“Why are you looking like it’s the first time you’ve seen the event full?” Samar’s hard drone made her startle.
“No,” she shrugged. “It’s the great crowd management. And Atharva came in… just excuse me for a sec.” Amaal walked away from him, now half-smug and half-grateful. She immediately made a call to Fahad.
“Hello!” She contained her excitement. “Call your journalist friends, contact my list too. Have them all here in the next ten minutes.”
“We are five minutes away.”
“How did you know Atharva arrived?”
“Because he only got the crowd there.”
She had guessed as much.
“But how?”
“He went to the masjid just after namaz, and did some of his thing. I don’t know. I just got a call that he is taking a crowd there.”
“But who told him?”
Silence.
“I’ll kill you but I’ll hug you first!” She grinned, turning and meeting Atharva’s eyes across the crowd. He was at the wooden toy stall, the little girl in his arms. Under the bright sun, he nodded at her.Thanks, she mouthed.Five minutes,she held her palm up.
Then it was like the slow five hours of the morning began to run in fast forward. Everything happened so quickly and Atharva was up on a high mound under a giant almond tree, a grin on his face. Amaal stood down — visitors, locals, shop owners, even some tourists around him with the reporters standing front and centre to cover it with cameras out. She counted a good 400-500 people. Small for the scale of Srinagar, but large to fill a panning camera.
“Mere Srinagar ke logo.” Atharva addressed. “Bahar akhir aa hi gayi![32]”
No sooner had his last word trailed than a loud round of applause tore through the air. She was shocked and surprised and thrilled at how just those five words meant to start his speech had done this. She checked over her shoulder to see if it was the group of KDP volunteers hyping him up. It wasn’t. Everybody was clapping loudly, not ready to stop.
She glanced back at Atharva, standing there in a simple light blue shirt to match KDP’s tents, navy pants, and a smile on his face.
“Badam Vaer mubarak![33]” His voice had to tear through the ear-rending applause because it was nowhere close to stopping. “Myon naav Atharva chhu KDP paath, tim chhus yith aayih mausam tyohar banaavan…[34]”
————————————————————
“Let me know for sure whenever there are more events like these,” Faizan, the reporter from Rising Roshni shook hands with her. Amaal smiled — “My associate Fahad will get in touch with you. Why don’t we add you to our messaging broadcast list?”
“That works.”
He moved down the line and into the now congested park. The sun was still heavy for late noon, but nobody seemed to care. Amaal took the scenery in, standing under the royal pergola in the centre of the park. Atharva was mingling and being the centre of attention, with multiple cameras on him as he talked. Organic. Adil was also drawing attention with the way he was playing tag with a bunch of kids. Now, only if Samar did something interesting, she would have a well-rounded KDP story…
“You are naive if you think he will report this event in its entirety.” Samar Dixit’s voice sounded from behind her.
“Sorry, who?” She turned.
“That reporter. He is from Rising Roshni. They didn’t like it when I criticised their co-founder in a public meeting in Akhnoor. That same week they wrote a long article about Indian military trying to intervene in state politics through four SFF officers.”
“That’s a great negative spin on our party,” Amaal murmured, impressed by whoever came up with it. Samar did not share in her good humour. She sighed — “Can you see the seven cameras around Atharva there?” She pointed with her chin. “Three out of those are from The Herald, New Kashmir and Khabar — all of whom are anti-KDP, anti-army, anti-India too sometimes. And four months ago, sure, I would have relied on them to publish about us. Now…”
“Now what?”
“Now I have KDP’s own Twitter page with 36,000 followers, YouTube subscribers up to 1.1 lakh and Facebook page grown to 81,000 last I checked.”
“So?”
“So, my followers get my story on my page, on my terms. If that does not match with some biased newspapers’ narratives, better yet. ‘Questions raised’ is equal to 'interest raised.’”
“I have read your media stats report, 60% of those followers are from outside of Jammu & Kashmir.”
