Srinagar, (The Telegraph): Kashmir is on a semi colon. The chief clause of its controversial power arrangement has prematurely expired. The sub-clause is in mourning and currently unavailable for the purposes of continuing what Mufti Mohammed Sayeed left unfinished. Mehbooba Mufti, PDP president and her father's anointed heir, had responded with anger and indignation to any suggestion she is mulling power while she grieves.

And so it happens that even with a coalition that enjoys majority, India's most troubled and troublesome state has had to be administered a dose of governor's rule. N.N. Vohra's Raj Bhavan takes charge while the political vacuum on centrestage awaits new actors. Those actors await the rewriting of their roles. It's only then that this drama can proceed beyond the semi colon.

From Mufti Sayeed to Mehbooba Mufti may not be as seamless a transition as many have come to presume. It does not become seamless merely because the PDP has unanimously backed her as future chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, the first woman to assume that job if she does. It does not become seamless should the BJP too eventually decide to back her as it did her father.

The seams are already there, picked out by the quite sudden departure of Mufti Sayeed. Mehbooba is not her father. Or, as one senior BJP leader remarked in a meeting of provincial party leaders yesterday: " Mehbooba ka kad woh nahin jo Mufti saheb ka thha (Mehbooba doesn't have the stature the Mufti had)."

The BJP hasn't explicitly said a new leader will require to negotiate new terms and arrangements. But critically, it has not expressed suo motu readiness to keep the old terms in place. There is not even, just yet, any formal word it will back Mehbooba as chief minister.

If Mehbooba has obdurately refused to talk politics from her mourning rooms at her resplendent Fairview cottage home, the BJP has remained enigmatically silent on how it will play this. Will it push new terms? What will they be? Is it eyeing new, more substantive, portfolios? May it want, with the Mufti gone, to turn more ambitious and want a power rotation deal? Or will it want to keep the coalition steady, aware that Mehbooba has the option of turning to the Congress?

Ram Madhav, BJP general secretary and chief emissary on coalition affairs, said little of political import on his short condolence fly-by to Srinagar yesterday. What speculation there was in the air over the BJP's future course he left afloat.

But if some in the BJP believe this to be an opportune hour to bargain for more, the PDP camp isn't idle on rethinking. Mehbooba, close aides told The Telegraph , will "not brook" any move to push her or make her yield. "She is a tough nut and she knows the PDP has already suffered an image knock as a result of this alliance. She has a long future ahead of her, yielding to the BJP is unthinkable, she'll set her terms, have no doubt."

Giving in to BJP pressure tactics will be poor optics for Mehbooba in the Valley, poorer even for the core PDP constituency, bred on a hardline "Kashmiri rights" diet. "If people see her conceding or taking dictation from the BJP, she will suffer politically," the aide said. "Mehbooba hasn't fought all this long to subject herself to dictation by the BJP."

There are voices in the party already articulating a rethink. "I won't call the alliance with the BJP unholy but it is antithetical and unnatural," Tariq Karra, PDP MP From Srinagar, told this newspaper on the lawns of Fairview cottage this evening. "This is a decisive moment and I think a good time for a rethink. We have opposed the RSS agenda all along, now I feel we have become its conduits."

Karra occupies the naysayer corner in the PDP and has been at odds with the leadership. But with the Mufti no more, he may feel entitled to speak out more openly and forcefully. "This is a political and ideological crossroads for us," Karra said as he exchanged embraces with other mourners in the Muftis' backyard.

"What I am saying is not only political, it is the voice of our conscience. The PDP was not formed to partner the BJP and the RSS, and I can tell you eventually our conscience will win."

Two hours south of here, in the dust-blown township of Bijbehara, the founding conscience of the PDP lies buried and quite beyond mortal reach. Who's to ask the Mufti where he'd have his party head now?

In a sun-bathed corner of Bijbehara's Dara Shikoh Padshahi Park, workers are busy erecting a temporary canopy over the Mufti's freshly laid grave. Bricks and mortar lie scrambled atop it, they've disarranged the offering of flowers. Trickles file past the grave, mostly the elderly of the Mufti's hometown. An engineer shouts out to the workmen to hurry. A senior police officer arrives with a fawning posse and drops his head in silent prayer.

High above the frenetic progress in masonry and steelwork looms a canopy far more majestic - the drooping boughs of chinar trees that will forever look over the Mufti, Bijbehara's prodigal who has returned home to rest and stir nowhere anymore. The air is rent with the clamour for tomorrow's memorial ceremonies. One chapter is moving to closure. Another is yet to reveal itself. Kashmir is on a semi colon.

Photo credit: The Telegraph