Amid bravehearts, in the hero’s honour

The young Captain of Rashtriya Rifles got a patrol ready in five minutes. He must have wondered at the improbable demand of the visiting middle-aged Colonel to scale the nearest hill. The soldiers spread out and started climbing up the hill terraces in which maize was sprouting.

The over-eager visitor’s knees started creaking. He asked a soldier for a light machine gun. It felt heavy and he climbed for a few hundred yards up the farm terraces. He returned the weapon and wished he had a sturdy walking stick. He felt all his machismo melting away. The soldiers kept moving up. They were super fit. You know it when you climb with them. Your brain and college certificate don’t tell you that. Your legs and lungs give you that education when you move up a mountain with them.

Cries of ‘Jai Hind’ rang out from the old men living in the mud houses. They offered water. It was scarce in the mountains and they had to buy it in tankers. They pulled out plastic chairs and offered hospitality, as they started talking about their Army stints. ‘I served in so and so battalion of JAK LI (Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry).’ Then came the long list of stations they had served in. The Armymen had been climbing for two hours. When they descended from the hilltop, the Colonel stopped at a shop on the road bend. The owner let out a sonorous ‘Jai Hind’. From almost every mud-roofed hut that he passed, he could hear ‘Jai Hind’. Old men, their faces washed with deep lines, proclaimed having served in JAK LI. Buffaloes stood tethered in solid mud and the timber huts were built on hewed slopes. A listless Bihari mason stood and stared as the patrol passed. When asked what he was doing so far away from home, he said he earned ~600 a day as most young men of the village worked in foreign countries.

The shop was well stocked with provisions. A beaming, handsome, 6 foot tall young boy came and stood there. In this part of India, people are generally good looking. The mountains and woods all around are a wanderer’s delight.

The lad insisted that the Armymen come to his house. Another good-looking young man came out. He had long, curly brown hair. A tall man who looked in his sixties stood outside the simple house in a salwar kameez. He welcomed the officers and took them to a drawing room with plastic chairs and a centre table.

A matronly woman came and sat next to the man. Another young man fetched tea, almonds, pistachios and biscuits. The tea was thick-sweet buffalo milk with just a whiff of tea leaves. In rural communities, such tea is an honour. Not much different from the customary offerings in the Colonel’s native Haryana.

The young men were shy and there was a tall young girl, their sister, who went away briskly. The boys had come home from their regiments on leave. It was Eid and homecoming season.

The father was strong, dignified and had little to say. Clouds of sadness remained settled on the mother’s face. The father of the boys got up and went into another room, returning with a framed medal. It had a green ribbon and a bronze circular disc with the Ashokan wheel. On the mother’s face, the lines of sadness and memory became deeper. The boy to whom the medal belonged had left the world.

The brave woman had five sons. She had permitted all of them to wear the olive green. One of them had given up his life in the service of the nation.

Darkness set in on the mountain slope. It was time to leave. The Captain sat quietly. The Colonel got up, saluted the parents and the patrol started walking back.

Rifleman Aurangzeb was conferred the Shaurya Chakra, the third highest gallantry award, posthumously in 2018. Jai Hind!