by Pankaj Dubey
The Kashmiri drifted from the book in his hand to dwell on the memory of a girl pecking at her slice of blueberry cheesecake daintily until, teased out of her ladylike ways, she shamelessly sank her teeth into the pastry with such relish that his mouth watered.
Sanam! It was no wonder that the place felt desolate. She must be on her way to the academy. Aamir reaches for his telephone to text and find out where she has reached by now. It beeps even as he touches his phone. A headline banner for breaking news flashes on the screen.
Eight killed in a major gun battle with militants in Kupwara early this morning.
He unlocks the cell phone to read more.
One CRPF officer and two policemen of the J&K Police died during a prolonged gun battle with terrorists holed up in a house in Kupwara this morning. Six more people died after a terrorist, who was presumed dead, emerged from the rubble of a house that had been bombed by the forces, and started firing. When the gun battle ended, the dead were identified as two women and a child who were passing by.
Curfew has been clamped in the town amid mounting tension after police detained a hundred people for questioning. Meanwhile, the army and the police have increased security around the area and the Farkian forests, which border the district, to check for infiltrators.
Worry lines his face as he telephones Abbu. The line fails to connect. He flings the cell phone on his bed and stares out of his window at the tiny bit of the Himalayas visible from there, trying to connect telepathically to his folks far away. Loss of connectivity, he knows, is common in the Valley whenever tensions mount. At the slightest excuse, authorities clamp down on all telephone and Internet lines. No one understands that this break in the network kills the innocent people of Kashmir more than its militants. Being in the dark about the status of one’s loved ones trapped there can get so suffocating that it diminishes and demolishes any faith one ever had in the system.
Hours pile up and the day eventually ends. Aamir waits for some news, his nerves fraying with the passage of time.
The next day’s headlines tell him that the situation has eased in his town and district. However, his mind remains tense. Abbu! Who knew what indignities he must have been subjected to. They had his name down at the police station in that long register, listing anyone and everyone in the area who has raised even the faintest suspicion at any time about anything. Abbu figures in their lists for the few aberrant lessons he had given in the madrasa before.
Aamir just has to know if Abbu is home and if his Ammi is all right. By noon, he manages to connect. The telephone rings. But no one responds. Palms clammy, he calls Sabah. No response there as well.
Aamir paces the campus, wild thoughts racing through his mind. A hundred dreadful scenarios raise their scary heads. He has called umpteen numbers, but each of them met a dead end.
The major! Aamir kicks himself for not thinking of him before and proceeds to correct the error. The military man’s number rings. Keeps ringing. Aamir disconnects and flops down on the grass.
It’s a crazy world, he thinks to himself, with half the people deaf and blind to the needs of the other half. Unless this attitude changes, the situation will not change. The system needs to be synonymously empathetic. Blanket bans make no sense. Communication can be monitored but never curtailed, not in today’s world because that only messes up things even more.
A persistent ringing infiltrates the anxious tangle of thoughts, getting progressively louder until he sits up and takes notice. His telephone is ringing. It’s the major returning his call. Aamir leaps to answer it.
By evening, Aamir knows that his parents are at home and are okay. The major had used his military contacts to connect to Aamir’s family and relays the information to Aamir. He also tells Aamir that in a few hours the lines will be opened up and made accessible for everyone in his district.
The major’s information allays his immediate tension but provokes a flurry of thoughts on an entirely new track. He struggles to combat them under the very deodars where, not very long ago, he had shared a coffee with someone who was becoming increasingly important to him and aroused all these new feelings. But that should not and must not happen because he must not lose sight of the important goal that brought him here—to improve the situation for his family, his people, his Valley, his country. He knows he can do it. Reach a position of power from where he brings about a systemic change and shape things in a manner that people, especially those in power, first connect, understand and then act. Not the other way around, as they were doing in his state . . . and in many other places. This is no easy task and will require complete dedication to achieving that goal, which is why there can be no distractions whatsoever. Not even the Sanam kind. He had been chatting with her when she was in Delhi . . . on her way back . . . all the time. He had to stop.
