Avalanche Express

It was Army Day yesterday and I remembered how my mother, who worked in the Ministry of Defence for over thirty-five years, would every year, on this day, carry a small box to all our friends in the neighbourhood, shopkeepers in the colony market, and passengers in the DTC bus she would travel in, and collect small coins and notes. For each donor, she would pin a small flag on the shirt or top. Most people, she approached, would put in small amounts happily and felt a sense of pride in having the small paper flag adorning them. Today, it is sad we neither put these pins, nor anyone cares about making any donations and not many of us think of those brave hearts who are there in the frontline other than when natural calamities strike our homes or when the enemy is at the gates.

Then there was this WhatsApp forward which made fun of Mumbaikars shivering in their winter at thirteen degrees and compared it with the temperature at Siachen around the same time…only minus forty! So here I am connecting the dots and repeating a piece written about six years ago when an avalanche came dancing down the mountain.

 

We are Ten, Ten Bravehearts
Sentinels on the snow
We walk out on days and nights
With temperatures always so low
Minus ten is comforting to us
Below forty is when you miss your toe
Sunlight, frostbite, hypothermia
Welcome to our abode in snow
Welcome to Siachen.

We are Ten, Ten Bravehearts
Out on a special mission
To stop the raiders from across
Coming into our nation
Walking in snow so deep
When we heard a huge commotion
No, it wasn’t the guns booming
But the rumbling of snow in motion
Come later to our abode on snow
It’s too hot right now in Siachen.

We are Ten, Ten Bravehearts
Sensing our biggest killer
With nowhere to hide
Didn’t run hither & thither
T’was coming down the mountain
Crushing all beneath, this road roller
Just minutes away from us it was
We stood still, we held our hands together
Death was roaring and laughing at us
But we never let go of our hands
For us it had always been
All for One, One for All

Now this will be our abode forever
Never ever to say Goodbye Siachen.
We were Ten, Ten Bravehearts
No one else will know our names
But for our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters
And our wives, sons, daughters, friends
Who will come to know of us much later
After days when all the searches are over
They’ll never find us, for we are lost
Lost forever, together us Ten Bravehearts
Sleeping soundlessly,….frozen forever.
Soon another set of Bravehearts will take our place
Welcome to Siachen, Mates.

We were Ten, Ten Bravehearts
Who will soon be forgotten
Wiped away from your memories soon
But not for our own families
Who wait at the station to receive us
As the Avalanche Express comes chugging down
Coming with our empty coffins
Wrapped in saffron green and white
Lying ten feet below, with unfulfilled dreams
Dreams of goodness and joy
Wondering how Genesis would have described us
From Dust to Dust or From Dust to Snow
Zara hatke, zara bachke, yeh hai Siachen meri jaan!

And in the end imagined myself singing

John Lennon's immortal song, slightly altered

Hoping they will someday come true

Imagine there’s no countries, It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too
Imagine all the people, Living life in peace
Yo hoo oo!!
And there’ll be Siachen No More
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one.

Jai Hind!

 SS