After firing several shots and hearing him
groan like an animal, I was assured of the fact that I was still alive. Beauty
of violence is paradoxical; you could feel alive only at the expense of the
lives you take. We, one of the infantry divisions of the Indian Army, crawled
up the rugged steep slope of the Greater Himalayas inch by inch, weighed down
by guns and ammunition, and dominated a jagged height of 15000ft among the
harsh range of rocks and snow. My exhausted breath permeated like liquid flame
on my folded arms, as I rested my chin on them and lay flat feeling the sting
of the sharp rocky mountain floor under my torso while the all pervading snow
of the vast cold desert produced a wonderful anaesthetic effect. “Papa let’s
play snake-snake” my five year old daughter Pari would have said sitting on my
back, if she saw my down-to-rock posture slithering heavily on the tapestry of
the piercing rocky floor, instead of saying “let’s play horse-horse”. But
snakes do not carry a tangled mass of contradictory bones, with a column of
rib-cage and collar-bone hanging loose.
Among the crushing sound of gunfire
throbbing through the space, ceaseless streaming of the Pakistani machine guns,
the blasting hangover impulse of the grenades, I could hear the demonic cry of
the Pakistani intruder whom I had fired a while ago. His suffering soul thrashed at the gateway of
its bondage seeking freedom .Writhing in the simplicity of his ultimate pain of
life, he articulated ‘Allah-u-Akbar’ which had operated his brain since his
childhood as he never missed a prayer. “As these Pakistan backed militants
don’t miss a prayer, they don’t even miss a target” captain Arvind, our team
leader used to say. Captain Arvind nourished
our starving souls with his reforming comments like “ Boys! fear others less
than yourself. Don’t flatter gods through worship as you have inherited that
fear from your ancestors. Our ancestors created gods as computer viruses are
created by the best intelligence. Religions are the anti-virus devices created
by the same to handle the eternal threat of destruction. “After hearing enough
of his great thoughts we called him Captain
‘Guts’ behind his back.
Now I settled behind a large rock fronting
a cliff adjacent to the ridgeline where the multiple groups of the Pakistani
intruders were entrenched. The harsh cold wind of the ice-desert rolled up the
moon along the slope of the rugged peak. Moonlight brings strange fancies to
your mind. Shivering uncontrollably I thought that the moon washed peaks exuded
indolent warmth. Leaning forward to rest my stubbly cheek on the cushion of the
rock that warmth appeared to have that exact temperature of mother’s breast
milk, just to assure the suckling mouth of its attachment with life. I had
never tasted my mother.
The icy wind stirred the tufts of curly
hair of captain Arvind and made tiny black twirls on his temples. But it could
not smooth away the furrow between his
eyebrows as he looked at the soapy sky, lying on his back as if interrupted in
the middle of an argument. The bullet traced with blood flow on his chest
looked like a drapery of red crushed silk covering the priceless moments of
breathing. As I laced my fingers on Arvind’s face to close his eyes, and
rumpled up his greasy hair, I felt a coppery dryness inside my throat. He was
still not cold enough like the disciplined verses of prayers in Holy books, to be called a corpse. The previous wound across his right cheek
had healed. Snuggling up with Arvind’s still body, as he lay closest to me among
the other sincere bodies of soldiers who had transcended the necessity of being
identified by their name, rank or religion, my body seeked a little human
warmth from him as soul seeks ether. I only perceived a dull pain at heart made
of so many small things that are too light to be left behind.
The remnants of the shattered senses of the
enemy soldier still tortured him through brilliant flashes of his pain and
convulsing mind. Hunger gnawed at my stomach. My sweat of exhaustion dried in
the chilled gusts of wind. Leaning against the rock, supporting my challenging
angles of bones, I reached the small bottle of brandy in my trousers pocket.
Holding it with my right hand I opened the cap using my teeth while the
fractures endured the tilt. Fresh sweat
brushed my pores in the act of tolerance. Fresh pangs of pain exploded and
sizzled like bouquets of bursting fireworks while the fierce night-long battle
of counter-insurgency operations in the barren valley starred the sky with
bullets.
As I
strained my ears to hear the mild sound of a little jerk, a rustle while
changing one tortuous posture to another, or a bitter pang of cry from the dry
throat of the wounded enemy, a big gulp of the straightforward brandy spread a
golden blaze slowly like a warm glow through my tired senses and twitchy
muscles. I had failed to shoot him through his guts. Chewing the remainder of a
piece of stale bread that I had fished out of the pocket of Captain ‘Guts’, I
imagined the wounded warrior creeping along through the rocky trails bubbling
and boiling in a strife to hang on with life.
When such suffering scenes appear in
Bollywood films, I used to notice a glistening in Reba’s eyes. When she watched
such sentimental scenes intently, I could feel from her trick of scratching her
nose and sniffing noisily, that my presence was embarrassing her. So I found it
invariable to talk about the ill effects of season change on general health and
went so far as to ask about the stock of pure honey in the house showing my
concern for our little Pari. Reba smiled tackling her free flow of tears that
subsequently crumbled her voice.
