Kargil: Untold Stories From The War

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Rachna Bisht Rawat is the author of six books published by Penguin Random House India, including the bestseller The Brave. She lives in Gurugram with Hukum, the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed golden retriever; an eclectic collection of books and music; and Manoj Rawat, the man in Olive Green who met her when he was a gentleman cadet at the Indian Military Academy and offered to be her comrade for life. Occasionally, they are visited by Saransh the Wise, who has moved out to explore the world on his own.

I am the proud father of Kargil martyr Lieutenant (Lt) Vijyant Thapar (Robin), Vir Chakra (VrC), who laid down his life for his country at the age of twenty-two. Losing Robin, our young son, in the Kargil War, when he had the best years of his life ahead of him, has been a terrible personal loss for both my wife and me. It broke our hearts forever. However, it is also the greatest honour of our lives. Besides being Robin's father, I am also an Army officer and I believe dying in battle for the country is a privilege. It is what all of us in uniform dream about, but very few man indeed. get the opportunity. Our son was a fortunate.

When death comes is inconsequential, as come it must. What really matters is how and where it comes. Life is never measured in terms of its length but in terms of its depth or the intensity with which it is lived. What Robin and the other martyrs of Kargil achieved in their twenties was far greater than what many long insipid lives did. All of us who lost their children in this war, and the wars before, are so proud of them. I am sure the same applies to the young wives who lost their husbands and children who lost their fathers. We live with the loss and the pain, but we also live with our heads held high. We believe these men we loved so much shall continue to live-till we remember their sacrifice. The onus of keeping them alive rests on us, the ones left behind. The nation has the responsibility to remember them with reverence because that was the trust with which they fell. We must ensure that their stories are passed down the generations. Kargil: Untold Stories from the War is a great effort in that direction.

Every book is a monument; it enshrines an event, a person or a thought. This book immortalizes the spirit of the officers and soldiers of the Indian Army who made the Kargil War an expression of dedication to duty, indomitable spirit, bravery and sacrifice. It is a testimony to the courage, grit and determination of the young men to get on the objective, despite death staring them in the face. The stories epitomize all that makes the Indian Army great. It also chronicles the graceful and dignified acceptance of their loss and pain, by mothers and wives who lost their sons and husbands.

Whenever the story of Kargil is told, it shall be incomplete without paying homage to the steely resolve and cold courage of these young men who went to fight for their nation knowing that they might never return.

With the exception of my young readers, who are not yet twenty, all of us have lived through the Kargil War. Some of us saw it unfolding on our television screens while others had a closer look. I was a reporter with the Indian Express, Ahmedabad, newly married to Captain (Capt.) Manoj Rawat of 3 Engineer Regiment when the war broke out. My husband's unit was among those immediately deployed on the Rajasthan border because of a perceived threat.

Even as I watched the goings-on of war with a sinking heart, the entire cantonment was emptied of men and machines within a few days. Noisy messes, where ice cubes clinked in crystal glasses, were suddenly quiet; the stomp of DMS boots was not heard in parade grounds any more; parks no longer rang out with the laughter of dads throwing balls to little children with poised bats. I would stand in my balcony and watch convoys of Army trucks head for the border carrying soldiers in combat greens, rifles slung across their backs, faces sombre. My handsome husband bid goodbye with a curt handshake, since an officer will not be seen hugging his wife in front of his troops. He did smile at me lovingly from the driver's seat and, with a crisp salute, told me to take care, that he would be back soon. He then drove off, his jeep disappearing in a cloud of dust. The solace of my life is that he did return. So many husbands never did.

The war was eventually restricted to Kargil. My twenty- five-year-old brother, then Capt. Sameer Singh Bisht, fought it alongside his unit, 5 Para. Those were terrible days indeed. I would scan every newspaper, watch every news channel, stay awake in my bed with Sufi, the cat, and wait for dawn to break. In the morning, I would go to work and beg, borrow, steal any war-related assignments I could from my editor, Derick D'Sa. Accompanied by a photographer, I would travel to villages where the bodies of martyrs were being brought home. I would cover funerals, join processions and watch grieving families and little children whose lives would never be the same again. I would think of the men in my life who were at risk too and my heart would sink. Late evenings, returning from office, I would park my bright blue scooter at an STD (subscriber trunk dialing) booth and call home in Kotdwar, a small town in Garhwal (Uttarakhand), where my parents lived in a mango tree-surrounded bungalow ever since my paratrooper father, Brigadier (Brig.) B.S. Bisht, Sena Medal (SM), Vishisht Seva Medal (VSM), had retired. It was always Mom who picked up the phone.

Dad, she said, was glued to the television watching war bulletins, trying to figure out where my brother could be. He had almost stopped eating and would sit silently in the veranda late at night with the light switched off; his head held high, a cigarette dangling from between his fingers, a glass of whiskey by his side and Farida Khanum's voice wafting out of our sitting room window from the old cassette player inside. His suffering ended when his son returned from Kargil a decorated officer. He was lucky. There were many whose sons never did.

In the course of writing Kargil, I met some of these fathers and mothers. And children with hazy memories of that man called father, a stranger in olive green, who had left home one day and never come back. When I asked Kargil martyr Lance Naik Bachan Singh's son, Lt Hitesh, to share some memories of his father, he said he hardly had any. 'My twin brother and I were four when he died, but I do remember his funeral,' he told me. Mrs Kamesh Bala, Hitesh's mother, told me that in the seven years of being married she had spent just five months with her husband. He had promised to take her and the twins along in the peace posting he was expecting, but that day never came. Bachan died at twenty-nine in the Battle of Tololing.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages