A heroic order

Today, at the rehabilitation centre in Pune, An-gami is resolutely picking up the threads of his life. I saw his new hands and his smiling face in a magazine recently. The pain I had witnessed at the hospital in Delhi has been replaced by hope and by joy. And he has hands. Not a pair of bandaged stu-mps, but real hands.

The surgical ward at the Army hospital had been a nightmare, both during and after Kargil. An arm missing, a leg gone, a patchwork for an eye. The wounds were bandaged and the blood and gore of the battlefield had been cleaned up, but the eyes of each soldier lying helplessly in that ward were a veritable window to the horrors of Kargil. Their pain may have been masked by their matter-of-fact accounts from the battlefield. But as they gave detailed accounts of the patrols, the attacks, the counter-attacks, the dead and the wounded they had carried back to base camp, they always looked you in the eye. No, there was no escaping the war in the hospital.

From one bed to another, the accounts got ghastlier. But they were all told with dollops of pride, with no mention of the pain or the trauma. I never got myself to ask them how badly it hurt8230; and they never told me.

All except Angami, that is. Lying on a hospital bed with both his arms amputated, the 20-year-old wasn8217;t thinking glory, he was battling pain just like the others. As I walked up to his bed, I was desperately working on my opening lines. After all, what is one supposed to ask a 20-year-old with two bandaged stumps and his entire life stretching out ahead of him.

But finally, I didn8217;t have to ask him anything. Angami smiled, raised his stumps and told me that 8220;it hurt like hell8221;. In his broken English he described the searing pain that made it so impossible for him to sleep at night.

He asked his colleague to scratch his nose, apologetically telling me for the nth time how it itched the most when he couldn8217;t reach it. And then he recounted his story. It was a graphic description of how his hands had been blown apart. He said it as it happened, reliving every moment. The tear at the corner of the eye said it all. Angami wasn8217;t putting on a brave face, he just couldn8217;t.

He said niggling thoughts about the future were absolutely terrifying. Sucking on a cherry his friend had popped into his mouth, he sh-ook his head. 8220;I miss my parents,8221; he said after a while and suddenly the 8220;brave lad8221; who had fought the enemy became a homesick young man. There are no words to describe the look on Angami8217;s face at that moment.

His friend broke the silence, diverting attention to a hero wooing his heroine on television. Angami snapped out of it and chatted about life back home, all the fun things he did. He even managed a weak smile when I finally said goodbye.

I could never forget the image of Angami and his bandaged hands. That afternoon in June, I had seen the pain in his face, but I had obviously missed the determination. The picture of Angami and his new hands indicated that his future would work out just fine, thank you.

It is good to know that at least some war wounds can heal.