SALUTE TO A JAWAN ON DUTY

Lone train journeys are just an opportune time to reinvigorate your thought process
and think on trivial matters which you generally won’t think during your normal
recourse. A similar thing happened this time during my recent frequent visits to
JAMMU when a look-out through the glass pane of moving train rekindled my
thought process. It was the sight of young soldier guarding a post near a railway line.
The scene was highly usual for a person from J&K but as I said earlier, in a journey
so banal one is always forced to take thoughts to the limits unusual.

Somehow I started to see the world from the eyes of that soldier.

I asked myself that what thoughts will be going through his mind every time a train
passed-by as he guards the bunker. A look back inside the train, somehow gave me
few answers when I saw that for the people inside the train, it will be a vacation time
or will be a spiritual sojourn, but for that soldier outside, every passing train is a
reason compelling enough to make him wish only one thing and that will be to be
with his family like the travellers in the train. Although he seemed tough while
standing at the post but from within I felt that deep in his heart there will be feelings
that longs for his family, misses them every day and would wake him up to count the
days left for his next family reunion. The youthful era of his life will be gone holding a
gun in his hand in nerve wrecking winter nights or following the commands his
super-ordinate even when he knows that life outside is splendid beyond limits. There
is no doubt beyond any thought that life will not be easy any single day while he
guards that position.

From guarding the frontiers of the nation to being a saviour in the disaster struck
areas, he will be so selflessly involved in the service to his nation that he may miss to
see when his daughter will become eligible for a marriage, when his son will complete
his graduation and when will the wrinkles start to set on that adorable face of his
other half. The life will just slip-by and he will never come to know what all left
behind.

Sitting in that train, I may not be able to understand his thoughts and life he goes
through every day. With even that little understanding of his life, I salute every
soldier not only of my nation but world across for the passion that drives them to
fight all odds and serve their nation with patience and persistence. It’s never too
easy, not at least for me, to live a life so morbid and still remain tough.

As my destination reached and so does my thought process and somehow I believed

that for a soldier

ONE LIFE IS NOT ENOUGH

‘For once you live for the pride of your nation for other you must live for yourself,
For once you lived a life full of sacrifices for another must be for the freedom you
lost’

Rajat Verma