence. You can’t always be on the front foot, no?”
He stared, impassive.
“In battles, you hide too. You told me this, that sometimes taking a few steps back is setting a longer game.”
“That is true only if you have a strategy.”
“And you will have one.”
“I don’t know, Iram… I don’t see any future for me even if I am called back home tomorrow. I know I won’t be called back in the foreseeable future. Until Qureshi is the CM, there is no chance for a return. He will make sure I am kept away so that he can securely hold onto his chair.”
“You are working at HDP for now. Concentrate all your efforts there.”
“I am.”
“No. You are doing the bare minimum to keep yourself busy.”
“Samar doesn’t want any more. And I am not in charge.”
“But you are getting to go back to the grassroots, isn’t it?
You are getting to live the life you were living at 25 again.
Even if you are not in charge, you are getting to go and run membership drives, meet people again, listen to their problems, find solutions, bring some semblance of order to chaos in some form or the other.
Even if it’s a candle and not the sun, it is light all the same. ”
She felt the hairs on the back of his neck flutter over her hand.
“Go slow, but go with your everything, Atharva. Take your time. If you cannot see the way out, then keep going one step at a time.”
“You said a man lost in a jungle will only keep circling back. I feel like that’s all that life will boil down to eventually. Honestly, Iram — chances of me ever rising up to a leadership role again are slim to none.”
“You wanted to make a difference once. Do you still want to do that?”
He nodded.
“Then roles don’t matter. You matter.”
“You mean to tell me that you will be ok not being the CM’s wife?”
“I married a common politician whose chances of winning the election were half and half. He won because I voted for him.” She bent and kissed his nose.
His lips stretched — “And wrote his speeches.”
“That too.”
Atharva’s head rolled further down her lap until his eyes were looking at her with a wider, clearer gaze. He stared at her with a mix of adoration and regret.
“What?”
“I could not be so understanding with you.”
She gaped at him.
“That first morning, when you woke up with so many questions about your history… I walked out. When you were going through the loss of your parents, your identity… I could not be so patient with you. I could not understand you like you understand me.”
“That is because you hadn’t gone through something like that before to understand it. If I hadn’t experienced that horror, I wouldn’t be able to understand you either today.”
“But…”
“And, you were running a state, cleaning up the mess made before you and handling the worst remnants of my father’s conspiracy at the time.”
“You are running a household, taking care of our son and writing a book while working on the release of another.”
She smiled — “Fair. And your son has become very demanding lately.”
“He needs zuv-zuv’s attention all the time.”
“Genetic problem.”
“I see now, I feel what you must have felt then. Or maybe a fraction of it, at least. The living in half, the drifting in water without any roots. It’s taking me everything to go from one day to the next.
How did you live with that and give birth to our babies, myani zuv…
” Atharva’s face began to crumple but she cupped his jaw, steadying it all.
“There is no competition. And, jo beet gayi so baat gayi. Hmm?”
He gaped at her.
“You once told me, that there are two of us in a marriage. One of us is enough to pull through at any given point. This time, I am pulling through. You rest. Take your time. Play with Arth…” she ran a finger down his nose, making an amused grunt pop out of his mouth.
“If you don’t like working at HDP, don’t.
We are not strapped for finance at this point.
You have secured your land income. My second book is coming out and you know the hype that has already cashed in.
I am starting with the third one and this time I will not stall. I will ride this momentum.”
“I know,” his eyes sparkled. “When you run, you rattle, myani zuv.”
“See?” Iram grinned. “We are in a good place. Look at this,” she nudged her chin up at the clear ceiling, bringing the shooting meteors into their space.
“This is a good house, an observatory, space enough for Arth to tumble down and run around and grow up. Even if we do not return home for now, we will make our home between the two of us. We will look at stars, play our records, go on dates which — when I propose, you have to accept. You will take us for long drives, hop cafes to find the best white pasta and black coffee, play the guitar, sing to Arth…”
“And to you too.”
“And to me too. Go back to workouts in the morning…”
He huffed. Iram held his jaw — “You need to get back to your routine, Janab.”
“Scared of a husband with a paunch?”
She reached down and tapped his belly. It wasn't a paunch yet but half a year of sedentary lifestyle was beginning to show. “I like my husband any way I can get him. But you need to go back to feeling in control of your mornings. Move your body again, run, because that’s where you feel the most alive. Captain Kaul, holiday is over.”
He smiled, his lips turning down. And what a smile that was!
“Life will not be like we imagined once, but it will still be ours,” Iram ran her knuckles down his stubbled cheek, down the scar that didn’t even stand out to her anymore.
His lips turned down further, telling her his entire soul was smiling at her.
“We did not win this time, but that’s not what heroes do, isn’t it? ”
His hand snaked up and behind her head. He pulled her down — “You’re right, myani zuv. Heroes don’t run to win. They run to live.”
And her mouth was captured in his.