Daughter Desh Ki

By Shahana

It was a rainy midnight in July in an exhausted little city called Poona. I was fast asleep when all of a sudden I heard someone breathe very heavily, almost choking with utter shock and bewilderment. I woke up with a start only to see Maa staring at the television wide-eyed and terrified.

There it was —NDTV on full volume with Barkha Dutt reporting some flood, scandal, or some such thing which at that point did not matter. Maa pointed at the ticker, which was rolling the same news over and over, as if to make sure it was drilled deep into my cerebrum that the commanding officer of 22 Rashtriya Rifles has been shot in a terrorist encounter in the valley of Sopore. I stared in utter disbelief. One only knew people or knew of people who met with circumstances such as these, but knowing that this time it was my father at the receiving end of the bullet was just the one thing I could not fathom.

There were no tears. There was no pain. There was no shock. Only a pragmatic mother and her even more pragmatic ways. She told me to go back to sleep and decided that I should focus on my upcoming exams. Just like that. She made countless calls that night only to realize that all lines to my father’s office and residence in Kashmir were unattended and were probably going to be for many hours. We did not sleep that night and we assumed that we had lost him.

We found out later that despite Pak TV’s report that said ‘woh halal ho gaye’, he had been found and was rushed to the I.C.U. His radio operator, however was not so lucky. Those few hours in my otherwise calm adolescence were, undoubtedly the most traumatic and mind numbing. And I speak for most Army officer’s kids when I say that its times like these that make us who we are- uncontrollably patriotic.

While news coverage in 1999 brought Kargil to the Indian living room, we witnessed the war at a very personal level. With every tricolour wrapped coffin, we hoped it was not someone we knew. Not the officer who used to play hide and seek with us during Mess parties, or the one who used to take us for bike rides on his new Kawasaki, or the one who first taught you how to hold a tennis racket or even the one who we used to make fun of because some pretty girl refused to dance with him in last month’s social evening. But all we could do was hope. As the number of dead soldiers soared, our hopes waned. Every death was the loss of a father, a husband, a son, a brother a fiancé or a childhood sweetheart, all of whom to us were family.

While most of the country was surprisingly supportive, given the lack of information about the defence forces out there, there were instances that made most of us Army kids cringe, partly in disbelief and partly in disgust. I remember flying Indian Airlines from Bombay to Bhuj and as I was about to board the plane I suddenly noticed those dreaded coffins about 10 meters from where I was.
 

There were about fifteen of them, along the sidewalk, wrapped snugly in the tricolour before they were about to be transported to their various residences or battalions. I noticed this rather corpulent gentleman giving stern directions for what exactly to do with these ‘boxes’ as he called them. These were his exact words, while he loudly thumped one of them “Arey kya yaar, in dabbo ko hatta yaha se, poora jam karke rakha hai idhar.” My heart sank and my eyes welled up instantly with tears of anger, rage and most of all, insult.

But I could do nothing. I let him deride the lost lives of the people I have known and loved for years. To my horror, I found out later, that Indian Airlines had refused to transport these very coffins in their carriers. So much for being a public sector airline.

Being from a culturally inclined, rather diverse family, I was always given the emotional freedom to make my own choices, as a result of which I had an extremely eclectic group of friends from every age group and political predilection, the latter of which sometimes, would bother me to no end. During my college years and for a while after, the anti-army stand became the ‘it’ thing. One was young, rebellious and had read every online copy of Al-Jazeera and was now convinced that the army was out to get every civilian in sight. My friends would debate into the wee hours of the morning about atrocities committed and the ever so reported ‘mysterious deaths’. About whether the army had been given too free a rope and whether they deserve the perks they get. After numerous attempts to defend, protect and preserve the sanctity of my beloved establishment, I gave up. This constant bickering and debating was pointless and it took the life out of me, because for me it was not about defending an institution, it was about defending the only place I could call home.

Asking an army kid to ‘look at the other side’ or better still ‘get some perspective on the issue’ is like asking a Holocaust survivor to do the same. I don’t want perspective. I don’t see another side. All I see is that the lives of our men in uniform are not held in the high regard that they should be. All I see is that they pay too heavy a price for the eternal political hogwash. All I see is these selfless men, who have missed life’s smallest yet most important moments just so you can live out yours. All I see is one side and its mine and I am not ashamed or even inhibited to say it.

We are the only category of children in the country who get very confused when asked where we are from. What do I say? I am part Maharashtrian- part South Indian, I was brought up by Sardars and Parsis and I went to 13 schools? That’s just messed up. But it’s true. That’s where you can shove in your perspective argument. This kind of cultural diversity is exactly what perspective is. But this is the extent to which we can go. No more please.

I have always beamed with pride to be called an army ‘brat’ but as I walk into a life outside, a life of the unknown, one thing is for certain. This is a more-than-real, heartbreaking, gut wrenching goodbye to a love that has lasted a lifetime.

Courtesy: http://raagshahana.blogspot.com/2011/08/daughter-desh-ki.html