Mr Girdhari Lal Batra, Vikram's father; and below my plane lands at Kangra Airport flanked by the Dhauladhar ranges
March 2014
Delhi-Bhatinda Intercity Express, Chair Car
The kid with the runny nose is rummaging in the plastic magazine holder attached to the seat in front. I reach over his head to pull the curtain against the sunlight streaming in through the glass. He has only recently displaced me from my window seat by bawling “khidki ke paas baithunga” and this Christopher Columbus of the kid world now seems to have made a discovery. In his chubby hand he victoriously holds a tiny packet. “Chocolate flavoured you-know-whats. Dotted, Ribbed, Flavoured,” it says. I do a mental double take. Yes! It is what I suspect it is. Alarmed by the services Indian Railways seems to have started offering travelers; I am quick to cash in on this opportunity to get back my rightful place. Nudging his fat mother, I tell her, “iske haath mein gandi cheez hai”. I have just finished tapping “ta dhin dhin dha” on the armrest when the volcano erupts. Mom lets out a shocked “Hai Ram!” and tugs at the packet which kid is trying to rip open with his teeth, mumbling, “meethi faunf” (he lisps). Mom whacks him one and drags the screaming midget to Daddy who snoozes one row away. To make her case stronger she carries along the piece of incriminating evidence. I quickly reclaim my seat and rest my head on the cheap Rexene, watching the yellow mustard fields zip past. Ah! Sweet revenge!
Let not my cheap shenanigans distract you from the nobility of my purpose. I am on my way to Bhatinda from where the kind and caring Brigadier Ajith will give me his Number 1 Gypsy which will take me to village Chehlanwali where retired Subedar Kala of 4 Mech lives. He is the last survivor of the war fought with the Chinese at Bumla. He fought besides the late Subedar Joginder Singh, PVC, in 1962, and later brought his ashes home. He has promised to tell me Joginder Sahab’s story and is the one who will tell me how Joginder Sahab charged like a lion with his bayonet when all his bullets had finished and was finally shot by the Chinese.
-------------
The biggest problem I faced writing this book of essays on the 21 Param Vir Chakra award winners of independent India was that most of them were dead. And it's not easy writing a story about a dead stranger. But as I began tracing their lives through friends and families and soldiers who knew them and fought by their side, these names started getting familiar. They started walking in and out of my head and leaving footprints on my psyche by the tread of their DMS boots. They started interrupting my conversations and stepping over my thoughts as I slept. As the days passed, they got even more familiar. Taking me by the elbow, they started coaxing me to come see the hills they had climbed, the roads they had walked, the girls they had loved. They made me stand outside houses they had lived in, and had me knocking at the doors, asking to be let in. In other words, they started behaving like old friends; who take you for granted because they know they own a part of your heart.
Vikram (Capt Vikram Batra) – yes, we were now on first name terms - who died saving another man in the heights of Kargil, made me book a Spice jet flight to Kangra. As I stood on the runway looking at the snow covered Dhauladhar ranges glowing orange in the morning light and wrapped my muffler tighter around my neck, I thought he must have grown up seeing these mountains every day. Already, it seemed as if I knew him better. Outside the airport, fragrant white roses bloomed and my cousin Sandeep waited for me in his spanking new Scorpio and snazzy Ray Bans. He had taken a day off (he is a serving colonel) and insisted on driving me two hours to Bandla gaon (Vikram’s village) because, he said, “Didi! For me, going to his house is like doing a pilgrimage”. The roses followed us all the way to the bright yellow bordered Vikram Batra Bhawan and then stopped and bloomed outside while we walked in to where Vikram’s portrait hung on a sitting room wall and his dad sat before it, wrapped in a soft pashmina shawl. I later found his girlfriend teaching in a school in Chandigarh. With a wry smile in her voice she told me how she could never convince herself to get married even though it had been nearly 15 years since he died. She told me that her heart still misses a beat when the phone rings at 7.30 pm on a Sunday, which was the time when he would call her every week before he went to fight the war from which he never returned.
