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“No offence taken,” he chuckled. And she kept staring at his face, just as he stared at hers, the small reluctant smile paused on his lips.

The wind whipped their hair and a child hummed a soft idyllic song in Kaeshir somewhere.

It was as if time stumbled in its track, tripping and trying to get its bearing.

Iram’s throat worked a swallow, as the smile melted away from Atharva’s mouth.

His gaze turned intense, something in his breathing shifting.

Iram felt it change, felt it make something in her change, and tried to stop it.

But her own heartbeat was tripping over itself, stumbling with both arms out too.

“Aliii!” A child’s shout reverberated. And time found its bearings again.

“About your manifesto launch speech…” she started quickly, her heart still trying to come back to normal. “I… think we should talk about it… we should make your manifesto speech… umm… about the speech pointers I mean,” she stumbled. He gave a nod and took the few steps towards the end of the pier.

“I thought we could get some time to talk about it on this tour. Do you have anything?”

“Yes,” she nodded, having taken enough time to recover. “Umm…. I… I saw how you started talking so naturally to people back there. That’s your strength. You convince them of something while making them feel like it was their idea all along. It’s… very rare.”

He stopped at the end of the pier, arms crossed over his chest, looking out at the vista of water spreading far and wide.

She couldn’t help but stare at his profile — hard, strong, skin dried and paled in cold, hair flopping in the wind.

He swallowed, and the scar on his cheek stretched. She turned away.

“We have to convince the people that taking a chance on a first-timer is worth the risk,” Atharva enunciated.

“Our manifesto is not a run of the mill status quo manifesto. You know it now. We are radicalising things in our own way. We are not offering a fairy-godmother solution to the whole ‘Kashmir issue,’ instead, we are targeting the development of Kashmir first and foremost. Water, electricity, literacy, employment, business opportunities — that’s what’s going to fill bellies. Not call-to-arms.”

She kept staring at him quietly, then blurted — “ Why do you need a writer when you write so well?”

“ I don ’ t write well.”

“ But the way you improvised that Kashmir University speech was…” she shrugged. "It didn’t even sound like a speech by the end.”

“ I speak well, there ’ s a difference. Extempore is good, but not always.

Some things, most things in political speeches, need to be pre-written.

Otherwise my emotions may sway me away from what needs to be really said.

In this case — our priorities. How do we convince people that our priorities as a state, as a society need to change? ”

“By telling them that what has been done so far hasn’t worked,” she pointed.

“You go about in such a way, that you end up convincing them that this, the ideals of KDP, are actually nothing but the need of the hour, the idea of the people, what they want… by asking them to put themselves before everything else, by asking them to put Kashmir’s interests above everything else,” Iram asserted.

“Look, Khuddari, sacrifice etc is good, but if you really want to appeal to somebody’s heart then appeal to their khudgarzi, that hidden child-like part in all of us that wants something for itself. ”

“Adolf Hitler did that you know, he appealed to the ‘id,’ the primitive, childish desires of his people.”

“No, not like that,” she disagreed. “You don’t touch the desires of people, you touch their needs.

There is a difference. A person may desire a bungalow and a car, but what he needs is a roof over his head and some money for the bus.

For now, that’s where Kashmir needs to start.

The basics. And that’s pretty much KDP’s agenda.

So make people realise that they need to become selfish for themselves and their children’s future first. And when it comes to their children, everyone becomes selfish. ”

“You mean we should make Kashmir our selfishness, our priority?”

“Humaara Kashmir-humaari khudgarzi,” she shrugged.

He shook his head. “Humaari khudgarzi, humaara Kashmir.”

“Bhai!” Fahad’s call made them turn. “Time to move.”

———————————

On their ride to the next village, Atharva didn’t sit near her. Instead, he sat with Rafiq on the rowing plank and they talked in hushed tones. As they turned from the main water into a channel of small lake houses screened by drying chinars, Atharva turned back to signal the shikara behind them.

“What happened?” Iram frowned.

“For this village, all the women stay on one shikara. You and Shabana jump to Tani’s boat and the driver will row you out of the channel.”

“Why?”

“Because it may not be safe.”

“Why wouldn’t it be safe?”

“Do as you are told Iram. Shabana, leave your backpack please.”

Iram didn’t understand, but did as she was told. The shikaras slowed and came close together. She followed Shabana into the other boat, as the three men from that one came to Atharva’s. But before they could row away, someone shouted — “Ghas! Ghas! Hindustani army ghas!”

Rafiq yelled something back that sounded more enraging, and then more shouts came from the main pier of the village. People emerged one by one, until there was a crowd of about two dozen men and women. Some children too.

“What are they saying? Why are they asking us to go?” Iram asked aloud. Their shikara was still frozen beside Atharva’s.

“I think this is the village Rafiq Bhai was talking about…” Shabana intoned. “The one where Sufiyaan Sheikh’s right-hand man’s family lives. He has brainwashed the people that KDP is anti-Kashmiri, pro-Indian army.”

“But that’s not true…”

“Welcome to politics.”

Atharva stood up in his shikara, hands up in a gesture of surrender — “Myany padayshi jaay chi kashir…” he asserted, telling them that his birth-land was first Kashmir. When there was no response to that, he signalled conspicuously. Their shikara moved forward.

Something white and brown landed near Iram’s feet. She didn’t realise what had happened until balls of dirt and snow started hitting them. In front of them, Atharva’s shikara had stopped and they were all crouched with their heads down.