Now as the desolate moments of keeping
myself awake hung low and strived to bump on my head making my eyes heavy, I
wished the wounded soldier might not die that night, leaving me alone like a
distant church clock striking at every hour promising the endless night of the
approaching morning. The gashes of bayonets on my limbs lay dead on the kissing
snow. A yellow patch of cloud had accumulated like a handful of words at an
edge of a distant ridge. Tomorrow it would be cloudy. Tomorrow it would be
lovely to feel the passing shadows of the heavy clouds floating low over the
Himalayan range in various shapes. If I would not take any notice of them,
during such cloudy mornings at home, Reba would name the silken shapes of the
drifting clouds and ask me to fly Pari’s kite convincing her that we could
almost touch the clouds. Reba would leave the provisions scattered on the
kitchen floor that she had been putting away in their labelled containers and
join in the play. There is an eternal joy in Reba’s rhyme of living; a power to
cherish and look through the loopholes of grief. When I left for war she said
“Time passes fast. I’ll make meals three times a day, watch TV serials that
continue for years, gossip about scandals of film stars and local people, give opinions about prices and go on.”
After a pause as the wind started to blow
again all over through the terrains and trenches, it was blurred with the
stench of decaying carcasses, the snow had not yet buried. The pain hung around
me neck like a splintered garland.
I wished I could see the convulsive rise
and fall of the perishing man- his heavy slithering and wriggling in a violent
vortex of pain. Sometimes there was a perturbing pause in his sounds of
anguish. Though I had enough bullets left with me, I thought it would be
wonderful to share a sip of fire from my bottle of brandy with him and ask him
to lit me a cigarette. In that case we might help one another to tie up our raw
wounds. He must be feeling as badly as I am or even worse. At the expense of
his awakening agony he kept me warm.
“War is the mirror of our fear of our
selves because enemies are intelligent. If we could conquer the demon within
ourselves, then it would not be necessary to acquire more areas for
establishing safe-houses for multitalented Gods and Allah. The terror of
faithlessness is the basis of all religion. We can’t see the visible god in us
lying hungry and naked; we love to stay enchanted by the mystery of the
invisible.” I remembered Guts.
Along with these luxury of realisation I
wished that wounded Pakistani insurgent
could stay with me alive until dawn, although I had shot him to kill him. In
the vast solitude of the ice desert, struggling with the fancy of living until
dawn, I lit a cigarette concealing the flicker of the lighter and the glowing
end in the curve of the rock. I tried to hold the thin trail of smoke within me
with firm determined drags.” Tomorrow it will snow” I said to myself. Far
below, a faint glimpse of a road winding around a sudden bend and further
fading down by a pass where a frozen stream had forgotten its course could be
seen in the frothy moon light. Beyond the Line-of control there is a rugged
track leading from the main road connecting the pass. The thought of my young
wife Reba and my small daughter Pari led me through the track beyond a small
wooden bridge. There the trail has threaded away into a sharp bend. There might
be a careless village along the slope of a hill, preparing for some festival.
But they will awaken in the morning and see every promise of celebration, the
mud street leading to the fare ground, the dirt puddle, the mossy walls,-
everything enveloped in snow. The soft whiteness will hang from the tree
branches and eaves of houses like frozen whisper. But the old man will still
open his tea stall in an attempt to warm the expectations of the next festival
as if he will never die. Was he the first born child of the earth, toiling and
dreaming with a clear vision when gods and wars were still not invented?
The blaze of the brandy slowly burned my
tiredness and washed away the ashes of my loneliness. Its warmth and comfort
triggered my regret for choosing to carry hundred more bullets instead of two
more packs of food. Facing the blanket firing of the Pakistani intruders,
hanging dangerously from the steep cliff, food appeared heavier and less
life-giving than bullets.
But wild creatures like snow leopards etc,
who were bored of eating gently the frozen bodies were dreadfully missing the
sport of killing a protesting victim that can provoke their vitality and
challenge their core of wildness. They had even stopped fussing about the
best-before dates of the frozen bodies. So a brandy marinated young flesh with
running blood and anxiety to live will rekindle their originality beyond doubt.
Care and pain had still not deserted that
man, as I could hear some awakening jerks. I knew that he was trying to shift
the weary load of his weight from the painful side on to the steady side of his
body. As pain comes alive to promise you of your being alive, the moon light
enlivened the snowy peaks. The presence of the suffering soldier nearby almost
encouraged me to say “Hello! How are you feeling now? Are you hungry?” Then I
would plead “Please don’t die tonight. I’m sorry, I couldn’t kill you, but you
shouldn’t give up. Take some rest if you are tired but don’t die.” There were a
lot more things to say like “You’ll feel better after this painful night is
over. Anyway, it will definitely snow tomorrow; don’t you think so? Look at
those clouds.”
