The Brave: Param Vir Chakra Stories (21 page)

Manoj Pandey sat crouched in a trench, almost blending in with the rugged brown slope. He was watching a burst of Bofors fire light up the purple sky. The unruly stubble on his chin made his face itch. He could smell the nauseating sweat in his hair even from under his helmet with a rip in the lining where the hard metal pressed against his scalp—cold yet strangely reassuring. Under the grime smearing his face, his features were good—a well-defined straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead creased in concentration. He didn’t wear a moustache. His chin was determined, his eyes warm, brown and finely lashed, though at that moment they were bloodshot from serious lack of sleep. He sat motionless, staring stonily ahead, his rough, weather-beaten hands clasped firmly around his Insas rifle.

A khukri (a traditional Nepali dagger) hung from his belt and rubbed against his thigh, the evil glint of its cunning blade sheathed in soft velvet. At the regimental centre in Lucknow, where he was trained to be a Gorkha Rifles soldier, he had been told it was the best weapon to use in close combat, small and deadly, instilling instant terror in the enemy. He had been trained to slice a man’s neck off, cutting swiftly across the skin—right to left, left to right, ripping through veins and sinewy muscles in one powerful move. At the regiment’s Dussehra celebration when he had just joined his unit two years ago, he had been asked to prove his mettle by cutting off the head of the sacrificial goat after the puja. For a moment his mind had wavered but then his arms had lifted in the air, bringing the glittering blade of the sharp dagger down on the scared, bleating animal’s neck, severing it from its twitching body in one massive blow that sprayed his nervous, perspiring face with warm blood. Later, in his room, he had trembled at the act and washed his hands half a dozen times to take away the guilt of his first deliberate kill. He had always been a vegetarian and a teetotaller.

In the past two months, Manoj had come a long way from his natural humane reluctance to take lives. He had contrived attacks, planned kills and used stealth to surprise enemy soldiers as they sat on craggy peaks. He had climbed up freezing mountains, trudging through snow and sleet, even without winter clothing in the initial days. He would use woollen socks as gloves to shield his freezing fingers, peeling them off when they got soaked in a sudden shower, twisting them to squeeze the water out and slipping them on again. He had fixed targets within the sight of his rifle, taken aim and pressed the trigger; tracing the bullet’s path with his eyes as it zipped through the distance and embedded itself in human flesh. He had killed in cold blood, shooting men through their heads, through their hearts, dispassionately watching them bleed to death.

His expertise with the khukri as a weapon of execution had, however, not been tested yet. His instinct told him that tonight could be the night.

Manoj Pandey shifted his weight and winced. The edges of his briefs were cutting into his groin. Every time he moved, the rough fabric would slice through the raw skin, digging a micro-inch deeper. He had been wearing the same clothes for almost a week.

Running a hand across his soiled combats, he felt the murky stiffness of sweat and grime. His fingers hovered over the rips and tears where the fabric had been ragged threadbare by crawling on razor-sharp rocks. But there was consolation in company. Cocking his head slightly, he silently observed the dark outlines of his men—short, stocky Gorkhas, grouped unevenly around him in the darkness—dirty, starving and battle-fatigued, yet brave. He made no sign, his eyes remained dark and languid, no emotion flitted across his face, but for them he felt deep warmth in his heart.

The sun had disappeared, dropping an impregnable black quilt over the terrain. It hid the crisp green of the grass, the blue rush of the sparkling water, the mesmerizing beauty of the district; and he preferred it that way. Daylight just added to his outrage at Pakistan’s audacity to sneak in and occupy the heights around them. Emotion interfered with resolve; tonight all he needed was cold reason and an animal’s instinct for survival.

Somewhere behind him, in the gloomy darkness intercepted only by the call of crickets, the Ganasak Nala gurgled, lapping against the quiet of the still night. Ahead loomed a steep though blurred 70-degree incline. That was Khalubar, the 5000-metre high ridge he and his men had to climb that night. Their task: to reach up undetected, take the enemy by surprise and destroy the Pakistani bunkers on top before daybreak.

He knew not many of them were expected to return but that didn’t bother him much. He remembered the emotional words he had once scrawled in the depths of a diary he had been maintaining since childhood: Some goals are so worthy; it’s glorious even to fail. Signalling to his men to follow with a curt nod, Manoj got up, slung his gun behind him and started to walk.

