Battling odds of life, he makes the Major moves

That’s when this plucky officer is not offering “moral support or guidance on securing income tax rebates” for friends learning to walk again at the Artificial Limb Centre, or studying the world of bytes in his second semester in a two-year software development diploma at the NIIT. “One reads about IT everywhere. The Army needs officers trained in computers at all levels.”

Presently posted as movement control officer (MCO) Khadki station, Mallik does not bat an eyelid while recalling his eight months with the 9 Maratha Light Infantry (MLI), Poonch sector, that snatched the soldier’s left limb. “The enemy was trying to cross the line of control and our team was working the minefields to block entry when I stepped over a mine,” says Mallik. And in the same breath adds, “I am as fit as anybody else. Life goes on.”

The philosophy of triumph is simply a case of a soldier’s logic. “If I cannot jog, I swim. If I cannot play hockey and football, I can always find some other game to play,” says this cheerful MCO, who rides his Bajaj scooter to work right after a spot of energetic morning cycling. And climbing five floors to get to his computer class for two hours thrice every evening is no longer considered a mean feat.

Mallik insists he will “never stop baby boy Ijya from joining the Army.” Yet, the only twinge of change creeps in not from studying software development or planning a settled life in Pune, close to the ALC, but walking the road to the market every day, his baby boy on his shoulder. “I always walk on the extreme edge of the road. If a speeding vehicle lunges upon you it is not always easy to shift immediately out of the way.”

And stay away from insensitised public buses that speed away from bus stops too fast for the man who sacrificed a limb for the country to climb up the three steps.