“Down,” Atharva shouted for their benefit but she was already pulled down by Shabana.

The people — enraged, victorious, started throwing bigger, murkier balls of rocks and ice, shouting abuses. Little children too picked up snow and dirt and pebbles and wood chunks. She heard Fahad curse.

“Motherfucke… fuck fuck fuck… Bhai, there are only three or four troublemakers encouraging them all… let’s move forward!”

“No they have the kids lined up front. If there’s a scuffle and something happens to them then we will be held responsible.”

“We can’t just retreat.”

“Sure we can. Rafiq, let’s go.”

As their shikaras were turning around, one of the piers nearby creaked with more mobsters. They were not on the edge of the pier, but a distance away, their aims not quite fatal but disrupting all the same.

“Indian army go back! Indian army go back!” They shot out, throwing without aiming.

Iram kept her head and eyes down. Then something hard hit her head, her eyes felt dizzy before her head felt cold.

The snow was melting down the side of her face.

She peeped up to find a group of children running to the edge of the pier, raining balls of snow at them.

Unlike the adults, they were aiming and hurling, as if it was a game.

Some even danced while shouting “Goback goback goback.”

Her shikara was closest to the pier, the boatman trying with all his strength to turn it around and row away.

More rocks and balls of snow hit them. Then a splash jostled the boat on her side and her head jumped up.

Icy water hit her skin but what paralysed her was a tiny child, a toddler, flailing in the water.

The children on the edge erupted in screams, people started shouting, chaos exploded.

She heard it all from a faraway tunnel, as her ears closed to everything and her body threw itself out.

Her feet didn’t leave the boat but she was hanging out upside down, her arms trying to extend to full capacity as they gripped onto the child.

She held onto him with both hands and pulled.

The weight of the child and water pulled her down instead and she went face-first into the ice-cold barrage.

But somebody held her torso and legs on the boat, preventing her from falling fully.

Iram felt shock course through her body.

She broke surface and cold wind hit her, numbing her whole face.

But the child’s arm was still in hers and she pulled again.

“Haan, haan… bas, thoda aur… aajao, aajao,” she rattled, letting the toddler buoy his body loose on the water.

When he was nearer, Tani reached out to lift him in.

The child landed inside the shikara with a plonk.

Iram turned, just as Shabana let her torso go and took in the blue child.

Iram tore her half-wet scarf from her throat and reached for him.

But her own hands were shaking, not even able to hold the scarf steady.

The boy cried as Tani took the scarf and rubbed his face, then his hair, eyes, nose and ears.

He was wailing loudly now, some colour returning to his face even as he racked with shivers.

Iram engulfed his tiny body into her own, rubbing his back as the other two women tended to his hair and palms, rubbing warmth in.

“Dilbaro, dilbaro,” someone wept. “Myaan dilbaro!”

Their shikara rocked yet again, and Iram turned in time to see a woman cross into their boat from Atharva’s. She snatched the child from Iram’s arms. Thrown back by the momentum Iram landed on something hard. It was Atharva’s chest.

A thick carpet-like fabric landed on her head followed by Atharva’s warm arms as they tightened it around her. His hand cupped her head and rubbed, so she took over, realising her hair was nearly frozen. As she did so, the scene in front of her made her angry as well as sad.

The hysterical woman was hurling abuses at them and at the same time thanking them, her child pressed tightly into her chest. She was raving, crying, cursing, rubbing her child’s back as if to reassure herself.

And then she opened her eyes to Iram, Shabana and Tani.

Her hysteria calmed. She reached out with one hand to them, saying a hundred grateful things all together in Kaeshir.

Her face crumpled, and she held her squirming child tighter as Tani consoled her.

But she took hold of a shocked Iram’s hand.

“Shukriya… shukriya hetim baar shukriya.”

Iram nodded, as much as she could of her frozen face. Her teeth were chattering now, shoulders feeling like they would never stop vibrating.

Their boat was manoeuvred to the pier and Atharva climbed out with Hasan to help the mother and son out.

They held their hands up to signal peace as the woman turned to them and bowed her head, muttering words that nobody could hear.

They kept their hands up, eyeing the mob that had gathered around.

It wasn’t hostile anymore, but there were elements that couldn’t be trusted in such a mob. In any mob for that matter.

Once the woman was safely away from the pier, they jumped back in.

As their shikaras were rowed out of the channel, Atharva came behind her again.

This time she felt his coat settle over her shoulders.

“Hold on five minutes. There is a kahwa seller I saw on our way here,” he told her.

She nodded, pulling his coat tighter around herself.

Her teeth were chattering harder now. Her hair was damp, feeling colder with every whip of the wind.

And the setting sun was doing nothing to help.

“Are we… gggoing back tttto Srinagar?”

“This shikara is going back. I still have two other villages to visit.”

“Even after what happppennn…ed here?”

“If I give up after every stone-pelting then there will be no KDP,” he answered.

She didn’t know what to say to that. So she sat quietly.

And when they waved over a shikarawala selling hot anjeer milk, Iram accepted a paper cup gratefully.

Atharva waited until all three of them had drunk enough hot liquid to keep them warm through the rest of the journey.

Then he gestured to Shabana, who low-fived Iram and crossed into the next boat.

“Go straight back to the house and get warm,” Atharva ordered. “There will be a party car waiting at Dalgate.” Then he had picked up his backpack and stepped fluidly into the waiting shikara. He didn’t turn to look at her, and Iram kept staring at his back as his shikara rowed into the setting sun.

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