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.
Though the night temperature was touching sub-zero, the arduous climb made the soldiers sweat. Manoj led his men, quick and noiseless. He would slip his fingers into cracks in the rocks and pull himself up, feeling his way ahead, deliberately keeping his mind off the fact that there could be a snake or a scorpion sitting in a crevice, ready to strike. The ascent was slow and nerve-wracking. Besides the terrain and the bad weather, there was the constant trepidation that the very next fold in the ridge could be an enemy hideout or a bunker. Every still shadow in a crevice appeared to be a Pathan lurking with a gun. The fear was constant, dogging them at every step, constricting their throats with its suffocating grip, making goosebumps erupt on their cold, wet skin.
Climbing was a thirst-inducing business and most of the men had finished their one-litre water bottles. They found some patches of snow under larger stones. While some of it was fresh and could be picked up in greedy fistfuls to quench thirst, most of it was too contaminated by gunpowder to be of any use. Manoj ran his tongue over chapped lips and didn’t reach for water even though he was tempted. There was just one last sip left. He wanted it there for psychological support till the end.
His thoughts went to his mother and lingered lovingly over there. He saw her, brow-lined with worry, gentle and caring in her faded green cotton sari, leaning forward to kiss his forehead softly as he told her stories of Siachen from where he had just returned. He blinked the moisture out of his eyes.
As often happens with children who have grown up in humble circumstances, Manoj had always been a careful spender. His father ran a small hosiery business and had a family of three sons and a daughter to bring up. Being the eldest son, his parents’ efforts to make ends meet were never hidden from the quiet child, who spoke little but observed a lot from underneath dark eyelashes that were always bent over a course book. He was an outstanding student right from the beginning. He knew he had to do well in life so that the future could give his family all the happiness they couldn’t afford right now. He wouldn’t ask for new clothes till the old ones started showing tears that could not be darned anymore; whatever he had would be neatly folded and put back in the cupboard. His books, with brown covers, would be put back into his school bag after every use, his notebooks would be filled with his neat and steady handwriting, with its delicate right slant, just the way his Montessori school teacher had told him to write; his copie
s would never have an ink stain or an untidy scribble running across the page. Manoj knew money was short, he knew the value of each hard-earned rupee. He understood just how difficult it was to get a family two square meals a day, just how tough it was to keep hunger at bay.
The train had slowly started moving out of Jhansi railway station. Suddenly a dark, ugly, wrinkled face thrust itself at him from behind the iron rails of the window. A pair of dull eyes, hazy with cataract, looked greedily at the shiny silver- foiled paper plate of food he was holding. A dirty hand shot forth and gestured towards a hollow stomach, with dark folds of scaly skin hanging over the edges of a faded petticoat. ‘Bhook lagi hai beta,’ (I am hungry, son) the withered old woman grovelled, her grey hair falling untidily over her face.
Before his father could reach into his wallet for some change, Manoj had put his hand out between the bars and handed her the steaming hot plate of chole bhature. The train picked up speed and chugged out of the platform; the old lady was left behind holding a full meal in her calloused old hands.
Since he hadn’t been well, Manoj hadn’t eaten for a day after his passing-out parade at NDA and his father had got down at Jhansi to get him something to eat. When his mother scolded him for giving the food away he had told her affectionately that he was a strong young man and could stay hungry for two days but the old woman needed to eat.
The men had been climbing for more than fourteen hours. They hadn’t slept for twenty-four. Sudden downpours of sleet and snow had left them chilled to the bone. They had miscalculated the treacherous path, lost their way twice in the dark and it was already morning by the time they spotted the hazy outline of the top.
They had the option to go back before the enemy spotted them but Manoj made up his mind—they would complete the task they had been sent for. There would be any turning back now. They would storm the enemy bunkers, making the best of the bad weather and the wet mist creeping up the cliffs, with its cold fingers on all it found in its path.
Another volley of fire lit up the sky. Manoj knew the guns were lined up on the highway, all along the Indus, firing at least 20, 000 rounds at a time. The aim was to distract the enemy, which was why he and his men had been able to climb the 70-degree incline unnoticed do far. However, this time the fire seemed to be coming dangerously close. The burst of the shells was accompanied by a hail of bullets and suddenly a soldier screamed out in pain and collapsed.
‘Take cover,’ Manoj shouted, ‘this looks like enemy fire.’ The bullets, rockets and machinegun fire were coming at them with an unnerving accuracy. The cries of men who had been hit rang out through the stillness of the chilly morning.
From behind the boulder where he had taken cover, Manoj looked out. Around him was death and destruction. Limbs had been torn apart, flesh ripped into, and blood was seeping into the soil as the gut-wrenching screams of his men echoed in the impersonal stillness of the bare brown mountains.
He knew they would have to storm the enemy in a daring daylight attack, right now. As soon as him mind was made up, the rush of adrenaline overcame indecision, fear and nervousness. The paralysing cold seeping into his bones was replaced by the heat of blood coursing through his veins. As the tracer bullet came flying past, lighting the place with a deadly cocktail of shrapnel and fire, Manoj stood up, tall and brave, his slight frame coiled like spring, his face a mask. Through the scream of the wind, he roared at those of his men that were fit to fight, ordering them to follow him through the hail of bullets. Like a colossal god with invincible powers he walked into the curtain of shells and bullets. He didn’t look back even once to see who had followed his final command but if he had he would have been a satisfied man. All his Gorkha jawans who could pick themselves up and walk were right behind him, their khukris gripped firmly in their hands.
