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  He is right. She does tend to get carried away sometimes. Sanam mentally slaps herself on the wrist and waits her turn.

  Waits and waits.

  It never comes.

  And before she knows it, the class has ended.

  Front Desk, Chinar Inn, Kupwara, Kashmir

  While Sanam sits fermenting with unasked questions, Aamir stands at his station, tactfully and calmly responding to guest queries and sending them away satisfied and smiling.

  ‘How long must I wait for my room?’ asks the irate middle-aged Frenchman, drumming his fingers impatiently on the reception counter. Having completed all the necessary check-in formalities, he is understandably tired and hungry; the traffic jams en route have only contributed to souring his mood. Aamir reads it all on the guest’s demeanour; however, he is also aware that the room will not be available for another hour at least.

  ‘Sir, why don’t you go ahead and have your lunch in the restaurant while I ensure that your room availability is expedited?’

  The Frenchman does not look happy.

  ‘And meanwhile,’ adds Aamir, with a smile, ‘a premium suite is about to get vacated. If it does, we’ll give you a free upgrade for bearing with us.’

  This does the trick. The Frenchman wanders off to the restaurant in a much happier frame of mind.

  The Kashmiri youth turns his attention to the other guests who have queued up for his recommendations: where to eat, where to shop, where not to go, local hotspots that are a must-see and safe to visit; and yes, does the hotel taxi driver speak English . . . the onslaught is endless. He deals with it all, handing out his best advice as a local to add flavour and enjoyment to their tourist experience.

  ‘You must never say “I don’t know”,’ the major has told him. ‘The man at the desk is expected to know much more than Google. At least, that’s what the guests think and you’ve got to do your utmost to fit this image.’

  ‘And what if I actually don’t know?’ Aamir had asked.

  The major was impressed by this candour in a world full of pretentious know-it-alls. ‘Escalate their query to your superior, then . . . even to me, if need be. Tell them you’ll get back to them asap. And do so.’

  So Aamir learns to deal with both the expected and the unexpected with equanimity, learning in those eight-hour-plus shifts, not only to stand on his feet, but to also think on them. This fetches him rich dividends, literally! The major becomes less of a manager and more of a friend and mentor to the chagrin of the other senior front desk personnel. This new recruit can effortlessly disarm both the hotel guests and the hotel’s higher-ups and all they can do is grin and bear it.

  The relationship between the major and Aamir blossoms over the weeks; from small talk and discussions on guest requests and their issues to long conversations that touch upon life, politics, art, poetry and everything else under the Kupwara sun. Any place is good for a chat: the banquet hall—and if it is getting spruced up before or after an event, in the manager’s office, and lately, even in his room. The old man would summon for the young lad when things were a bit lean at the front desk and steal some interesting conversations together. Even Aamir sometimes sought him out after his shift, hanging out with him if the major was not exactly busy with anything.

  The major tells Aamir all about his time on the Arunachal border and asks him about his life in Srinagar. ‘Did you feel safer there than here in Kupwara?’

  He has a point. In the past, Kupwara had witnessed the most horrific killings and was therefore the most heavily militarized district in Kashmir and hence safer.

  ‘That’s relative,’ replies Aamir, choosing his words carefully. ‘It all depends on what you do, where you go, and how you think.’

  The major doesn’t comment and merely nods.

  ‘To really know Srinagar,’ continues Aamir, ‘one needs to know the main town area. This is the part of Srinagar that is really old, and breathes heritage.’ Aamir pauses before continuing, ‘No tourist goes there. Every building, bridge and bazaar there is steeped in history—a history that is being rewritten every day and every night, although it’s not by choice.’

  He falls silent after that. The older man knows better than to ask the young boy to elaborate. He knows that Aamir will volunteer the information himself when he trusts the older man enough.

  One evening, a guest who has his heart set upon seeing and purchasing Kashmiri art—not the commercial kind that one may find in the emporia, but authentic cottage craft found buried in village homes and small markets—gets Aamir and the major talking about art and poetry and how they shape life.

  After the guest leaves, Major Kalra smilingly accuses Aamir of being a closet poet.

