May, 1999.
Alone, I lay, covered in my own grief and blood. My once pugilistic self had gone placid. Clenched fists slowly unveiled to become open hands trying to embrace the situation that was once a behemoth looming over its prey. The rumbling skies looked down upon me with utmost sorrow that it began to rain its cries. It was a season when the sky didn’t know whether to reveal the sun or the rain. Nevertheless, it rained. I lay there humbled by the gesture. My accoutrements were strewn all over the place. Glimmers of past memories whisked my mind like the flapping wings of a humming bird. There wasn’t any movement from me but for a wince that showed disbelief and realization at the same time. I had given up the urge to resist. I could see the images in front of my eyes blur and fade away. Everything there is, boils down to this one point, eventually. We had won but deep down, I know we lost. We lost everything. Things we loved and things that meant the most to us. The thought stuck me like a hungry blade right through the heart claiming what it was meant to almost immediately.
A life of war and sacrifice,
I see no gain but pain.
A soldier seeking fortune in vain
I hope to live again.
Standing on the barren war front,
We go along the rhyme.
Fearing as the end approaches,
Victims of our own crime.
Left our traces on the war field,
By the many lives we steal.
As my comrades had their time,
And so did I have mine.
Walking through a shore of bodies,
But will they rest in peace?
There’s no life without a soul
And the power that makes them whole.
Kneel and pray for forgiveness
My wounds are hard to heal.
For all the deeds that have been done,
Search for reasons none.
With this thought, I closed my eyes... darkness. Black. Everything went dead silent and I knew I was sinking. Then, a shadow stretched out its hand.
Footnotes: The content sans the time period is entirely fictitious. The time period is when the kargil war took place. I have tried to pen down my imaginations on the revelation a wounded soldier experiences in the last few minutes of life.
