Chapter 40
“The Secretariat has moved on but Srinagar hasn’t,” Noora reported, solemn for a change as they sat in the library room of the bungalow. There was no desk or table, nothing except a long, ancient divan and empty bookshelves.
Atharva wanted to fill the space up, start living here.
“Did you get Iram’s books?”
He nodded. “Adil sends these for you,” Noora reached inside his bright orange bag and pulled out a nondescript plastic folder. It was thick. Atharva knew what it was.
“What else?” He accepted the folder and set it aside.
“Law and order is not under complete control. Kupwara is buzzing again but Qureshi sahab does not let any recce happen.”
“Hmm.”
“Inside news is that Momina Madam has to pay back the debts.”
“Money she got to fuel my campaign,” Atharva guessed.
Noora snickered — “You are still smart, huh, Big Brother.”
“From Pakistan. Can you trace from where?”
He shook his head vigorously — “Not only from Pakistan. That was peanuts. The bigger chunk is routed through Kuwait.”
“China.”
“You were planning to do something anti-China in Ladakh or what?”
Atharva’s mouth compressed.
“Naughty Big Brother, two hammers on one foot.”
Atharva stared at him. “What else?”
“Common conversation is still about you.”
“Good or bad?”
“Pick one,” he held both his fists out.
Atharva kept staring.
“Good,” he pulled his wrists down. “Mostly. The people are not happy with this change. And it’s also visible how you were pushed out by KDP itself. And…”
“And what?”
“Now there is a new worry for KDP.”
It was like Noora was suppling facts and Atharva instinctively knew the reasons behind those.
“How will they win the next legislative election,” Atharva voiced out loud. “If there is one thing people don’t forgive, it is treason.”
“So the current very, very, very internal plan for the campaign is to make them forget it.”
Atharva nodded.
“And forget you.”
That means there was no road leading home for at least the next two years.
If, at all, Qureshi won the election after two years…
there were chances he could negotiate a deal to go back home.
Qureshi would then be secured in his position.
Or… Atharva thought, if he could manipulate the election with Janta winning more seats than KDP, and strike a deal with Yogesh Patel.
Atharva reined in the horses galloping in different directions.
If he wanted a shot at going back in either case, he had to make himself oblivious in public memory first. They had to forget him. Move on from him.
And what would he do when he returned home to a people who had forgotten him? He did not want to think about that yet.
Home was preferable to a profession.
“Who got my books…” Iram pushed the door ajar, laptop open on one arm. She stopped short, her frown melting at the sight of Noora. “You came! Did you bring the groceries I messaged you about?”
“It’s food,” Noora grinned. “I got double.”
“And you brought my books too…”
“Oh, I thought you would be missing them all…” he smiled coyly.
Iram chuckled, indulging the man-child, but her brown gaze moved over to him.
Atharva saw how soft she looked. The last few months had made her step up and become the shoulder of their household.
Now, with her books here and him ready to share the load again, the giddy girl inside her was slowly peeping out.
“Noona…” Arth’s tiny head popped from between her legs and the half-open door.
“Arthaa!” Noora opened his arms and Atharva grunted as his son squeezed past Iram and ran into Noora’s open arms. As the great family reunion went on in the background, he reached for Adil’s folder and snapped open the velcro.
Newspapers from the last month.
He pulled up Adil’s message from last night.
ADIL
Noora is BOILING my brains. Take him back!
BOILING, he cracked the code in his head.
Take him back. He turned the word around, then numbered the code. Letters resembling the numerical.
6217108
He picked up 6th October.
Brains, he went to the Tech section and read through the random words underlined in a light pencil.
Take him back. Backwards.
He jumped back to 2nd October.
Atharva went in reverse order of sections.
Read the underlined words. He went down the sheaf of newspapers, deciphering Adil’s message.
This jumble of encoding was a tactic he had developed back in SFF — to have one code mean two different things at once.
Like a random sampling, but one that only they knew was not random.
Adil had refined it with him and they had kept it to themselves.
Neither Qureshi nor Samar understood it.
“Baba carcar!” Yathaarth toddled to him and weaselled his way between his legs. Atharva turned his eyes from the newspapers and widened them playfully at his son — “Car car? You want to go out, Dilbaro?”
“Car car!” He banged his palms on his knees.
“Did you hear that?” Noora screamed. “I taught him car!”
“You did not teach him anything,” Atharva balanced the baby bouncing on the balls of his feet between his legs as he went back to the last newspaper.