  ‘Yes, sir. I do read a lot . . . and pen a little in Urdu.’

  ‘Aaah . . . I knew it. Tell me about your style . . . is it an angry rant or a musical haiku?’

  ‘Anything and everything that brings the heart and the mind together—my senses and my thoughts.’ Aamir tells him that some of his favourite poets are Robert Frost, Nighat Sahiba but most of all, Malloch.

  If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill

  Be a scrub in the valley—but be

  The best little scrub by the side of the rill;

  Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.

  Impressed by Malloch, almost as much as he is impressed by this boy, the major is about to say something to Aamir, when his cell phone buzzes and interrupts the tête-à-tête.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ the major tells Aamir as he walks away to take his call in private, ‘meet me after work.’

  Aamir nods and gets back to work. However, he remains distracted that day, wondering what it is that the major wants to tell him. He has a feeling that it is something completely unrelated to their discussion, but something important.

  6

  ‘I talk English; I walk English . . . only . . . only I speak no English . . .’

  Raucous laughter follows this comment. It was some boy in the motley group lounging in the corridor taking a pot-shot on the new student’s superior English language skills.

  Sanam shuts her ears and mind to it as she walks past the Hindi-belt rowdies who are now tunelessly singing Bhojpuri songs, remixing it with English pop and rap and getting it all wrong. She realizes that all this performance is purely for her benefit, for the ribbing would start every time she passed the rowdies in the corridor. KKT’s was beginning to seem like a den of Patna goons, rather than a coaching centre in the heart of the national capital.

  Befriending these Bihari Romeos is out of question but ignoring them isn’t working either. Every day they pull a new stunt to get her goat. They heckle her as ‘high class girl in high, high, heels’. Ape her ways and called out to civils board to give her marks for the way she walks and the way she eats and talks until she is sick and tired of their inane challenges.

  ‘Beat me if you can . . . you pick a sport,’ she retorts one day. Some snigger, some look at her as if she has gone mad. Others keep up their bigoted chatter. As expected, not one of them takes her seriously.

  ‘Chess, anyone?’ she offers. ‘Let’s have a match.’

  One student who is busy playing PUBG on his phone, almost chokes at this. ‘High class ladki . . . high class games!’ sings out someone in the group.

  Sanam is fast losing it. She plants herself, arms akimbo, in front of the student playing PUBG and throws down the gauntlet, ‘Okay, forget chess. I’ll play whatever it is that you’re playing, come on!’

  And without waiting for a response, she begins her game. She goes scavenging in the virtual ghost town for virtual weapons to virtually kill and stop herself from being killed.

  Two more from the boisterous boors group join in, tickled pink to see this slip of a girl challenge them in what is easily the most violent game of the season. At the start there are four players, pitted against each other. Things begin to heat up as safe areas shrink, forcing players into even tighter spaces and bloodier encounters. One playe
r goes down over the shimmering blue boundary wall contracting suddenly, even as Sanam enters a high-risk zone to acquire a vehicle. With one casualty, the two remaining boys gang up against her, chasing her as she crawls underwater to escape. She enters a house, with the boys in hot pursuit. She jumps on to a ledge and positions her virtual self above the stairwell, waiting for them to climb up. The minute one does, she drops on him, simultaneously shooting and taking him completely unawares. She eliminates him and runs out before the back-up guy can get her. She slips into the red zone camp which is highly risky. Her final contender sees her go in and mocks the girl’s foolhardiness. Red zones are danger zones! But Sanam is not a fool. She hovers at the edge. A champion gamer had once told her that as long as even a single pixel of her character’s virtual body touches the blue circle, she’ll be okay and will survive. And she does!

  She eventually gets killed. Shot by the last man left standing. He was the one playing PUBG when she called out for chess. No, she didn’t win, but she had certainly caught their attention. Yes, even a girl can play their games and play it well. She can outwit and even kill the boys in the game as she has done.

  Sanam stands tall in class that day, hoping that she has finally silenced the misogynistic mindsets. But all she has done is rile them further. They mumble around her now, refusing to straighten their twisted thinking to accept her as their equal.