He absently etches her name on the ground with a twig and then covers his calligraphy with fallen leaves, burying his dreams in the earth. Forever.
Three hours later, Sanam’s cab deposits her at the admin block. Shouldering her weekend bag, she walks past the tall deodars, unaware of their tryst with her name, on her way to her hostel block. A soft breeze tugs at her hair loosely scrunched in a fancy hairband, blowing strands into her face.
That night she lies in bed, a cauldron of confusion. To text or not to text? He hasn’t texted since she’s arrived—Aamir, that is, not Nitin, who has. Nitin’s text doesn’t count . . . but should it? What she wants to do versus what she should do are slugging it out in her mind, each side trying to take the other down. No win is in sight as sleep overtakes her.
The beginning of the week dawns bright and clear. There are barely any clouds in the sky as they trudge to the grounds for PT. Only the mind is overcast. Neither Aamir nor Sanam seek out the other and go about their business like any other OT: running, exercising, bellyaching, stretching and carping some more . . .
Classes begin in earnest post the mid-term break. There are new subjects to tackle, a series of guest lectures and numerous assignments that the OTs must complete before their village survey, scheduled for next month, warns the course director. The drudgery resumes.
Sanam welcomes it as this is something that makes her feel right at home—working under pressure with tight deadlines and a race to score. These pursuits can occupy her mind for hours, leaving no space for anything else.
Aamir could have been mistaken for a marble sculpture. Even his fan club gives up after failing to animate him despite all their chatter and good-natured ribbing.
The two go from class to class, avoiding each other without appearing to. A faint nod is all that Aamir gives to acknowledge her return when their eyes meet across the room before resuming the discussion he was having with the OT seated behind him. Sanam steps aside with her tumbler when she sees him approach the water cooler although she doesn’t mind sharing the lunch table with him in the Mess because there are others she can chat with in her group. Aamir is wholly focused on his meal a few chairs away. Kuldeep senses that something is wrong because she overdoes her apparent gaiety and tends to lose the thread of the conversation too often. It doesn’t occur to him to diagnose that the Kashmiri is the root cause of her malaise.
The story plays out differently in the Mess hall that evening. Sanam seems to have skipped the meal and her absence disturbs Aamir more than he thought it would because it literally kills his appetite. He lingers in the lounge after dinner, waiting to see if she will come. She does not.
Meanwhile, Sanam is stalking his Facebook profile, checking recent posts. The latest deals with militants who are not militant enough.
Young boys . . . many with barely a stubble. The glamour draws them in. With just rudimentary training, they go down without a whimper in their first small skirmish. Lives lost unnecessarily. Heroic in death. Unable to experience or savour the idolizing that drew them to the cause in the first place. Martyr or Mistaken? What does one call them?
She wants to talk to him. Comfort his bleeding he
art as it bleeds for these boys in the Valley. But she can’t. Between yesterday and today, an insurmountable wall has sprung up between them, seemingly from nowhere. She decides to text instead. That’s easier. She WhatsApps him her thoughts. Sends it. Deletes it immediately. And goes offline.
Aamir ponders over her deleted message. Wonders what she wrote. Did it concern him? Her? Or them? Was there even a ‘them’? Overthinking kills his sleep. Apparently overthinking kills brain cells too, he has read somewhere. So, he blogs instead. Falling into a dreamless slumber for a little while before the sunrays wake him up again.
Their avoid-or-not-to-avoid game continues day after day as both Aamir and Sanam seek each other, and simultaneously, hide from each other. Thoughts of the other spring up unexpectedly at various times during the day, taking them unawares, just when they think they have the situation under control. Sanam oscillates between wanting and not wanting to be with Aamir, for reasons of propriety even if Nitin is almost a nobody in her mind already.
As for Aamir, the more he tries to block her from his mind, the more she seeps into it, until every molecule of his claims her to be its building block.
She develops a new technique to manage this. Every time Aamir springs in to view, she will pretend he is someone else. Badal, perhaps. Or even, Rohit. That will neutralize the thoughts roiling in her mind and heart. Heart? Where did that come from? It wasn’t a party to this war. No. She simply wouldn’t allow it.