“I told him I came in car!” Noora’s screechy voice yapped. “Iram! You heard it. You are my witness.”
“Whoever taught him, now Janab has learnt how to demand to go O.U.T.”
“Car-car!”
“I taught him!”
“Dani car!”
“When did Dani bhai use the car, Arth?”
“Dani car!”
approval rating down
king struggling
Jammu yours
Ladakh head yours
Srinagar yours
party planning to use you for Polls
Will ask
say no
————————————————————
His son learnt to say the word car-car and Atharva didn’t know if he knew the meaning of it or they, as a family, made him establish the connection by taking him out the moment he uttered those words out loud — but it became a norm to go out almost every second day.
It could be something as small as a drive around town or a short day-trip to a place not more than 30-40 minutes away from their house.
Sometimes it would be the entire clan, on others — just the three of them.
And Atharva couldn’t be happier. That his son seemed to come alive on these drives, that his wife laughed and sang along to his grandfather playlist, and made their car — his prized possession from his bachelor days, so much more precious.
His beastly Land Rover was now so lived-in that its interiors could pass for a toddler’s cot.
The backseats had stains and spit-ups that refused to go away even after his rigorous scrubbing.
The bottle holders always had one or more baby bottles.
There were wet wipes and snack packs always stocked in the dashboard.
Atharva opened the glove box to grab his book of mileage and had to wade through packs of homemade jaggery crackers, ‘baked’ potato chips and something that looked like toasties but were so dark brown in colour that he shuddered to try them and see.
“You have turned my car into a pantry,” he groaned, stretching across the gearbox until his fingers snagged the pen he remembered storing in there.
Iram finished snapping Yathaarth in his baby seat, shut the door and slipped in. “I don’t see you complaining when you are hungry.”
He kept quiet. He valued his life. And he did not have a good enough rebut to that. He did enjoy Yathaarth’s snacks, especially when they were returning from day trips and were too tired to stop somewhere for a break.
Atharva continued to note the kilometres that his car had run this week against the entries of fuel.
He had seen his father do this often when he was home from deployments.
Mama was a little easygoing with refuelling but Baba had taught him to keep track of the mileage manually.
Always. He hadn’t used this car enough to do that but now that it was their daily car…
“Let’s go now, are you writing a novel or what?”
“Done,” he finished and tucked the pen inside the book, hoping it wouldn’t roll out with the groceries she would stuff in. “All buckled up?” Atharva turned his head over his shoulder.
“Yes!” Iram pumped her fist in the air and the mini-me behind her held both fists up — “Ess!”
It had become their war cry nowadays.
“Music.”
Iram scrolled down her mobile and hit play. Nowadays she openly ran theft on his playlists in the guise of putting Yathaarth to ‘sleep.’
Suno sajna, papihe ne…
He started the car, depressed the handbrake and they set off with a collective holler.
It was a weekday, between tourist seasons, and he had the privilege of taking his family out. Atharva valued it more and more with every kilometre that their car ate up and with every round of claps and happy banter that flowed.
“Dilbaro, who is the best — Mama or Baba?” Iram asked for the umpteenth time.
“Besss!” Yathaarth chose with a grin, like he did every single time.
“He is such a diplomat,” Atharva shook his head.
“Just like his father.”
“I am not a diplomat.”
“Oh, you are when you want to be.”
“So specify that, I am versatile and fluid. I can be very curt with my opinions.”
“And then you went and became a politician.”
He laughed at how easily that word again flowed between them. At one point in the last year, even saying words like ‘politician’ and ‘CM’ around him had become taboo for the people in his circle.
“Now I am a party worker again, myani zuv.”
“Zuv zuv!”
“Yes, baby?” Iram turned.
“Mama,” his low voice mumbled.
Atharva slowed the car. “Did he just say Mama?”
Iram turned fully in her seat, her seatbelt pushing off. “Arth, Mama? Ma-ma?”
“Mamaa!” He giggled.
“Turn around, see if he calls you,” Atharva eyed the scene play out in his rear-view. Iram turned. Yathaarth pouted his mouth. Then strained in his belts to reach for her. “SZuvzuv!”
“Yes, baby?”
“Zuzz…”
“Don’t answer.”
“Zuvzuv… zuuu… Mama!”
She gasped and turned to him with a squeal — “Yes, baby!”
He broke into a chortle. Atharva kept his eyes alternating between the road and the rearview, where Yathaarth was quickly learning a new song.