------------
For the handsome Lt Arun Khetarpal, who refused to abandon his burning tank Fama Gusta even when he was told to save his own life in the 71 war, I stood under a black umbrella knocking at the door to his mother’s beautiful Delhi farmhouse on a rain splashed morning. I was let into the tastefully done up sitting room, where she was wheeled in in a cotton nightie, a friendly lab wagging its fat tail by her side. She had just come out of a surgery, her hair was cut really short and she whispered his name so gently that it appeared as if he was in deep sleep and she did not want to wake him up. All this while Arun stood there in his uniform, tall and handsome, hands resting on his hips, a smile playing on his lips, and watched us from a photograph on his mother’s bedroom wall. Mrs Khetarpal died shortly after I interviewed her and those who love her believe that she is now sitting somewhere with Arun, making up for all the time he left her alone. I still remember the pride in her voice when she had told me how she let Arun go for the war with the words: “Don’t come back a coward. Fight like a tiger.” That was exactly what he had done. She was the one who had opened the door to the postman 44 years back and received the telegram that said: Deeply regret to inform your son IC 25067 Second Liut Khetarpal reportedly killed in action sixteenth December. Please accept sincere condolences.
------------
The fragile Poornima Thapa, who works in Pune and is writing a book on her father – the legendary late Major Dhan Singh Thapa, PVC, was the one who told met how her father defended a small post called Sirijap near Pangong Tso (lake) in Ladakh which the Chinese attacked in 1962. Nearly every soldier of his company was killed and the post was set on fire by incendiary bombs but Maj Thapa continued to fight with his khukri even when he ran out of bullets. He was given up as dead and awarded the PVC posthumously. A few months later he was found alive. He had been taken Prisoner of War and had suffered torture at the hands of the Chinese but he could finally return to his family who had already conducted all the rituals of his death. “My father never liked to talk about those days. It must have been humiliating for him,” she told me.
When I came back home from my travels, these stories kept me awake till the early hours of the morning, cups of coffee got cold on my bedside, and I typed out my essays with a quilt drawn to my knees, table lamp turned so that its light did not spill beyond my keyboard. My fingers learnt to move almost as softly as Mrs Khetarpal’s voice so that the sound of the tapping keys would not disturb the one who slept. Who had to wear a uniform and go to work the next day.
-------------------
This story began one evening when I was walking down the Mall in Ferozepur cantonment where kids raced bicycles and red poppies bloomed by the roadside. Looking up, I caught the eye of the late Company Havildar Major Abdul Hamid, PVC, of 4 Grenadiers who was killed in 1965 while blowing up the seventh Pakistani Patton tank from his RCL gun in the Khemkaran sector. He was watching me from a laminated poster on the roadside. I had been offered my first book contract and was feeling a little giddy from happiness. Looking up, I declared: “I am going to write your story Abdul Hamid.” He did not respond but Manoj, my husband, who had been walking by my side, trying not to trample any flowers, smiled and stepped off the sidewalk; and broke into a jog gesturing to me to meet him end of the road. That was a year back.
Last week, I met him there. Abdul Hamid’s was the last story I wrote. So technically, it is the end of the road that took me past yellow fields of mustard and golden wheat ripening in the sun. It took me beyond the Sela pass in Tawang where an entire lake freezes over in the winter and to Bumla where Subedar Joginder Singh died fighting with a bayonet in a war where soldiers lacked everything except courage. It took me to Sirijap in Ladakh where Maj Dhan Singh Thapa sliced necks off with his khukri and it took me all the way to freezing Rezang La in Chushul where 13 Kumaon’s Major Shaitan Singh and his men (113 in all) were brutally massacred by the Chinese who outnumbered them completely. They died following orders that said: You will fight till the last man and the last bullet. When 13 Kumaon sent me a list of Rezang La martyrs, it ran into three pages on my laptop and made my eyes wet.
The bodies of these soldiers were discovered three months later by a Ladakhi shepherd. They had frozen in the cold in their moment of death. They still had guns in their hands. Not one of them had tried to run away. I met two Rezang La survivors, both 73 now. They recounted how a grievously injured Maj Shaitan ordered them to leave him behind since he would only lessen their chances of survival. I can’t share with you these stories just yet but one day I hope I’ll be able to put a book in your hands. Till then, this blog will have to suffice as a tribute to the brave soldiers who died fighting and to their families who have lived with loss all their lives and yet been generous enough to share with me what they still have –memories of those dead heroes.
