Noora scuttled out from his side of the door and ran to the group of members already getting impatient. The late summer sun was hot, dry and heavy, even at 10.
“I’ll be back,” Atharva told Iram and walked into the ECI office with a mix of Kashmir, Himachal, Uttarakhand and Punjab members of a party that was the building which had materialised brick by brick over two decades.
Iram stared at his back as it disappeared among the party members. He was stepping back into an ECI office after years. That in itself was a celebration for her. Even if he was stepping in to support Samar and be the silent observer, he was going in with every fibre of his being activated. She had not married a winner, she had married a hero. And even in the defeats of life, this man continued to prove it to her over and over again.
“Mama, change.”
“Changing, baby. Which song do you want?” Iram picked up her mobile and found her thumb freeze over her period app. She checked the date on the calendar. She should have logged her period five days ago. How had she not kept track?
How had Atharva not kept track?
But then, their life had been smooth-flowing, at least their personal life. Nothing had felt amiss. Not even the months that they had tried for this baby. Iram startled.Thisbaby. Something inside her was certain that there was a baby. She hadn’t missed a day since they started trying. Not even a day’s delay. She smiled.
“Shola song! Mama, shola song!”
“Sorry,” she startled, pulling up the music app and selecting his Shola jo Bhadke. As Yathaarth got busy singing along and rolling in the backseat, she kept an eye on him through the rearview but her thoughts veered. Another baby. Talking about it and trying was one thing. To think of another human being here, in between them, rolling around on their backseat, was quite another. She had not imagined another baby since… Hayat. And Hayat had slowly gone from being a baby to a constant jewel enshrined in her most cherished thoughts. She had stopped thinking of her as her baby girl whose milestones would have matched Yathaarth’s and started to slowly see her as that soul who had come to deliver him safely, help her and Atharva jump over the break in the bridge across from each other and tie their family together.
A momentary fear inched up from inside those deepest thoughts. Like a needle piercing its way up.What if this baby too…
Instead of arresting that thought, Iram let it finish itself.
What if this baby died too?
She let that thought come, swirl its way around her mind, then she opened the gates for it to leave. Because it was just that. A thought.
Arth’s sing-song turned into ramblings as he began to recount to her one random incident from his school when Ms. Manya had told them a story and had them enact it and he had become the lion. Iram hummed and smiled and nodded, laughing as he climbed up between the seats and into her lap. She squeezed him to herself and listened to him mumble half-fiction, half-fact, inhaling his kiddie shampoo scent as he lay his head on her breast. Whatever was meant to come, would come. Atharva and her would try to hold as much as they could, as much as they were destined to. And let the rest go.
“Done,” Atharva’s deep voice brought her out of her thoughts. His side of the door clicked shut and Noora scuttled in through the back door.
“Where are Samar and the others?” Iram glanced behind him.
“Out the main gate. There’s media there for them.”
“Oh.”
“What happened to you?” He opened the bottle of water stowed on his side of the door.
“Nothing.”
Grey eyes narrowed as his head tipped back to take a swig. She cocked her head too.
“Anyway,” he finished drinking his water. “Next up is Parliament House.”
“I thought we were meeting Yogesh Patel?”
“His office is inside the Parliament House.”
Atharva put the car in reverse and began to pull out of the lot.
“Atharva?”
“Hmm?”
Yathaarth climbed over her lap and jumped behind at Noora.
“Arth, sit down,” his father commanded.
“No seat belt!” He sat in the middle of the backseat. Atharva ignored him. Google Maps anyway showed 100 metres to the Parliament House. They waited in line to get clearance out of the complex.
