My heart skipped a beat when my father-in-law called up to give the news that there is news of an Air Force operation across the border. I stopped in my tracks and switched on the television. It was an air strike by the Air Force Warriors. I scrolled all the channels for news of any casualties. Negative. Then, I allowed myself a sigh of relief. I was just praying hard that there are no casualties. Amidst the trending hash tags of “not forgotten, not forgiven”, I may be amongst the minority who do not dare utter the dreaded word. Attack only brings a single memory. The memory of my boy (armed forces personnel never age, they either become veterans or attain martyrdom) guarding the borders and others.
I forget to breathe when I hear him at 2 a.m. with all the noise in the background. I know he is somewhere outdoors, either in the snow or in the winds. His idea of luxury is a tin shed, and music to his ears is the voice of his two-year-old daughter. When the toddler watched the movie Uri, she cried out, “Papa!”, looking at the actor who donned olive green. Then she continuously cried saying, Aunty ro rahi hai (aunty is crying). I didn’t have the heart to continue and we got out of the cinema. I don’t need to witness it on screen, I thought. I swim in the flood of emotion every day, and no actor can emulate on screen the pain and tumult in life.
The boy has left after living with me for two years out of six years of our marital life. In two years, I’ve changed houses twice and I’m at the point of leaving the second one as he is no longer here but at the border. This is stability, as I am told there are ladies who have done shifting four times in two years. I have been pursuing an allotment of house, retention of house but to no avail till now. Everyone is sympathetic but they cannot do anything about it. I carry on my duties as a government servant and a mother.
My father has been bed-ridden after a heart attack. So I prefer to keep my terrors to myself. However, I don’t have the heart to really reflect how and what I have to do tomorrow. My future is entwined with the boy. Whatever he is doing, I am clueless most of the time. I am doing the rounds for a house here, and I sometimes cry and laugh at the irony of the situation. The boy does not know more than a couple of hours of sleep, and I’m here, focussing on where I would stay in his absence.
Armed forces wives are said to be resilient, brave, sophisticated and much more. I’m nothing like that. I am scared to my guts, I’m always teary eyed, vulnerable and praying a hundred times a day for the safe return. “We are proud of you,” I am told by another bureaucrat, who was helping me out for a place to live. “Do you think the government is doing enough for the cause of soldiers?” he asked. No one can do enough for the lives that are at stake always and the lives who survive behind with all the focus on the frontiers, I thought — but just murmured something.
I’ve had sleepless nights thinking of everyone else whose boys are out there. I feel no pride, only horror, when I look at his medals.
Yuddhaya krit Nishchayah, the medal says, from the Bhagwad Gita, where Krishna tells Arjuna that, if you get wounded in the war you would attain heaven; if you are victorious you would rule the earth. So, get up and fight the war.”
I want no wars. I only want all the boys to be safe.
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