Samar glanced back at Atharva. His eyes were fixated on the girl too, joy and pain all in two eyes. Samar could read it so well, could read Atharva so well after years of their distance.
Atharva looked at him, and smiled — “I never said it out loud to anybody but Iram. I named her Hayat when they asked me to name her. You saved my Arth and Hayat.”
Samar’s throat tightened.
“How did you accept her loss?” He croaked, looking away from him towards the unyielding dark sky. Nothing but rain and desolation in the distance.
“There was nothing else to do,” Atharva said matter of factly. It had always been easy for him to accept, to make peace, to move on. He wasn’t cursed with Samar’s constitution of getting himself tangled in the in-between. He was either on one end or the other.
“She came into our lives for a reason, and went away for a reason. We had to believe in that. Or those who were left behind would be affected.”
Silence lingered between them then. A long silence. Rain continued to pelt, the murmurs of people going to sleep behind them continued to punctuate the rumble of clouds, the temple slowly settling down to silence even in this noise.
“My mother died when I was four,” Samar told Atharva what he had already told him once long ago.
“But she did not die by falling from the roof,” he enunciated, blinking ahead. “My father killed her.”
When no sound came from beside him, Samar turned his head to check if he had gone to sleep. The fucker could sleep anywhere.
“That is why you returned the day of his antim sanskar itself when he passed,” Atharva observed, very awake.
“Hmm.” Samar looked out again. “Even that was more than he deserved from me.” He took off his specs and rubbed at his eyes. Fatigue was so real that he wanted to lie down here and sleep forever. Not just the fatigue of this day but this entire life.
“Amaal…” he found the word flowing out of his mouth. “She thinks I fixated on my mother’s passing as my only anchor passing and haven’t gotten up from that moment. Or something like that. My therapist said similar things. PTSD, early maternal loss, insecure anxious attachment, unresolved grief… the entire bouquet.” He put his specs back on. “I am a mindless, ruthless bastard to her on my bad days and downright mean on my neutral days.”
“Surprising.”
Samar laughed, eyeing him — “You know something about that too.”
“You being a mindless, ruthless bastard to me? Add asshole too, most times.” Atharva slapped his thigh. It was a joke, but it hit too close to home.
“I never did anything to you with bad intentions,” Samar confessed. Atharva stilled, the smile falling off his face.
“Before doing something, I didn’t think — Would this harm Atharva? On the contrary, I kept doing things one after the other without thinking if it would harm anyone, as long as it would save you, keep you on the path that we had chosen — at least in my head, that’s what I thought…”
“I believe you.”
Samar’s brows rose.
“I believe you.” Atharva reiterated. Samar snorted — “And still you didn’t give me my militia back. Let’s not go there, Atharva.”
“I saw what leading it did to you. That is why, as far as I am concerned, you are never getting it back.”
Samar snapped to attention. A hard ball of saliva formed in his throat. It would not go down. He forcefully pushed it down, and clawed the next words out.
“I asked Amaal for until next October.”
“For what?”
“For getting over this… mindset, this cutting nature. I know I cannot fully change myself but I am just so frustrated with the way I act, like every time something doesn’t happen to my liking I want to burn the other person with my words because I was wronged and I don’t deserve this.” Samar gave a little laugh. “Even as I say it I know it’s unreasonable. But I just can’t stop. I am working hard with HDP, trying to build it up to a place where I can call a success mine. I am pushing my body to start functioning as healthily as it can for a man my age. Like a lunatic I am writing letters to my mother. The therapist says it’s working but it’s not working fast enough! Five months are already up, Amaal has waited long enough and I have filled one and a half diaries with so much bullshit I don’t even know what else to write. In fact, I don’t even know I am writing to her anymore. I didn’t even know her. I am so frustrated right now. I fought with Amaal today and now I am petrified that she will not pick up my phone again tomorrow, though I know she will. Where have I caught myself!” He scoffed. “Amaal says I either swallow the poison and kill myself or spit it at the person in front of me and kill them. But what else can I even do with it?”
The rain badgered unencumbered in the lull left by his words. Samar breathed it in, then out, exhaling all the bad of the day. The static today in his head was of the rain.
“Shivji drank poison to save the world, but he didn’t swallow it.” Atharva’s quiet voice broke that static. “Neither did he spit it out.”
Samar glanced at him, but Atharva wasn’t looking at him.
“He held it in his throat and transformed it until his throat glowed.” Atharva’s eyes came to him, and smiled. “Maybe that’s what we have to learn.”
