This will be the last time I wield
my pen. My eyes are weak, I can barely see. But I sit myself down at the end of
my days because I know I can’t leave without ever having said what I have felt
everyday for almost half a decade. And I write this in the hope that in a rare
lucid moment, it might catch your eye and speak to you in a way I haven’t been
able to.
The first time I saw you, you
were but a kid- probably in High School with dreams of a brighter future. And I
was a fresh young graduate all set to join the Assam Civil Services. Remember those
nights we sat in your house- Young ‘educated’ men enthralled by your father’s
talk of nationalism and a movement that was brewing? Those nights created dreams
of a future where our children would study without discrimination, where
library books wouldn’t be passed around just so a “tribal” couldn’t get his
hands on them. A future where you and I could walk around without being taunted
as beggars and fools just because we looked different. As the dream transformed
itself into a vision, I found myself picking a green uniform over the life of a
civil servant, wielding a gun instead of a pen- without a shred of regret
because I believed I had been called to serve my land and my people.
Imagine my joy when I saw you
again two years later at Boys’ ME School at Aizawl, among the volunteers who
had come forward to cook for us greenhorns playing at war. The songs we sang,
our stolen looks of promise, all fed by the hope of a better life after the
guns were silent. Your happy smile is the last thing I remember before the attack,
before the chaos that turned our worlds upside down. In the days and nights
that followed while we hid in angst waiting for a chance to right a wrong, I was
tortured by thoughts of you and wondered if you lived through that horrible day
when the sky rained death upon our happy fellowship. I beat myself up for not
having taken you along but then reasoned that was not the life I wanted for
you. Days and nights in wild hideouts, a fugitive in my own land, fuelled by the
need to chase the usurper out, knowing I needed to be a guerilla against the
man with bigger guns. The vision by then had become a cause.
At Ruallung I said a thousand
prayers when I saw you. You were still so beautiful and my cause became so much
dearer because you were still a part of it. But you were unhappy; my dear, how
your eyes had grown dull. And your smile couldn’t reach them, I know you tried.
There was never a time for a guerilla to feed the flame of a romance but my
heart had no room for doubts. Seeing you was all that mattered, I never even
thought to question why you were so sad. My walk home with our supplies was
lighter than my journey out with an empty rucksack, only because I had seen you
and knew you were alive, waiting for me. It was only at night, in the cruelty
of a watch under a moonless sky that my heart bled, that I felt it squeezed
till I could breathe no more. Major Pritam Singh. The name replaced every beat
of my heart while all I wished for was to hold you in my arms and blow
everything else away.
March 20, 1968. The dreaded man
was dead, we had been planning for days and he was finally dead. Taking the
spoils after an attack like we always do, I walked right up to his dead body
because I wanted to frame in my head the face of the man who had tortured you
and whose name had tormented me for so long. It was then that I saw the little
notebook in his pocket. It had your name on it, as it had other names, but
yours more often than others, and dates against each written name. Even in
death, this devil was to haunt me. I traced each night you were forced to be
with him, wishing I had known and that I had come to shield you. But a guerilla
could not be your knight in shining armour. Forgive me, my love.
The next I heard, you were at the
Civil Hospital in Aizawl. The kindly doctor there had done his best to heal
your wounds they said. But those who had inflicted them could not be more
indifferent and no one could tend the hurt inside. I was told you were not
yourself anymore, that the trauma of the many invasions had done you in. My
love, it would have been too much for even the strongest of us. But your life
had been spared and this I felt was in answer to my prayers. The day we said
our vows you were happy, you were once again the girl I had loved from so many
years ago. When you trembled at my every touch I never blamed you. Each day has
been worth it just knowing you are now safe and I could watch you sleep in
peace. And on those nights you stayed awake, when fear took over and their
faces came back to haunt you, I could finally be that knight you needed and my
presence calmed you. But I cannot point a gun against ghosts and memories of tragedies
that were all too real. Watching you slip further away from me and from a world
that had been cruel, all I could do was pray that it would all end soon.
Yet here we are today, both
invalids. Waiting for salvation and a life of love undisturbed by rememberances
of horror; living in a world that shuns us exactly because we had fought for
it. It’s hard to understand my love, I know. What felt so right then still
feels just as right. If we could go back we would probably do just the same-
for what is life worth if not for the struggle of a better one? Even if those
we thought we were fighting for do not understand, I still believe in the cause
that drove us; and I believe their todays are so much better for the years we
spent in anguish. If we could go back, I still wouldn’t have offered to make
you the wife of a servant who slogged for a Government that wanted to trample
him and his people. It would not have been right to see you in a plush home
tending to nothing more important than your flowers or hosting parties for ‘Babus’
who secretly looked down upon us.
There’s only one thing I would
change could we choose to go back, my love. I would take your hand on March 5,
1966 and not let go as I run, to meet whatever fate awaited us, together. Then,
perhaps, I could always have been your knight.
March 2, 2013.
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