So, she squints when she sees him in the library the next day. Gets braver and almost greets him. Like she might do if he were Badal or someone else.
Aamir is confused but also amused. Now what is this Sanam up to? The intense way she is considering him, as if he were a foreign specimen. She is crazy and driving him crazy too. He checks out of the library with his books, not daring to steal a look at her on his way out.
Her technique works. Sanam adds it to her modus operandi. Not only will Aamir not be Aamir, he will also be full of faults. Faults that she will nit-pick in her mind every time she sees him, reducing him into something abhorrent; and vaporize him in the process from her thoughts and from her life.
However, in seeking to disentangle herself, she only finds herself even getting more entangled.
She seeks refuge in Dheeraj sir, who is free this evening and can spare her an hour or two to discuss her Pub Ad submission. Sanam smiles at the thought. He can definitely fill her hours gainfully. They plan to meet at the Plaza Café on campus at six thirty.
Aamir sticks to the library after classes. This whole Sanam business was getting too tricky for him. Here, surrounded by all these books, he feels safe. Also, there is Ramya to superimpose on any thoughts of Sanam that might sneak up on him. He spends three fruitful hours there, finishing up his assignments; researches an impending submission and manages to flick through some poetry too.
Ramya hijacks him for a cup of chai and biscuits and off they go to another café in the campus that she claims brews the best tea.
The second he steps in, he knows. Every nerve tingles as he senses her even before he sees her. She is with that pompous ass, Dheeraj sir! He is a lecher, why doesn’t she see this? Sanam is a fool, a gullible childish fool who seems to not want to grow up.
Ramya drags him to a table that is almost hidden behind a tree and orders chai for both of them. He makes a determined effort to stay focused on his table, not wanting to even look at an ant that may be crawling on the edge.
They make a cosy twosome and this raises Sanam’s curiosity and ire. Her mind drifts from Dheeraj sir to another world far away—picturesque and green, a valley throbbing with life and dissent, a place so restless and beautiful that it made her Aamir what he was. Aamir! Her Aamir! That jolts her back to reality. Shaken and alarmed enough to start concentrating on what Dheeraj sir was saying.
She had planned to fixate her eyes and her thoughts exclusively on Dheeraj sir and the topic of discussion this evening. So, she dutifully does so. Finds him a bit supercilious and condescending though. Something seems to be bothering him also. Has he sensed her distraction, her struggle with her growing attraction to Aamir? Has he noticed her stolen glances, her eyes shifting stealthily to include the mountain boy in a panoramic view. He must have!
Aamir continues his chai date with Ramya, oblivious to the green-eyed monster he was inadvertently feeding at a table not too far away.
‘Why aren’t you in the journal society?’ Aamir asks Ramya.
‘I have no time.’
‘We could come out with a poetry sheet together,’ he proposes. She does not answer. Her attention is taken by a message she has just received.
‘I have to leave, sorry,’ she says, rising abruptly, her chair almost toppling over in her rush.
Girls! Capricious in the extreme. One can never tell what goes on inside their fickle heads.
He stands up to bid goodbye and then flops down into his chair again. He notices that she has forgotten her folder behind and he sprints after her with it. When he returns to his chai, he hears someone call him.
It is Dheeraj sir. He beckons him to the table that he is sharing with Sanam. His Sanam. For Aamir, that walk is the longest and the most arduous of his life.
‘Sit down, boy,’ sir says, indicating the third chair at their table. Aamir has no choice but to do so. ‘Help her out with that essay on “non-performing assets (NPA) in banks affecting the development of India.”’
Aamir looks like he has been asked to fly to Pluto.
‘Come on, you’ve already done this. You know the subject, help her with it,’ he cajoles before saying that he has to be elsewhere and abruptly leaves the table with a hurried goodbye to Sanam.
