Tirunelveli woman inspector hides grief under mask, leads Independent Day parade hours after father’s death

TIRUNELVELI: As in previous years when she was leading her contingent during the Independence Day and Republic Day parades, inspector N Maheshwari of armed reserve unit led the parade on Saturday as well. But she did not give the slightest hint that her father had died the previous night.
After performing her duty the ground, the woman inspector rushed to Vadamadurai in Dindigul district, situated 230km away, to attend the funeral of her father.
Her father, Narayanaswamy, 83, on Friday night district due to some ailments.
On Friday, her husband Balamurugan, who is with the intelligence unit of the Tirunelveli city police, returned to work after recovering from Covid-19. Balamurugan was deployed in the Tirunelveli Medical College Hospital – a tertiary Covid-19 care centre – and was entrusted with the task of collecting information on Covid patients who got admitted there.
Maheshwari was busy with the Independence Day parade rehearsal .
When she heard of her father’s demise, she thought of leaving for Dindigul immediately. But she she did not want things to go wrong at the parade as it would not be proper to have a substitute at the last moment to lead it.
She did not inform her seniors about her father’s death and was at the VOC Stadium ground on Saturday morning.
The mask she was wearing helped her cover her grief from the rest of the world as she led the parade. The guard of honour was accepted by district collector Shilpa Prabhakar Satish. Soon after the parade, Maheshwari and Balamurugan hurriedly left the ground, rushing to Vadamadurai.
Only at this point, her seniors came to know about her loss. Showers of praise and condolence messages started pouring in for her in the social media as pictures of the officer leading the parade were widely circulated.
The inspector was inconsolable and was not in a position to talk about her act and the grief she had hidden for more than 13 hours. She reached Dindigul in the afternoon and attended the funeral.