Page 264 of The Circle of Exile
To,
Mr. Atharva Singh Kaul
Subject:Acceptance of Resignation
Mr. Atharva Singh Kaul,
I acknowledge and accept your resignation from the Kashmir Development Party with effect from today. While it is never easy to part ways with a valued colleague, I respect your decision and your reasons for moving on.
On behalf of the party, I thank you for your contributions and wish you the very best in your future endeavours.
Sincerely,
Samar Dixit
President
Kashmir Development Party
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Atharva was right. Life would never give them 100%. It never did, to anybody. What was important was that they had what mattered most. And now, after two decades of strife and struggle, Iram had finally learnt to not only live with the threads of sorrow and joy interwoven into the fabric of life, but also appreciate that both would linger together at a given moment. That was life.
If it was Yathaarth’s rock-hard, handmade anniversary cake with white frosting melting like milk over it, then it was also the album of their wedding photographs that came in the courier the next day from Amaal. If it was the joy on Atharva’s face as he skimmed through those photographs a day after their sixth anniversary, then it was also Yathaarth’s innocent question — “Baba where this?”
“This is Kashmir,” his father had told him. “This is your Mama’s house,” he had pointed to the almond tree under which they had gotten married. Then flipped down to the reception collages and pointed to the big house lit up in fairy lights at the hour of dusk. “This is your great-grandfather’s house. My house.”
“My house?”
“Yes, yours too. Mama’s, yours, and mine. Ours.”
Iram had fought him on their wedding fineries once. Today, as Yathaarth had grinned and clapped and even kissed some of the photographs, Iram had nothing but gratitude for the man flipping those pages for their son.
“Baba, Tiangle!”
“That’s an attic. Like the observatory we have here. But that attic has a sloped roof made of wood. It’s not very high, I have to bend my neck when I enter. It is Mama’s writing office.”
“Kitchen kitchen!”
“Here it is the kitchen,” he had laughed. “But there, it’s the attic.”
“Gamophone?”
“No,” Atharva had smiled. “The gramophone would be in another room, here, see this window?”
“Picnic, Baba! Lezzgo picnic.”
Life was Atharva’s stuttered eyes, without any answer to his son’s demand to go for a picnic to this place. And then, when he shut the album and threw Yathaarth up for a tickle attack, life was those giggles too.
Iram had teared up and laughed with them. Because that was life.
Life was Yathaarth’s fourth birthday and their entire clan there. Begumjaan and Zorji, Ada, Mirza and Fahad, Amaal and Samar, Noora, Shiva and Daniyal. Adil couldn’t come. Sarah and Mahadidn’tcome. But again, that was life.
Life was Ada making a meal out of the blue unicorn cake that she had ordered in spite of her nephew’s ‘car’ cake already on the table. And then life was a small, tiny white unicorn candle placed atop the blue one’s back. The one that burned the brightest.
Life was Begumjaan sitting beside her and teaching her new Gen Z lingo. And then life was also her throwing a whistle at Zorji because he couldn't stop taking second and third servings of the cake — ‘Because both are different flavours!’
Yathaarth throwing confetti around and playing with his friends in the garden was life. Atharva being the perfect father and breaking the khoi bag for them was life. Whistles, toffees, paper balls, cars, stars, pencils, erasers, more confetti was life. As Iram sat on a patio chair with their clan mingling around, Atharva’s reassuring pat to her head was also life.
