Rachna Bisht: An Author Speaks

Rachna Bisht Rawat, is out with her first book The Brave which has 21 riveting stories about how India’s highest military honour, Paramveer Chakra was won. Here she recounts what it was like to meet those who were left behind to mourn and to remember the unforgettables      

March 2014
Delhi-Bhatinda Intercity Express, Chair Car

I am on my way to Bhatinda  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.
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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.
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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 flight to Kangra. As I stood on the runway looking at the snow covered Dhauladhar ranges glowing orange in the morning light, 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 more 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 has 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.

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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.
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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 but Major 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.
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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.

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Rachna Bisht-Rawat is an author and journalist, a mom and the gypsy wife to an Army officer whose work takes the Rawats across the length and width of India. She blogs at http://www.rachnabisht.com/.

Rachna is a 2005 Harry Brittain Fellow, and has won the Commonwealth Press Quarterly’s Rolls Royce Award in 2006. Rachna’s first short story,Munni Mausi, was a winner in the 2008-2009 Commonwealth Short Story Competition.

Order her book here http://www.flipkart.com/the-brave-english/p/itmdzsmvpazuhnjn