Sunday 10 February 2019

Diary Of A Soldier - 16 English translation of Gautam Rajrishi's 'Fauji Ki Diary' (फ़ौजी की डायरी)

khoon se lathpath haree vardee naye shringaar se...
(the coated-with-blood green uniform... was adorned anew)

The summer arrives, at last, on this high mountain. The snow has melted and a convoy of vehicles has arrived only yesterday with fresh vegetables and packets of milk. This actually is a proper halleujah moment for the taste buds in one's tongue, living in terror of frozen potatoes and canned peas for the past seven momths..

Beyond this joy however are memories that turn back repeatedly to look towards that bleak summer... it feels like centuries have passed. The season of summer that year was bent upon breaking all its records of heat. The winter, lurking still  in some such remote, northern corner of the country, had been  startled by the sudden boom of explosions. The summer, beginning in mid-May, seemed to have resolved to bring on by the end of July, a rain of blood - not of sweat. The small patrolling party of the Jat regiment, led by Captain Saurabh Kalia was surrounded on that fifteenth of May by the enemy in large numbers... and its tragic outcome was to keep the days to come all shaken up for centuries...  the summer of that year was... is... to be remembered in the history of the Indian army as the most fierce one.

The Bofors guns posted at the border had opened its powerful jaws !

Nineteen years ago... the year nineteen hundred and ninety nine... the summer of ninety nine !

That year... the summer had as if got caught on the snowy summits of Kargil, Drass and Batalik. The rogue was refusing to leave. Before the final decision for declaration of war was taken in the corridors of power in Delhi... war had started already for the soldiers a fortnight back.

Captain Amit Bhardwaj, another young officer of the Jat regiment had gone out with his team to look for the missing patrolling party led by Captain Saurabh Kalia. After the end of Kargil war, people remember the names of just a select few heroes... whereas many bravehearts such as Amit, Vishwanathan, Nimbalkar and Adhikari have remained hidden behind these talked-about names. Amit had returned just that April... having completed his training from the commando school in Belgaum. He had been with me... in my team... during that training. The way he used to walk alongside during the drenched-in-sweat route-marches of the long, unending nights and requested to hum together songs by Kishor Kumar is still wedged like an ache beneath the layers in my chest. His most favourite song was - ye naina, ye kajal, ye zulfe, ye aanchal. I'd had no inkling then that I would never meet him after the training. It was perhaps on the seventeenth or the eighteenth of May when Amit and his radio operator had the last contact with their battalion. Later... much...much later.. after the formal declaration of the end of war, the badly mutilated bodies of Amit and his radio-operator were found... with marks of bullets fired from close range on their faces and chests.

During that freezing summer....lurking still on those high mountains, Indian soldiers were, as if, in a contest to set new examples of bravery. When, in the beginning of June, the Prime minister eventually admitted in his formal statement that there was a "war-like situation" in Kargil, the word "like" had forced thousands and thousands of soldier to burst into laughter. Beyond that laughter however, towered the Tololing and and Tiger hills with their heads held high at sixteen thousand feet, mocking as a difficult 'challenge'. It was necessary that the mountains be freed from enemy-occupation, also because the peaks of these mountains looked over the Srinagar-Leh national highway and this road was extremely important for the movement of the army's own convoys.

The story of Vikram Batra and the Tiger hill has become very famous. But the truth about Tololing is as much a matter of honour as it is of pain. It was perhaps for the first time after twenty eight years... after nineteen seventy one... when the Indian Army was making a planned attack on the enemy. The last night in the month of May and the first two-three nights in the month of June of nineteen years ago, were about to join the list of the most dangerous of challenges in all the wars in history. As per a pre-decided plan, the grenadiers and a team of soldiers from the Naga battalion began to make a concentrated attack. Sitting behind large rocks and in dug-out bunkers, the enemy was not an easy target. Due to heavy army firing, it became very difficult to advance after reaching as close as thirty meters. Teams led by Major Rajesh Adhikari and captain Nimbalkar had taken position behind a huge wall of snow.

Captain Nimbalkar (now colonel) narrates the story of those three-four nights in a very interesting way. In between the exchange of fire with the enemy, there was also a full and free exchange of expletives. The cannon-shots from the bofors guns positioned below were as fatal for our own soldiers as they were for the enemy. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Vishwanathan, second-in-command of the grenadier regiment was leaving out nothing in attacking the foe despite being injured. When, in the process of evacuating the  injured soldiers, Lieutenant Colonel Vishwanathan realized that his return would be futile as his death was imminent, he ordered for the less injured soldiers to be evacuated first. How valiant of him was this ! A number of enemy bunkers were destroyed and the Indian army had lost over sixty of its warriors including Lieutenant Colonel Vishwanathan, Major Adhikari, Subedar Randhir, havaldar Madanlal, havaldar Ram and Captain Ashok. The month of June was not yet half over and the target of Tololing was still far away. It was to be achieved only at the end of that summer, the story of which will be told another time, dear diary. Such valiant warriors and their unbelievable stories ! I had written something once...

