Page 249 of The Circle of Exile
I need them to stop.
“Hmm. Ok, I am driving and it’s getting jammed. I will talk to you later, Vikram.”
“Shola song!” Yathaarth pumped his hands up and down. Atharva chuckled, toggling the button on the steering wheel.
Bholi surat dil ke khote…
“Baba!”
“If I leave the steering wheel, Mama will scream at me. Tell Mama to change.”
“Mama, shola song.”
“Arth, you are not supposed to enjoy shola song.”
Even as she rebuked him, she reached out and put on hisshola song.
Shola jo bhadke, dil mera dhadke
Atharva eyed his son break into his own version of the song, singing along with his eyes wide and happy.
“The first song you made him smile to,” Iram accused him.
“It’s Khayyam.”
She rolled her eyes, their faces grinning and looking forward at the Golden City opening up before them.
————————————————————
Life on the road was a whirlwind. He had travelled a lot, for most of his adult life. First in the SFF, then as a politician, then as the CM. But he had travelled most of those paths alone. A few with Iram. But now, there was a live-wire of a toddler with them who didn’t mind life on the road except for when he was hungry.
If one day they were on the banks of Gangaji in the mountains, then the next they were in Rudraprayag. If one day he drove them into the city of Golden Temple, then the next they were in a remote village on the border of Punjab, recruiting workers for NDP. The name hadn’t been officially finalised, but KDP and HDP’s goodwill carried with it an air of confidence among the people. News spread fast, but word of mouth spread faster. Himachal stories were still not ripe but Kashmir, for all its controversies around the CM’s chair and some turbulent months, was a model of exponential growth and development for a society that had been fighting to even survive.
And as Atharva ventured farther from Kashmir, he realised he wasn't such a big thing. His face was not recalled so easily. People did not ‘think’ they had seen him on TV. He was just a regular party worker, come to town with his wife and kid to set up the skeleton of booth-level cadre.
And while he was at it, Iram became the champion. She would write in the front seat of their car while he drove and Yathaarth slept. She would supply unlimited snacks from her Pandora’s box — healthy as they were but not unwelcome during hunger pangs. She would take the car from him if he had to stay back at a place longer and Yathaarth needed a real bed and some hotel pampering.
In short, as Atharva saw her drive away from him in Phillaur, leaving him to finish up a working session on booth-management, he couldn't help but be in awe of her. At one point in their life, he had believed that Iram needed his protection, his arms surrounding her. Today, she singlehandedly held his entire family together. Became the wind beneath his wings. And, he turned to the booth agents he had recruited and began to speak — the words beneath his voice.
47. The road home…
The road home became clearer and clearer as months passed. As winter took 2019 into 2020, Atharva’s grassroots became stronger and stronger in Uttarakhand and Punjab. The Himachal Pradesh alliance between HDP and Janta, after initial hiccups, was slowly getting on track. And Kashmir? Iram sipped on her hot water with lemon, standing in the kitchen at the hour of dawn, scrolling through Srinagar News on her laptop. It was March, and campaigning was in full swing before the valley went into voting next week. The pre polls were pegging Janta increasing their vote share by a whopping 65%. They would eat into the vote share of somebody, and that would be KDP, since Awaami didn’t have much to go on in the first place.
Iram smiled, reading about Hajan and Avantipora and Kishtwar and Kargil. Had it been six years already to that spring when she had toured these very places with Atharva? He had built himself and his party from nothing in front of her.
Now she was seeing him drown the same party that he had given his blood, sweat and tears to. He didn’t show it, but Iram saw how it pinched him to break down the same things that he had built with his own bare hands. He was putting his conscience on the side and doing this, working day and night, between Uttarakhand booth management, Punjab student organisations and Himachal’s unions. He was being the man who did not look back at Kashmir, while digging a tunnel back.
“Last day of exams! Wooohooo!” Daniyal came hooting out of his room, twirling like Maha used to as a kid.
“You big old baby,” Iram widened her eyes, laughing quietly. “It’s 5 am.”
“And I can wake the whole house up!” He pumped his hands in the air. “I am going to be a free biiiiird! Wooohooo!”
“Wake the whole house up for sure, but if you wake Arth then he is yours to put back to sleep,” came Atharva’s heavy croak from the top of the stairs. Daniyal didn’t care. Iram observed one of his rare ecstatic moods. He was always smiling, cracking jokes, being happy. But these glimpses of the kid he had once been were rare, peeping from those cracks.
“Were you up all night studying?” She asked, moving away to grab a cup for him.
He yawned, opening the fridge to bring out the milk. “Almost.”