  The high that she had gotten from taking on the challenge soon sinks into frustration. It isn’t only the boys; their institute head is even more chauvinistic. Within a week in the institute, Sanam understands the extent of Tripathi sir’s patriarchy. He has no qualms about exhibiting his gender bias and humiliates the female students without compunction. He neither responds to Sanam’s questions nor does he take her goals seriously. Like the petty-minded boys in her class, he believes that she is merely killing time until she gets married. Damn! Boys, she can understand, they have more hormones than exposure. But he is a teacher! As the institute head, it should be his duty to think and act with more maturity.

  Only, he doesn’t think it is.

  ‘Select your optional subject carefully,’ he advises Bhaskar, the weirdo sitting two rows behind her. Everyone here seems like a weirdo to her, so differing from her in language, dress, thoughts and ways.

  ‘Sir, we should choose our optional subjects as per our interest na?’ Sanam asks.

  ‘I’ll come to you, wait for your turn,’ he snaps at her.

  Sanam stands up then, extremely angry, ‘But my turn never comes! Why am I here? Why am I paying the fees? Why am I bloody tolerating this chauvinism in this day and age?’

  Things turn ugly then. From Sanam it comes down to girls in general. KKT shows her what he calls reality.

  ‘Look at how many girls there are in this class. Three! Forty boys and only three girls. Why?’ He smirks. ‘You girls know that this isn’t for you. Fashion design . . . even teaching . . . that is what works for you people.’

  The class of bigots is in splits by now, applauding their teacher’s extreme prejudice. Some even adding their two bits. ‘Sir, you don’t know . . . it’s for their biodata . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ agrees another. ‘Adds weight when it says: “attempted-IAS”.’

  Sanam is livid. How can people even think this way?

  It’s the final straw when KKT says, ‘The prelims are what you need to worry about . . . your pretty face won’t help you there, haan? If they hold the interview before the prelims, then you will definitely stand a chance!’

  Sanam slams her notepad shut, grabs her bag and storms out of the class and out of KKT’s celebrated coaching centre.

  KKT tells his boys, ‘Girls have strange hobbies these days.’

  Sanam turns around to take one last look at the centre. The KKT hoarding overhangs the frontage of the run-down building, proud and false. She feels even more annoyed at the sight of it, but then she’s even more determined now. She doesn’t need bigots like these to promote her cause. No. She does not need anyone.

  ‘Sanam can do it on her own!’ She screams out to the world.

  That was not just an emotional outburst. Sanam truly believes in herself. She knows she can. Planning is her forte. She will chart out her course and forge ahead until she reaches her goal. She will become a powerful IAS officer and prove her tenacity and integrity to the world.

  Chinar Inn, Kupwara, Kashmir. In the Gardens. Evening.

  Major Kalra and Aamir occupy a table in the gardens adjacent to the main restaurant. The older man had recently given up his customary evening drink, but today the glass is back on the table.

  What is troubling him? wonders Aamir. Was it his grown-up daughter who stayed busy scorching the ramps in Mumbai and cared not enough to visit him? Or was it that Canadian lady he was always FaceTiming? The two had gotten close during her Kashmir visit last year and she had been pushing him to migrate to Toronto. Wanting to divert the major’s mind, Aamir starts talking about Kashmir. The major, unlike most outsiders, was not afraid to hear out the many voices in the Valley.

  ‘The issue isn’t localized any more,’ says Aamir, talking about the rising frustration among the youth.

  ‘Don’t they get enough shit here to keep them busy . . . why import? Political leaders to rebel heroes . . . rabble rousers to security forces . . . everyone out there is playing with people and their minds . . . all the time.’

  ‘Sir, we live half our lives online today, so half the shit happens there.’

  The major is impressed with Aamir’s take on the situation. ‘So,’ says the major, ‘you think the web is a safe place to let off steam.’

  Aamir shakes his head, ‘You’re only half-right, sir. There’s much more to it than just that . . .’

