5/11 GR is special: Trust me it is!
By: M S Nazki/ANN DESK
The General, the daughters and wives of the Brigadiers and Colonels and the loyal Jawans!
-‘This is a story of wives and daughters! They have to be examples of sorts especially for the ladies who want to get up and fight!’
-‘Midge Gillies has written a book, Army Wives: From Crimea to Afghanistan: the Real Lives of the Women Behind the Men in Uniform! very soldier should read it because there is a family who always is on the wait or waiting room ion a railway station. Most families have an army wife somewhere in their past. Over the centuries they have followed their men to the front, helped them keep order in far-flung parts of the empire or waited anxiously at home. Army Wives uses first hand accounts, letters and diaries to tell their story. We met the wives who made the arduous journey to the Crimean war and witnessed battle at close quarters. We hear the story of life in the Raj and the, often terrifying, experiences of the women who lived through its dying days. We explore the pressures of being a modern army wife – whether living in barracks or trying to maintain a normal home life outside ‘the patch’! This is a continuation of a story. Please with the wife acknowledge the daughters too!’
-‘The Indian Army has its own family and it is bigger than any one that exists in the world! Trust me, if you get into any officer’s home at the dead of the night or a Langar in the Indian Army no one would return empty stomach. It could be an enemy in disguise of a friend’!
-‘When they get the biggest shock they stand by each other since their fathers in uniform have taught them to remain solid and crystal clear in their ethics and presentations!’
-‘This one was devastating as the girls and ladies stood up to do a task that had to be done by someone and these great women decided it for themselves!’
-‘Trust me I was reluctant to do this story and I did not do it yesterday and the reasons were extremely nostalgic and tearful after I saw the pictures (they are with the story)! But my friend MS. Nazki just coaxed/cajoled and told me, ‘Sir, we have to do it’! Just a bigger Tot of Rum and I began rolling my fingers on my keyboard!’
-‘Nazki’s small little message was big enough to manufacture a story of frozen tears and I think I did not do a bad job! We both have never done it so far! These lines could shake the bones of anyone because I’m considered a stone heart by my daughters (two are mine and three adopted)
-‘But these words melted my stone heart, ‘to lose everything and yet be so brave.. Veer Naris, Betis, you are Power! I attended the last rites of Gen Bipin Rawat & Mrs Madhulika Rawat and found all eyes around moist yet filled with pride. But what I found and reason for sharing here is the courage which I have never witnessed in my life. Two Veer Naris, Mrs Lidder and Mrs Harjinder having suffered the biggest loss of their lives attended the last rites of Mrs and Gen Rawat.’
-‘Mrs Lidder having cremated her husband in the same Brar Square 5 hours back was standing solid, unshaken to be a support to General Rawat’s young daughters, Kritika and Tarini. Captain Agnes Prafulla Menezes (wife of Lt Col Harjinder Singh, 5/11 GR) whose husband’s mortal remains are still in R&R Hospital for identification have preferred to be a support system for General’s daughters from last two days knowing well that her entire world has collapsed.’
-‘I have never witnessed such courage in my soldiering life. Fauji wives and families are made of different mettle altogether! They are, they have been and they will be!
Aditi Mathur Kumar described it perfectly in her book, Soldier and Spice – An Army Wife’s Life and this extract is in her book, ‘the situations we Army wives have to deal with are not normal ones at all. The nomadic life we lead, moving from station to station, being separated from our husbands for long stretches of time, and the constant fear that we live with if our husbands are anywhere near the sensitive areas in the country . . .’ I do not think that anyone could have written it better!
But I will add on since I too from the army family, perhaps the great ladies at the funeral first the daughters must have heard their father and the wives their husband saying in the evenings after the office that, ‘somehow whether or not the war is winnable is beyond our scope, an irrelevant detail. We don’t do it to win anymore; we do it because it’s what we know how to do. Get ready to go. Get ready to come back. And the moments in between we mark on the calendar. It’s our battle rhythm.’ But that day the rhythm stopped and their world shattered! The father and the husbands did return but with no words to speak but just the frozen tears to be shed at their funeral It was evening and that was a big reason I never wanted to do this story!
.In the twentieth century two world wars produced new generations of army wives who forged friendships that lasted into peacetime. Army Wives reveals their experience and that of a new breed of independent women who supported their men through the Cold War to the current war on terror. I salute the daughters and the wives who stood with each other in this destruction and devastating loaded circumstance! There was no way out but to stand by each other!