"Cheed kay jungle khade thay... dekhte laachaar se
golian chaltee raheen... is paar se, us paar se
jism to chhalnee gira dhartee pe, lekin saj uthee
khoon se lathpath haree vardee naye shringaar se"

(The Pine forests stood... watching helplessly
as from this end and that... the bullets flew
the body, riddled, fell on the ground... but
the coated-with-blood green uniform... was adorned anew)

Sunday 3 February 2019

'Diary Of A Soldier - 15 , English translation of Gautam Rajrishi's 'Fauji Ki Diary' ( फ़ौजी की डायरी)

Diary Of A Soldier - 15

Battees Saal Bahut Se Sawaalon Kee Umra Hotee Hai
(Thirty Two years is the age of many a question)

Indra jit... lance naik Indrajit Singh is no more. My prayer to Ma Bhavaanee, to enable me to take back all the soldiers of the battalion safe and sound after the two and a half year tenure over here, went unheard. Today is the fifth day... when the sixteen officers and the eleven hundred soldiers of the entire battalion have been unable to take in even a single morsel of food. A soldier's death during encounter with the enemy does become acceptable somewhere, in some corner of the mind with the passing of time. But death because of the ferocity of weather or delay in the arrival of medical help owing to the difficult terrain causes lifelong pain.

It was after midnight... must have been after two a.m... when the wireless set recevied a message from the operator. It was partially the concern in his voice and partially the fierce weather outside... the dreadful mix of the two together were creating in the mind a certain air for the making of a disaster. The group of  thirteen soldiers, back from leave, had started this way at seven in the evening. By all reason the group should have arrived after a climb of seven hours. It is always safer to travel after sunset on snowy mountains as the risk of an avalanche is minimal during night. We generally receive the weather forecast of this region each morning with an accuracy of 99.9 per cent, directly from Delhi. But this night, perhaps, came in the category of that 0.1 per cent. When the group just back from leave had asked for permission from the base to start their climb towards the battalion, the weather had been completely clear. The half-moon had arrived with all its brilliance along with hoards of stars. It was just an ordinary night...which, unknown to anyone, was going to bring in an unforgettable flood of pain by the time it ended. A message from the group of soldiers just after two hours of the start of their climb had said that Indrajit was experiencing a mild chest pain. They had also received my order to return immediately to the base. But Indrajit had insisted... it is nothing... let's go up. The chest pain grew terrible midway. First aid did bring his breaking breath somewhat to normal but lance naik Indrajit closed his eyes forever a few moments before the break of dawn. The on-alert helicopter pilots, ready to pick up Indrajit any moment to carry to the hospital, didn't stand a chance against the cruel whipping of the weather.. Even in these advanced times of science and modern technique, we have failed to bring helicopters to our country which are capable of making safe flights in such foul weather.
       
It must have been perhaps three in the morning when finally my restlessness, despite the best efforts of the subedar major and the other officers of the battalion to stop me, compelled me even in that blizzard to rush down towards the base. When somehow, after a thousand... ten thousand years... I reached my soldiers stumbling and faltering, Indrajit had passed on... leaving us behind.

There were so many memories associated with Indrajit. Prior to the tenure at Pithoragarh, he had been with me for three years, here in Kashmir... in the jungles down below over there. He had been with me  so many times while patrolling, in so many ambushes and operations. Always with a smile... and singing, every now and then, songs from Haryana.

The post mortem report said he had, during the climb, picked up and swallowed a piece of snow which then went to settle in his chest and proved fatal. During the four week training prior to posting on these high mountains, we had been told thousands times never ever to swallow snow to quench our  thirst when tired. Ever since I have received this information, the waves of sorrow and pain have been joined somewhere also by a wave of anger.

Being a soldier you cannot be careless even for a moment... a soldier just can't afford to be careless... and carelessness against instructions given during training has especially proven to be fatal more often than not. A small mistake has not only brought the life of a young soldier to an untimely end... it has also robbed the country of an able army man. Those left behind are his wife, his four year old daughter, his old parents and we... his colleagues and comrades.

The most difficult moment in a commanding officer's life comes when he has to inform the father or the mother or the wife in the family of a departed soldier. With a sobbing heart and trembling hands, I have no idea how I was able to break it to Indrajit's father over the phone. The wail rising from the other end has, as if, rendered me deaf for life. How I wish no father would ever have to hear the news of his young son's demise... and no commanding officer in the armies of the entire would ever have to inform the family of a soldier in his battalion of his death.
 
This is all that I pray for ! Is it too much ?

Words are failing me today dear diary.  Such bizarre, delirious bits of intoning are rising from the pit of my chest. A portion of a poem by Babusha Kohli puts wet bandages on these scalding bits of intoning late at night on these icy, smouldering mountain. Listen my diary :-

"Aasmaan kehta hai ki kisee ko itne ratjage na do
ki pakkee neend kaa pataa dhoondhe
aasmaan ke paas aankhe hain par haath nahin
zakhmee gardan par tamage taange gaye
uskee neend kee mittee par ugaaa diye gaye gulaab ke phool

aakhir shaanti aur sannaate mein koi to furk hotaa hai na

dar-asal mere dost !
sannaate na torre gaye to jamhaai aatee hai
ki battees saal bahut se sawaalon kee umra hotee hai... "

(The sky asks not to give so many wakeful nights to anyone,
 that one has to go looking for the address of sound sleep
the sky has eyes but not hands
medals were hung down the wounded neck
rose flowers sown over the soil of his sleep

after all there is a difference between peace and silence

the fact is my friend !
that silence, if not broken, brings on yawns
that   thirty two is the age of many a question..."

... Indrajit would have turned thirty two in June this year !


                                                                               -x-