But wise men never flop off their mouths
uttering foolish ideas. Ideas should be trusted in; not executed. His muffled
groans and rustling sounds of slither were enough to keep alive my desire to
see the next morning. Besides, I know some men
shoot their best when they themselves are wounded. Wounded pride aggravates
their potentiality. Shielding ourselves behind the huge rocks with a platoon of
Grenadiers who had positioned themselves to provide us covering fire, we shot
at our enemies and saw how they flung up their arms among the brilliant flashes
of firing. Their bodies wriggled and shivered in the air for a while in a
shuddering grip of the torment of dying; then fell back with a scream of agony
when the body suddenly got rid of the terror of living; then life grew heavier
than the convulsive flutter deep inside the heart. We targeted the foremost
attackers at their guts without looking at their faces; because guts do not deceive
or scream. We know how the bullet grazes deeper and deeper into the rhythm of
blood spreading splinters of sparkling shocks, then stifles the core of life
with a burning and slithering knot tightening silkily around the wind-pipe
until it produces a vision of a blurred sky, sinking heavily down, down and
down in the abysmal ocean of sudden darkness. An unnatural shine glistened in
the eyes of my brother-soldiers. It was the isolated fear of still remaining
alive and to pray for tomorrow. As killing is our duty, we killed the Pakistani
insurgents as fishermen kill fish-with a disciplined heart and clear vision.
Triumphs in war is discovered in graves and wind-beaten National flags after
consuming fragments of streams, meadows and youths of neighbouring countries,
chunks of valleys and dunes, panting breaths and old men’s wise arguments
shooting hollow faces and bursting ancient towns.
My
vision got blurred in an anxiety to hang on with the slippery edge of my thin
life nightlong. Pari and her mother fluttered around my semi-consciousness.
Pari was determined to rid our house of the scattered dry leaves blown in and
the wise footmarks of neighbourhood people e with a broom in her small easy
hands. Her mother watched vacantly the slow-paced wheels passing by, sitting at
the door. The air-ripping sound of shell-bursts, grenades and fired shots, the
persistent hums of the Fighter Mi-choppers would awaken and assure the morning
of conquest among the barren Himalayas targeting the enemy headquarters on top
of a peak and other militant groups along the ridges occupying dominating
heights and their supply camps. Next time I would stuff my pockets with packets
of Gold Flake, liquor bottles and food packs reducing the bullets to sustain my
belief. Bullets bring loneliness.
Tomorrow they will have to cut my uniform
to take me out of it. It will hurt like devil. Then I will drink a mug full of
hot steaming tea and biscuits.
I lay stiff and detached with my column of
quarrelsome bones. The cold dry wind sliced through my endurance. My weight
seemed to drift loosely in the gusts of wind like a handkerchief, initially
stuck for a moment in a thorny bough, then slowly rising and circling and
finally swirling deep down through the calm depth of the valley. The stars
abandoned the sky growing smaller and smaller- fading away like seasons. It was
soothing to know someone alive nearby. He would continue to live as long as his
pain lashed through the shattered nets of his senses like caught eels. The
night kissed heavily on my drooping eyelids.
Pari looked delighted as her shrill voice
echoed through the thousand barren valleys of the ice desert, exclaiming “Look
papa! I’ve gathered a whole bucketful of snow! Come we’ll make an igloo.” “Why
not a snowman?”I asked. “Because he is very white” she replied and began to
sweep away the Line-of-control with her small play-broom. Light flakes of snow
floated in the air like white petals and settled slowly on the barren valley.
Many ancient convulsions of grief and lamentations gradually descended into a
deep quietetude. It enveloped the harshness of the terrains, the carcasses,
dried up courses of streams, the pine branches far below near the sharp bend
and the small wooden bridge. Pari suddenly screamed out of horror when her
hurried feet stumbled over a sack like thing. As it sagged over to one side, we
saw a half-eaten face of a man, his naked jaws, the pulled apart limbs with
strips of half-chewed flesh and several bitten marks from where the meat had
been torn away. There was no bullet mark on his belly. He lay among the rocks
like thousand words remaining silent. An unopened food-can and a lighter were
collected from his pockets. Scavenger birds and Air Force planes soared and
circled in the hollow blue of the sky. The bodies of soldiers who no longer
care for pain and prayer were dragged away for burial. I noticed his face for
the first time.
The image of Pari grew more and more
distant. Though I could identify her floral print frock her face was a dumb
hollow. The edge of the snow covered cliff glistened with an aloofness. I
transcended my physical suffering and escaped through the loophole of the fear
of death with a great anxiety to comfort Pari with an assured touch.
Then the sky was a huge bulk of lavender.
Kakoli Ghosh
Durban