Delhi-Bhatinda Intercity Express, Chair Car
The kid with the runny nose is rummaging in the plastic magazine holder attached to the seat in front. I reach over his head to pull the curtain against the sunlight streaming in through the glass. He has only recently displaced me from my window seat by bawling “khidki ke paas baithunga” and this Christopher Columbus of the kid world now seems to have made a discovery. In his chubby hand he victoriously holds a tiny packet. “Chocolate flavoured you-know-whats. Dotted, Ribbed, Flavoured,” it says. I do a mental double take. Yes! It is what I suspect it is. Alarmed by the services Indian Railways seems to have started offering travelers; I am quick to cash in on this opportunity to get back my rightful place. Nudging his fat mother, I tell her, “iske haath mein gandi cheez hai”. I have just finished tapping “ta dhin dhin dha” on the armrest when the volcano erupts. Mom lets out a shocked “Hai Ram!” and tugs at the packet which kid is trying to rip open with his teeth, mumbling, “meethi faunf” (he lisps). Mom whacks him one and drags the screaming midget to Daddy who snoozes one row away. To make her case stronger she carries along the piece of incriminating evidence. I quickly reclaim my seat and rest my head on the cheap Rexene, watching the yellow mustard fields zip past. Ah! Sweet revenge!
Let not my cheap shenanigans distract you from the nobility of my purpose. I am on my way to Bhatinda from where the kind and caring Brigadier Ajith will give me his Number 1 Gypsy which will take me to village Chehlanwali where retired Subedar Kala of 4 Mech lives. He is the last survivor of the war fought with the Chinese at Bumla. He fought besides the late Subedar Joginder Singh, PVC, in 1962, and later brought his ashes home. He has promised to tell me Joginder Sahab’s story and is the one who will tell me how Joginder Sahab charged like a lion with his bayonet when all his bullets had finished and was finally shot by the Chinese.
-------------
The biggest problem I faced writing this book of essays on the 21 Param Vir Chakra award winners of independent India was that most of them were dead. And it's not easy writing a story about a dead stranger. But as I began tracing their lives through friends and families and soldiers who knew them and fought by their side, these names started getting familiar. They started walking in and out of my head and leaving footprints on my psyche by the tread of their DMS boots. They started interrupting my conversations and stepping over my thoughts as I slept. As the days passed, they got even more familiar. Taking me by the elbow, they started coaxing me to come see the hills they had climbed, the roads they had walked, the girls they had loved. They made me stand outside houses they had lived in, and had me knocking at the doors, asking to be let in. In other words, they started behaving like old friends; who take you for granted because they know they own a part of your heart.
Vikram (Capt Vikram Batra) – yes, we were now on first name terms - who died saving another man in the heights of Kargil, made me book a Spice jet flight to Kangra. As I stood on the runway looking at the snow covered Dhauladhar ranges glowing orange in the morning light and wrapped my muffler tighter around my neck, I thought he must have grown up seeing these mountains every day. Already, it seemed as if I knew him better. Outside the airport, fragrant white roses bloomed and my cousin Sandeep waited for me in his spanking new Scorpio and snazzy Ray Bans. He had taken a day off (he is a serving colonel) and insisted on driving me two hours to Bandla gaon (Vikram’s village) because, he said, “Didi! For me, going to his house is like doing a pilgrimage”. The roses followed us all the way to the bright yellow bordered Vikram Batra Bhawan and then stopped and bloomed outside while we walked in to where Vikram’s portrait hung on a sitting room wall and his dad sat before it, wrapped in a soft pashmina shawl. I later found his girlfriend teaching in a school in Chandigarh. With a wry smile in her voice she told me how she could never convince herself to get married even though it had been nearly 15 years since he died. She told me that her heart still misses a beat when the phone rings at 7.30 pm on a Sunday, which was the time when he would call her every week before he went to fight the war from which he never returned.
------------
For the handsome Lt Arun Khetarpal, who refused to abandon his burning tank Fama Gusta even when he was told to save his own life in the 71 war, I stood under a black umbrella knocking at the door to his mother’s beautiful Delhi farmhouse on a rain splashed morning. I was let into the tastefully done up sitting room, where she was wheeled in in a cotton nightie, a friendly lab wagging its fat tail by her side. She had just come out of a surgery, her hair was cut really short and she whispered his name so gently that it appeared as if he was in deep sleep and she did not want to wake him up. All this while Arun stood there in his uniform, tall and handsome, hands resting on his hips, a smile playing on his lips, and watched us from a photograph on his mother’s bedroom wall. Mrs Khetarpal died shortly after I interviewed her and those who love her believe that she is now sitting somewhere with Arun, making up for all the time he left her alone. I still remember the pride in her voice when she had told me how she let Arun go for the war with the words: “Don’t come back a coward. Fight like a tiger.” That was exactly what he had done. She was the one who had opened the door to the postman 44 years back and received the telegram that said: Deeply regret to inform your son IC 25067 Second Liut Khetarpal reportedly killed in action sixteenth December. Please accept sincere condolences.
