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No easy answers

On Memorial Day weekend in the United States, in the middle of Walter Cronkite tapes and stories from Vietnam, my mind turned 15,000 miles away to the snow-bound interior of our northern state of Jammu and Kashmir. Inevitably so, perhaps, with remembering the dead being the order of the day. A few more Indian soldiers died that day in defence of our nation, in defence of what expansive secularism calls the idea that is India and unflinching nationalism has labelled the defence of our territorial integrity.

I understand that such things exist, that national defence is not something to get mushy over, that when a lieutenant colonel stands in front of the media and says that our losses have been "acceptable," he is speaking the cold truth. Without the sacrifices of some the many cannot hope to hold on to the things they cherish. Sadly, individuals whose deaths are reported in the media don't tell the real stories, and to make too much of the passing of individual air force and army officers and personnel would not address the real issues. Of course, we are sorry when anyone dies in the forces, but such is service.

I don't mean that to be callous in the least; for in our family, many of the older members remember with fondness and pride an air force officer, who died nearly thirty years ago. He too was somebody's father, somebody's husband, somebody's son, and I can see quite well that if some of those who survive him today live to be a million years, they will not forget the tragedy that overtook their lives with his passing. But such is service, one lives and dies with the ideas of nationhood, honour and courage, and hopes that one has done his duty.

It is a strange institution that hones these values, and the vast majority of civilians live well outside its protective shadow. Within its walls, the magical India that we mostly only imagine is fleetingly real, and discovering that was among the joys of high school for me. I didn't know it then, but the visage of the armed forces were an exquisite mural on everyday life; it was always there and it was India. One didn't think much of it, maybe that's what it is to feel that some things are normal.

We lived in the cantonment area of Bangalore, behind miles of barracks and parade grounds and a never-ending sea of army vehicles. School children went to school in tarpaulin-topped trucks better suited to carry soldiers into battle. At the entrance to the school gate, a smartly dressed jawan looked up ever-so-briefly as we rumbled past him. Regimental sergeant majors conducted drills at assembly, the retired colonel in the principal's office was doubly menacing. Goodfriends left school to enter the armed forces, and when they first came back on leave, they were six inches taller and 40 pounds heavier, all of it bone and muscle.

Every kind of Indian you could possibly imagine was in the army. The Sikhs, ubiquitous to the point of putting others to some shame by their relative absence, Gurkhas, their faces caught in a strange half-space between a smile and set jaws, even some strangely British-looking officer with predictable clips to his step and tongue. People from practically every town and village across the nation, it seemed. Someone from Jayanagar, only a few kilometres to the west, and some from Meghalaya, another world away. The collage of their lives was startling, and yet the order of it all seemed quite familiar.

The stories of the army are its traditions, and it was here that the overlap with civilian lives really began. In the diaries of their everyday lives, the history of India's poignant moments were recorded, and knowing that somehow makes us the rest of us feel as one with those who serve. Senior officers spoke of the wars of 1965 or 1971, ex-servicemen in supporting roles remembered even earlier days of nation-building.

Among the fondest memories I have of my last visit home is the few hours I spent with my grand-uncle, a retired Army captain. His memories of service are from a different time, when officers were called on to serve a different India from the one into whose service they had enlisted. When they looked across the muzzles of their rifles at brother officers in the newly formed Pakistani Army. When the calling to serve the secular state was not constitutional obligation, but the reality of having to look people of other faiths in the eye, knowing that their lives depended on your protection. Some were gallant, and some were cruel, but such is war.

The army is a place of extremes, I've decided, where the cycles of life and death are laced with the highest emotions we can give voice and vent to. Perhaps those extremes are necessary to serve in the forces, the shifting sands of those who stand outside their doors simply don't belong. Duty is a constant companion to honour, and not always a friend to it. Second thoughts are a luxury, hindsight shows little more than the inside of a body-bag.

That's probably why we must see territorial integrity as paramount, why religious fundamentalism cannot be permitted to win the day. Are hundreds of Indian lives worth a few rocks at 18,000 feet, Dilip D'souza asked us the other day. The Indians are using chemical weapons, the Pakistanis say. The top-brass is not aggressive enough, say a thousand commentators. These are all legitimate questions and issues, but I suspect that not all of them have little road-maps for answers. The army is not a place for questions and answers; instead it is a place to do one's duty. We have made our choices, and the army is acting on them.

It is for us who remain outside the services to ask and answer the questions. True, every once in a while a few good officers and men will die defending some large rock in the sky and we are wont to ask ourselves if it is all worth it. Whether the mutilation of our soldiers or the cold-blooded murder of prisoners of war is a tolerable price for the choice we have made to stand our ground. But the answers aren't any easier to come by outside the walls of the services. It is true that before a single soldier has died, we must always ask ourselves what his life is worth. But after he has died, we must still ask ourselves why he gave his life.

Ashwin Mahesh