Ever since I switched on the news and heard about what was happening at the Swaminarayan temple, I could not help but keep watching. The entire temple had been cordoned off and there was complete mayhem even as the bloody stand-off continued between the police and the terrorists. The stretchers kept coming out, with the dead and injured being hauled into vehicles. Ordinary civilians, with their garments soaked in blood, were courageous enough to jump over the temple’s walls in order to help with the rescue work, although it meant putting their own lives at risk. It was a terrible scene of helplessness and, at the same time, courage. But it was only when the National Security Guards marched in that there was a palpable sense of relief. They were flown in from Delhi and quickly assumed positions within and outside the temple premises. It was pitch dark when they arrived but they were trained to fight under such conditions. I kept up with the news for a while but, as the night wore on, I gave into my fatigue. As I tossed and turned in my cozy bed that night, my one thought was for those soldiers fighting their lonely battle. I wondered how many of them would actually be able to cheat death. I prayed to God for their protection. It struck me, of course, that this was their job. That they were indeed trained to fight and, if need be, even give up their lives. I don’t like the word ‘sacrifice’ being used in such a context. To my mind, this somehow appears to remove the element of fear that would inevitably be present in the minds of those who are required to give up their lives for the nation. And it allows us to take for granted that presumably undaunted spirit which is willing to discard life in order to protect ours. But why do we forget he, too, like us is made of flesh and blood? He, too, is a salaried person, upon whom, possibly, the whole burden of bringing up a family rests? As I woke up in the morning, I caught up on the latest from Gandhinagar. The operation was over. It was ‘successful’, as the reporters from the scene put it. An announcement in one corner of the TV screen revealed that one jawan of the NSG had been killed. That one jawan had brought us peace by paying the highest price. By giving up his life that could, in no way, be restored. A life that was extinguished in a blast of gunfire. Who was he? What was he like? Who is he survived by? Who did he remember as he drew his last silent breath? Who would know? In time, his death will be forgotten — like that of his innumerable comrades who’ve died in wars and skirmishes and encounters like this one. It brings to my mind the lines written by Alan Seeger, a soldier who had a premonition of his own death. His poem was printed posthumously: I have a rendezvous with death/At mid-night in some flaming town,/When spring trips north again this year/And I to my pledged word am true/I shall not fail that rendezvous.
