Page 265 of The Circle of Exile
Their eyes met, and the unnamed thread of sorrow passed through this joy —He never knew what celebrating his birthday in his own home was. We miss it. He doesn’t. But that’s life.
Atharva was right. Life would never give them 100%. But whatever it was giving them, was a blessing that they accepted with both hands and celebrated.
The Maverick did not make it to any television news or big reports. He was still working quietly to put together student organisations and unions, strengthening the skeletal framework that was bigger than any state or region. Then slowly penetrate panchayats and municipalities across North India. He was not doing it for himself, but for a set of people with the right intentions, whom he was cultivating into a broader party. Oblivion wasn't his curse anymore.
Iram was grateful for it at this point in life. He toured a few days a month, spent almost all the other days at home — being a full-time Baba with hours dedicated to meetings with his newest partner: Vikram. She had more than enough time to expand her literary universe. Write more. Devote herself to a story that, in retrospect, had been a lot of prophecy and a little experience woven into one big ball. Zoon and Taj’s story was coming to its culmination soon. And even though she had fought with Sherry six years ago about it not being a romance, it had turned out to be one. Not the fluffy — girl meets boy and they live happily ever after kind. But one that she had understood as the base of life — two people meet, fall in love, and change begins.
The Kashmir of Zoon and Taj’s world had gone from being a strife-torn, brutal heaven to a civilisation that was slowly looking back at itself in the mirror. A Kashmir that was finally acknowledging its own greatness again. She hoped that the Kashmir that she and Atharva had left behind was still doing that. The light of knowledge, the power of debate, the bloom of discussion, the wheel of innovation — all of that was Atharva’s Kashmir. Now that he wasn’t there anymore, what would it feel like? She often wondered it, and instead of letting it pull her down, wrote about that imagination in Zoon and Taj’s version.
Iram had given up on book tours. To keep Atharva’s low profile going, and to keep them out of the public eye, she had sacrificed that. And it was not even worth calling ‘sacrifice.’ Was it because she herself didn’t want to do those anymore or because any price paid for Atharva’s welfare was not even a price worth thinking about — she did not know. But it reminded her of Begumjaan’s words —the more you can sacrifice for somebody, the more you love them.
But ‘out of sight, out of mind’ did not dull her readership. It did not stop her stories from talking what she couldn’t. Even away from home, she was talking about home.
Sitting miles away from home, she had made a new home. Shimla was slowly beginning to feel like the home that had always kept its arms open for them, but they had taken a while to settle into it. Now, as the hot summer and the touristy crowd grew in the hills, the life that they had cultivated in the last few months was jolted by news.
An attack on an Indian military convoy carrying medical aid to the Amarnath Yatra camp had shaken them all. The mood had been sombre, not only in their house or their group but across the country. Now, weeks later, terrorists had been identified, three were neutralised, and the rest had been traced back to their bases in Pakistan. Normalcy had returned but an undercurrent was still buzzing.
“Iram?”
“Hmm?”
“How would you like me home a little less?”
She finished typing the paragraph that she was working on and peered at him over the hood of her laptop. He had just come up to the observatory after putting Yathaarth to sleep and was perusing his records collection.
“One headache less at home,” she rolled her eyes. He smirked, fingering the spines of the collection and pulling out a classic Rafi mix.
“We are both headaches for you now?”
“Have you counted the number of times I hear ‘Mama’ and ‘Myani zuv’ in a single hour?”
“How many?” He lodged the record and set the pin on its surface. It began to run with a soothing, crinkly sound.
“At least 81.”
“You’ve counted?” He chuckled.
She hadn’t. And she loved it, unless she was doing something important and the calls did not relent. Or when the calls were for something insane like finding batteries from the ‘drawer of batteries’ or holding a baby punching bag ‘steady’ or keeping ‘my drawing safe in your locker.’
“You didn’t ask me why I was asking,” Atharva sat down beside her and put his feet up on their newest addition to the space — a coffee table.
“Why are you asking?” She went back to her typing.
“Because Lok Sabha elections are coming.”
“So?”
“You think NDP won’t give it a shot?”
Iram stopped typing and gaped at him — “Wait, is there an NDP?”
“It wasn't until this morning…”
She shut her laptop — “Atharva!”
He grinned.
“You better tell me everything. Was that why you and Vikram were out all evening?”
