THE GARUD STRIKES (31 page)

Authors: MUKUL DEVA

Madhuri Dixit, widow of Guardsman Raghunath Dixit

Giranth enlisted when he was twenty, and soon joined the proud ranks of 4 Guards. A few months before war broke out, Giranth arrived for two months’ leave. It was during this leave that their fourth child was conceived. A child who would never see his father, since Giranth Singh was declared ‘Missing In Action’ during the war. The loss of her husband netted Pushpa Devi the handsome amount of forty-two rupees per month. This was what she was expected to bring up her family of five on.

Several years elapsed before she was informed that Giranth had been killed and she was now officially a widow. From twenty-six years of age, Pushpa Devi has soldiered on, bringing up four children, two of them blind, on a meagre pension of 132 rupees a month.

Somewhat better off than them is Madhuri Dixit, the wife of Guardsman Raghunath Dixit.

To reach Madhuri’s small, but
pucca
house, one has to enter deep into the heart of Farrukhabad town and jump over open sewers and garbage heaps. She was all of seventeen years old when she got word that her husband was no more. Today, all she has of him is a photograph taken from his paybook, enlarged and morphed to include her standing beside him in her bridal finery. That, and some hazy memories, perhaps as hazy as the nation’s memories of its men in uniform, who sacrifice their lives in each war.

BACK

THE

PRESENT

‘I never thought I would see you again, sahib,’ Naik Ganesha Singh’s voice cracked as the wizened old man reached out to embrace Paunchy. The babel of voices and excited expressions on the faces of the others conveyed the same sentiment.

I stood beside Mrs. Jane, Himmeth’s wife, watching them. They had gathered at Fatehgarh, to meet us and tell their story, rallied together by the call of the officers they had followed into battle all those years ago. I could see they were eager to tell their stories. Many had forgotten most of the stories. The others, who remembered, had given up hope that their stories would ever be told.

Age and life had taken its toll on them, but it was easy to see that they still retained that spark, that very special spark, which separates heroes from mere mortals.

I have had the pleasure of meeting war veterans before, and it was not hard for me to understand what they would have been like, back in those days.

Lord Tennyson’s ode to Ulyssses swept through me, unbid
den:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I sat with them till the sun was low over the horizon, and heard their half-forgotten, half-scrambled stories. And these are what I have put together for you in the story I just shared.

Suresh Singh, Ganesha Singh, Mukund Singh, Tirath Singh and Pushpa Devi: forgotten remanants of a forgotten war.

As I walked away, I could not help think… With pride for what they had accomplished, with grief for all that they had lost, and with shame at the nation that had forgotten them. These simple, yet brave, men who had wrested freedom for a people not their own.

Despite everything, I had the satisfaction of knowing that the Garud they had marched under would be proud of them.

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