Leaving behind those dead or dying, the men charged like angry lions, placing their feet firmly on the sleet-covered jagged rocks, following the man, who was not walking through flying bullets for the first time. They had seen him do it before. Just about a month ago.
About a month back
In a narrow gulley, the bodies of four men from an ambushed patrol had been lying for more than 10 days since the Kargil War had started. They were from an initial patrol that had been sent to reconnoitre the occupied heights when the Indian Army had grossly underestimated the enemy infiltration. Completely unaware that they were being watched by the Pakistanis from both sides of the gulley, the men had walked into a deadly trap. They were shot dead at point-blank range by enemy soldiers sitting at a height on both sides. All efforts to retrieve the bodies were repulsed by the Pakistanis, who would start firing indiscriminately the moment they spotted any activity from the Indian side.
Manoj volunteered to go and get the dead men back, insisting that their bodies be wrapped in the Tricolour and sent home to their families. He and his men had crept behind boulders and climbed the heights, reaching higher than the enemy. Then while some men were engaged in firing, the officer and a few of his men crawled down to where the bodies were lying, and ignoring the hail of bullets flying past, dragged the bullet-riddled bodies out of the gulley.
Manoj had been one of the first to reach and had boldly crawled up to a dead man, pulling him behind a boulder. For a moment, he had stopped to look at his dead mate and his heart burned with rage. The body was badly mangled by shrapnel and he couldn’t make out the man’s face. On his bloody finger there was a gold ring that told him the man had probably been married. Even the belt he wore around his waist was punctured with bullet holes.
‘You bloody dogs, I’ll throw you out of my country,’ he had promised the enemy, shouting out in anger and had then used all his strength to drag the dead soldier back.
It was a miraculous retrieval and even a decade later officers who had watched the operation would sit with a glass of whiskey in the mess and remember the amazing man who had managed the impossible. ‘It needed a very big heart to do what he did,’ they would say. ‘Only he could have done it.’
The time has come to show that daring once again and Manoj does not disappoint his men. Adrenaline coursing through his veins, he gestures to them to follow and, steeling his heart against every instinct for self-preservation, walks into the curtain of flying bullets to reach the first bunker on the ridge—a pile of cut rocks with a boulder for a roof grainy in the brooding fog that is sweeping across the landscape. He can make out the shadowy outlines of two Pakistani Northern Light Infantry soldiers. He is not conscious of an effort but a sharp tug at his belt apprises him that his hand has gripped the handle of the khukri hanging there and whipped it out in a silken move. The sheath falls away limply by his side as his hand flashes its ferocious blade up in the chilly wind. The thumping of his heart is left behind in an instant as he runs across the uneven terrain, jumping over boulders in the falling snow, his face a grotesque mask of death, and falls upon the enemy soldiers, ferocious and proud. There is a swish in the air as the blade, cutting through the falling snowflakes, flashes and slices into human flesh.
Right to left, left to right. Then again. And again. The bodies of the shocked Pakistanis, terror written in their eyes, fall in a bloody pile. They could have never imagined that someone would walk in through the deadly fire. Had he been watching, the young officer’s regimental centre khukri ustad would be proud of his student as he lets the blood drip off his khukri and looks up to find his next target.
Sprinting across to the second bunker, the men fiercely pounce upon the enemy and a bloody hand-to-hand combatfollows, ‘Jai Mahakali, Aayo Gorkhali’ piercing the cold morning. Return shots ring out. Some of the enemy soldiers are charging with their bayonets, but most find they are no match for the gutsy Gorkhas with their lethal khukris that are splashing blood on the wet rocks. Suddenly Manoj winces. He has been hit in the shoulder by a bullet. Unconcerned, and feeling no pain in the heat of the moment, he takes out his gun and moves on to the next bunker, spraying the ones hiding there with a shower of bullet
s.
Another bullet comes and hits him in the leg, making him stagger unsteadily. ‘Naa chodnu,’ (Don’t leave them) he cries out in Gorkhali, telling his men to carry on the carnage, and drags his injured leg forward. Reaching out for a grenade, he lobs it at the fourth bunker from where mortar fire is coming at them. Even as an explosion rents the sky, throwing up a dull grey cloud of stone and debris, a fatal shot bursts through the air and hits the officer in the forehead. There is a flash of yellow and he is engulfed by the smell of burning cordite and a warmth in the freezing cold. His whole body is wracked by a terrible pain; his brain is on fire, his lungs gasping for breath, his heart seems to want to force itself out of his chest and his tongue is dry and swollen with thirst. He wants to go on and shoot the Pakistani soldier he can see leaping out of the burning bunker and race down the slope, but his disobedient body had stopped listening to his commands. He can only watch as his arms let go of the rifle he has been holding, his fingers lose their grip on the trigger, his knees buckle under him and his neck slumps forward on his heaving chest. Blood courses down his face, blurring his vision. There is a spurt of light in his head, then stark darkness and silence. Finally, he has to close his eyes.
Manoj Kumar Pandey of 1/11 Gorkha Rifles is dead; his blood-stained body tilts in an arch and falls gently to the ground in front of the fourth bunker of Khalubar. He is 24 years and seven days old.
The Brave: Param Vir Chakra Stories Page 17