For more than a month they had been on almost continuous assignments, one following the other. In the Army, they called it a rodent’s life— scampering up hillsides under cover of darkness, finding holes to crawl into when daylight broke, carrying on their backs 4-kg backpacks that held sleeping bags, extra pairs of socks, shaving kits and letters from home. They would nibble on hard, stale puris when hunger struck. Though the nala was close, with its fresh water beckoning, they could never reach it because the enemy would fire from the top. Instead, they would reach into crevices to snap off icicles that they would suck greedily on to quench their thirst. They would fill their water bottles with crushed snow for the endless rocky climbs where water would not be found and crack icicles under their teeth, swirling them around in their mouths like the coloured iced lollies from their childhood. When Manoj returned to his trench after a taxing assignment, bone-tired and shivering, and closed his eyes for a few moments of respite, images that were hidden in some corner of his mind, carefully wrapped in the cobwebs of time, came back to haunt him.

‘Bhaiya kuch toh le lo,’ (Brother, take something, at least) the three-year-old could hear his mother’s voice from somewhere in the distance. His eyes were lost in the cacophony of sound and colour that play an important part in the wooing ritual of young innocents by the habitual seducers, big cities.

It was his first visit to Lucknow and the little boy from Rudha village, dressed in his best khaki shorts and cotton shirt, was looking with wide-eyed wonder at the new world unfolding before him. He had never beheld these sights before. Around him there were hawkers selling sticks of fluffy pink candyfloss and bright-orange bars of ice-cream; crisp golgappas were disappearing into open mouths, and on a wooden cart, a man was grating ice to a fine powder that he would collect in a mud bowl, sprinkle with some bright red syrup, stick a wooden spoon into and hand over to outstretched arms.

He felt his mother pull on his little hand and suddenly his senses were assaulted by a big man with a ferocious black upturned moustache and yellow paan-stained teeth that flashed in his face when he parted his lips in a big smile. Behind him, on a wooden pole, were tied balloons and bright plastic toys—pistols with brown butts, squeaky green parrots with shiny red beaks, catapults, whistles and dolls.

What caught his eye was a brown wooden flute, dotted with darker stains. ‘I want that,’ he told his mother. She tried to tempt him to buy a toy since she felt he would not be able to play it but he was undeterred. Finally, she gave up and paying Rs 2 to the vendor, placed the flute in her son’s little hand, quite sure that he would throw it away before the day ended.

She was wrong. The flute stayed with Manoj for the next 21 years. He would take it out every day, play a tune on it and then place it back in his cupboard next to his neatly folded clothes.

Even when he went away, first to Sainik School, then the National Defence Academy (NDA) and finally, the snow-clad peaks of Kargil, the flute would remain in his trunk of old clothes and memories that his mother would eventually stop looking at because it always made her cry.

Deep in his stomach, Manoj could feel a faint rumble. He wondered if the man beside him could hear it, too. Hunger pangs were striking. There was an cold puri lying in his backpack somewhere, but he didn’t care much for it. It was like chewing on cardboard. This time it was his tongue that tempted his mind to go back to the mess where dosa, sambhar and that spicy chutney called gunpowder would be served on Sunday afternoons for brunch. ‘Gunpowder, ‘ he said aloud and laughed dryly. His mind went back to that first Sunday in the regiment when the commanding officer (CO) had asked him for a glass of wine. A teetotaller, and new to the Army then, he didn’t know how wine was served and summoning the mess waiter had naively asked: ‘How will you have it, Sir? With soda or water?’ The bar had rung out with amused laughter.

Manoj shook his head to shake the memories out of it and concentrated on the task ahead: He and his men had been climbing in miserable darkness for almost nine hours. Most of them had rolled up their jackets and shoved them into their backpacks. Manoj had a pair of spare woollen socks that he had wrapped around the breechblock of his rifle to keep it warm and lubricated and protected against jamming in the cold. A seized weapon in war could make the difference between life and death. On the last mission, a man’s breechblock had jammed and he had had to hastily light a precious fuel tablet under it to get it back in working order. He didn’t want that happening tonight.