Page 193 of The Circle of Exile
“There is no rule book that says anything against it.”
“You want us to go after all the candidates in all the seats that came second in the last election?”
“Yes.”
“And why can’t we recruit our own candidates? We are Himachal Development Party. We have the capacity to nurture our own candidates.”
“Hmm? From where?” Atharva glanced around the empty office. Tsering’s gumption soured.
“Don’t go after every runner-up candidate. Go after those whose ideologies come close to ours. Bring them in. This way, you are bringing in their share of votes. Then the work is to just nudge them over that margin. It’s a matter of smart calculation. Once you get a foothold in a few seats, your manpower will expand exponentially. To break in, you have tobreakin.”
“Does Samar sahab know this?”
Atharva clamped up. Samar did not know this. He had been swamped in Jammu. They hadn’t gotten a chance to speak but he had been clear in his message of key objectives — recruit as many able members as possible and plant a candidate drive for Panchayat Election 2018.
When Atharva did not speak for a long second, Tsering got to his feet and walked to his desk. Atharva eyed him as he picked up his mobile, dialled a number and plastered it to his ear, turning away. Atharva waited as he talked in hushed whispers. Long minutes passed.
And then he turned, striding to him with his mobile held out.
Atharva knew who it was.
“Samar,” he addressed without even looking at the number.
“What is this, Atharva?”
“Elaborate,” he clipped, looking Tsering in the eye.
“I sent you there to oversee a membership drive and try and see if we can identify candidates. You are talking about poaching other party’s candidates! This is not Kashmir and you don’t get away with shit like that.”
Atharva held his tongue. A moment of silence passed.
“I am sorry,” Samar sighed. “I did not mean it like that. Just, that, we are not doing it this way. You oversee Tsering’s work, guide him on the membership drive. Do not go into the drive yourself. North Himachal may be far away from Kashmir politics but you were big news and it’s not been that long. Leave the candidate hunting for now. Take a debrief report, set up cadence for communication with headquarters at Shimla and move to Lahaul. Replicate the same process there and in Spiti. We need more manpower on our hands right now, not seats. It takes time to build up credibility.”
Atharva listened, quiet. And Samar's tone softened, turned condescending.
“Look how it took us a decade to build up KDP. You will replicate the same in Himachal. And this time we might get results faster because we are more experienced…”
“Ok.”
Atharva pulled the phone down his ear and ended the call. He returned the mobile to Tsering.
“Let’s talk about the membership drive.”
He reached out and collected his candidate-identification papers. As he was swapping them for the membership drive strategy, he did not miss the smug smirk on Tsering’s face.
Atharva did not let that come in the way of this work. He hated going forward. He hated the humiliation. He hated the waste of time and resources that would ensue in this drive because even if they gathered a thousand volunteers and members, they would never be able to compete at scale with other parties for the next five years, in which time, the parties would study their Kashmir model and come after them. One plan never worked on two missions.
But as was made clear to him not a minute ago — he wasn’t the alpha on this mission. He was no longer the alpha on any mission.
So he buried the injury of his insult and began.
“We start with booth-level mapping and target-setting…”
37. Fall from grace is difficult to bear…
Fall from grace is difficult to bear, but more difficult is to be reminded of that fall in your every move, again and again. Time and again. And again. Iram observed her husband’s graceful re-entrance into public life, or as close as it could come to that with membership drives across northern Himachal Pradesh. It wasn’t regular work, or even frequent. But he did take 3-to-4-days tours twice a month on average. That had been the new normal in the last three months.
He had come back from his first tour to Kinnaur and Spiti tired and silent. She had expected the tour to bring him alive, as alive as he had been before leaving for Kinnaur. If anything, it had sucked some more life out of him. She had asked, and he had answered with curt honesty — “It’s not the work that I can stand behind, but it’s work all the same.”