------------
The fragile Poornima Thapa, who works in Pune and is writing a book on her father – the legendary late Major Dhan Singh Thapa, PVC, was the one who told met how her father defended a small post called Sirijap near Pangong Tso (lake) in Ladakh which the Chinese attacked in 1962. Nearly every soldier of his company was killed and the post was set on fire by incendiary bombs but Maj Thapa continued to fight with his khukri even when he ran out of bullets. He was given up as dead and awarded the PVC posthumously. A few months later he was found alive. He had been taken Prisoner of War and had suffered torture at the hands of the Chinese but he could finally return to his family who had already conducted all the rituals of his death. “My father never liked to talk about those days. It must have been humiliating for him,” she told me.
When I came back home from my travels, these stories kept me awake till the early hours of the morning, cups of coffee got cold on my bedside, and I typed out my essays with a quilt drawn to my knees, table lamp turned so that its light did not spill beyond my keyboard. My fingers learnt to move almost as softly as Mrs Khetarpal’s voice so that the sound of the tapping keys would not disturb the one who slept. Who had to wear a uniform and go to work the next day.
-------------------
This story began one evening when I was walking down the Mall in Ferozepur cantonment where kids raced bicycles and red poppies bloomed by the roadside. Looking up, I caught the eye of the late Company Havildar Major Abdul Hamid, PVC, of 4 Grenadiers who was killed in 1965 while blowing up the seventh Pakistani Patton tank from his RCL gun in the Khemkaran sector. He was watching me from a laminated poster on the roadside. I had been offered my first book contract and was feeling a little giddy from happiness. Looking up, I declared: “I am going to write your story Abdul Hamid.” He did not respond but Manoj, my husband, who had been walking by my side, trying not to trample any flowers, smiled and stepped off the sidewalk; and broke into a jog gesturing to me to meet him end of the road. That was a year back.
Last week, I met him there. Abdul Hamid’s was the last story I wrote. So technically, it is the end of the road that took me past yellow fields of mustard and golden wheat ripening in the sun. It took me beyond the Sela pass in Tawang where an entire lake freezes over in the winter and to Bumla where Subedar Joginder Singh died fighting with a bayonet in a war where soldiers lacked everything except courage. It took me to Sirijap in Ladakh where Maj Dhan Singh Thapa sliced necks off with his khukri and it took me all the way to freezing Rezang La in Chushul where 13 Kumaon’s Major Shaitan Singh and his men (113 in all) were brutally massacred by the Chinese who outnumbered them completely. They died following orders that said: You will fight till the last man and the last bullet. When 13 Kumaon sent me a list of Rezang La martyrs, it ran into three pages on my laptop and made my eyes wet.
The bodies of these soldiers were discovered three months later by a Ladakhi shepherd. They had frozen in the cold in their moment of death. They still had guns in their hands. Not one of them had tried to run away. I met two Rezang La survivors, both 73 now. They recounted how a grievously injured Maj Shaitan ordered them to leave him behind since he would only lessen their chances of survival. I can’t share with you these stories just yet but one day I hope I’ll be able to put a book in your hands. Till then, this blog will have to suffice as a tribute to the brave soldiers who died fighting and to their families who have lived with loss all their lives and yet been generous enough to share with me what they still have –memories of those dead heroes.
Jind, a railway station right out of a period film. Pic taken from the train to Bhatinda
Subedar Kala who told me the brave story of Subedar Joginder who died in the 1962 war
The ladies of Sub Kala's pind who insisted that I would have to share their lunch: Rotti todo ji
(Left to right) Rezang La survivors Subedar Ram Chander, who carried Maj Shaitan when he was injured; and Naik Nihal Singh, who had both arms smashed by machine gun fire but managed to walk back to Company Headquarters
Maj Rama Raghoba Rane, one of the very few who lived to wear the PVC on his shirt front.
That's Arun at the National Defence Academy
Lt General Tindy Sharma, who is in his 90s, told me about his brother Major Somnath Sharma (portrait on the wall) or Somi, who was independent India's first PVC
Company Havildar Major Abdul Hamid as I saw him on a poster in Ferozepur for three years
With the ladies of Kala Sahab's pind in gaon Chehlanwali
The kid
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