The banks dealing with these NPAs probably didn’t feel as tortured as the pair of them did at that moment. Jettisoned into her personal space so suddenly and having to act and think normally . . . hell! How was he going to explain all that financial claptrap with just half a mind! Being with her and yet not being with her was killing him. Like he had been shot in the gut . . . and didn’t know what to do. But he couldn’t just sit there like an idiot and do nothing.
Sanam says something, barging into his confused thoughts.
‘I’m sorry, could you repeat that?’ he says.
She does. It’s not easy for her either. Her coping mechanism has malfunctioned . . . How is she to pretend that Aamir is someone else when he is inches away from her? And faults . . . she can’t see any at the moment, not when he’s so close to her physically.
And so, they wrestle, both with the NPA essay and with each other’s proximity.
Had Dheeraj sir but known the havoc he would wreak he wouldn’t have thrown the two together.
Aamir’s phone pings. It’s Ramya and it’s urgent; he has to leave.
All of a sudden, he is gone, leaving Sanam alone at the table with her notes.
She knows that it is to that senorita’s side even if he hadn’t told her. She had peeked at the phone screen and noticed the name—Ramya—flash in the message notification. This breaks her. All this pointless war raging inside her. All this agonizing for a territory that was never hers in the first place.
Sanam smacks her head and gets back to focusing on the NPAs. Wasn’t her head an NPA too? Well, she needs to switch it back to PA-mode. ASAP.
19
The weather in Mussoorie is fickle and clouds perpetually play hide-and-seek with the sun, keeping the populace of the picturesque town guessing all the time whether it will rain or shine. Sanam is pondering the ever-present clouds in the Mussoorie sky: their changing colours, sometimes dark and ominous, sometimes white and fluffy. One cannot predict what the clouds will do, they operate on their own terms.
Sanam is back with Dheeraj sir in the library. The NPAs are still to be resolved. She is unable to concentrate as her thoughts about the clouds overhead have diverted her attention. She shuts her eyes trying to understand why the topic of clouds instead of NPAs has seized her so.
Dheeraj sir l
ooks concerned. ‘A headache?’ he asks. He is having a massive one too, he empathizes. But Sanam shakes her head, banishing the clouds from her mind. She will now focus solely on NPAs and Dheeraj sir’s inputs on them and not dwell upon the stratosphere.
‘I need to speak to you.’
Sanam’s head jerks up. Aamir! So, the mountain boy has returned to her. Tired of his senorita, is he? Well, she doesn’t want him. Not now. Not ever.
She returns to her NPA notes without a word, ignoring him completely.
Aamir pulls up a chair beside her. She is livid. How dare he! How dare he disturb her when she is with Dheeraj sir!
‘I don’t want to—’ she starts telling him off, not bothering to look up.
‘What did you say to Ramya?’ Aamir cuts in.
Ramya? Where was this coming from? Sanam looks up puzzled and is stunned by what she sees.
Aamir is shaking in anger, his brown eyes ablaze and boring into Dheeraj sir. Questioning him. Accusing him.
It wasn’t her. He had come for Dheeraj sir. That annoys her afresh. Hell! Here, she sat, dreaming, seething, missing him and all the time he had been after someone else! Anyone but her. Ramya . . . Ramya . . . Ramya. Even now.
Her blood pressure mounts to match his. He is shouting at sir now, flinging accusations that just don’t make sense. Not to her. Not to sir.
‘She’s dead . . . almost dead!’
Dheeraj sir goes pale, but collects himself, ‘Don’t raise your voice,’ he warns. ‘And I don’t want to listen to your crap.’
Aamir is beside himself. He jumps up and grabs Dheeraj sir’s collar and shakes him, mumbling something about Ramya . . . and all girls in general . . .
Sanam loses it as well and tries to shove Aamir away from sir. Not that she really can. But Aamir backs off when he sees the aggression on her face.
‘You’ve gone mad,’ she screams. ‘Ramya, Ramya, Ramya! She has driven you mad.’
‘You’re suspended!’ says Dheeraj sir icily, looking at Aamir. Sanam takes that pronouncement badly and looks from one to the other, wondering how to defuse and salvage the rapidly deteriorating situation. Neither seem to be in a mood to call a truce.