  Pausing to stare off into where the seemingly endless blueness of the sky meets the limited greens of the inn, Aamir elaborates, ‘The net is both a vent and a magnifier . . . we empty our minds there . . . and we fill it too.’

  This is too deep for even the major and he waits for Aamir to continue, fully aware that it is not easy for the youth to openly express himself like this.

  ‘It’s not just us offloading our problems on the net. So many are there . . . with opinions that are darker and angrier than us. And they add to our frustration.’

  So right the boy is, thinks the older man.

  ‘All those posts and rants, sir, you feel lighter and better when you tell your story.’

  The major nods.

  ‘But that euphoria fades fast,’ says Aamir, ‘“Likes”, “shares” and “comments” only increase the feeling of victimization.’ The major is impressed. Aamir continues, ‘And it’s not just about Kashmir now, every victim in the world jumps in with their half-story inciting you even more to rise up and fight the unjust powers. They capture your mind and bind you to their cause, whether it’s right or wrong.’

  For the next few minutes, both are silent, immersed in their own thoughts.

  Then the major makes an announcement. Young man, I’m the one who wants to capture your mind now,’ he says, looking Aamir in the eye. ‘But only for the good of the nation,’ he reassures, with a twinkle in his eye.

  There is a sense of déjà vu . . . Aamir feels they have been at this point of conversation before. Yes, he recalls, that night . . . before they got interrupted . . .

  His hands steepled, the major begins by asking, ‘That MA or MBA that you want to do . . . where will it take you?’

  ‘Not thinking that far ahead, sir. Right now, a good job is all I expect from any degree.’

  ‘But you should think far. And big too,’ contradicts the major. ‘Not many can.’

  Aamir doesn’t reply. His circumstances will not let him think big or too far ahead. Daily survival is what matters at this point.

  ‘You’re bright, well-informed, with your head screwed on right.’

  Aamir remains silent.

  ‘Look, I’ll come straight to the point . . . go for IAS.’ Aamir is still deadpan. The
major leans in closer to emphasize his words, ‘We need people like you in the system.’

  ‘Are you confident that I can do it?’ Aamir asks him, smiling sceptically.

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘I do want to make a difference, but . . . I . . . I’ve got no reach. No clout that counts.’

  ‘So get it. Join a good coaching centre. If not here, go to Srinagar. Clear the exams. Become an officer. Change things!’

  ‘I can’t quit this job, sir . . . I need it.’

  ‘Look, son, it’s your choice. Make excuses. Or find ways to go about it.’

  And the old man gets up to do a round of the hotel. Before walking off, he snakes an arm around the young lad’s shoulders and fires a parting shot in his ears, ‘Kashmir needs young blood with sane thinking. Think how much you can achieve once you’re on that chair.’ He walks away.

  Aamir stares out as the blueness of the sky bordering the green of the lawns sees the borders coalesce into the gathering darkness. The horizon now is a single colour . . . that of the night.

  In that one instant, his mind is made up, all doubts melting into the darkness.

  He will attempt the IAS.

  7

  ‘Try Karol Bagh,’ suggests someone.

  ‘No, the Rajendra Nagar crowd is better,’ says another.

  ‘Why not enrol just for the mock tests?’ advises a friend’s mother.

  ‘But Pub Ad is one subject where you will definitely need guidance,’ cautions a past candidate.

  Sanam shuts her ears to the torrential, unasked-for advice; it seemed like the sole purpose of every uncle and auntie in the world was to guide her. Without any warning, friends, acquaintances and neighbours are flush with suggestions and exhortations. Her IAS aspirations and her self-eviction from the coaching-centre-from-hell is suddenly every busybody’s business.

  Self-study, that’s what she will do. She has had enough of coaching centres and their purported success stories. Sanam decides to script her own story in the way she has been doing all these years. As soon as her mind is made up, it goes into overdrive—she makes a comprehensive to-do list; flags the relevant dates in the exam calendar; prints out syllabi for all the papers along with lists of the necessary reference books; prepares a study schedule; subscribes to Yojana and other government magazines. There is so much to do and the meagre twenty-four hours in a day is far from adequate for all the items on her agenda each day.