145;Bring Prabhakaran to Me146;

HER life can be divided into before and after. Before October 12, 1987, Gurmit Kaur was a lively 21-year old, a bonny daughter in her lap, a...

HER life can be divided into before and after. Before October 12, 1987, Gurmit Kaur was a lively 21-year old, a bonny daughter in her lap, another baby on the way. A boy, she hoped, imagining how her husband Lance Naik Ranjit Singh would light up when the telegram announcing a son8217;s birth reached him.

It was she who got a telegram instead. About his death in Sri Lanka. Home the warrior never returned, not even in a coffin. 8216;8216;All we got were a few uniforms, his turban and a box with his belongings,8217;8217; Gurmit8217;s eyes brim over. The son also never came. Instead, she gave birth to a daughter two months after her husband8217;s death.

A Battle Lost before it Began

IT was a battle doomed from the beginning. When 13 Sikh LI was airlifted from its peacetime location of Gwalior to Vavunia on October 11, 1987, little did it know that it would be asked to launch an operation within hours of landing. It was around 1 pm that they touched down at Palali Jaffna. The few soldiers who survived remember the heavy downpour that made unpacking almost impossible. They had barely begun to get assembled when their commanding officer Col R S Sethi was called and briefed about the heliborne operation to capture Jaffna University, the military headquarters of the LTTE, late that evening. Sethi, in a report submitted later, wrote: 8216;8216;By way of intelligence, little was provided8230; The aerial recce of the objective was carried out by a few lucky commanders in copters.8217;8217; The operation began on schedule at 10.30 pm with a platoon of 10 Para commandos consolidating their location, though not without casualties and damage to one copter. By the time the first platoon led by Major Virendra Singh of D company, 13 Sikh LI, landed, the enemy had been alerted and the troops were greeted with heavy fire, which made further landings impossible. Though vastly outnumbered by the enemy, the soldiers fought to the last bullet, and till their last breath, for 10 long hours. Only one of them survived to tell the tale.

Life after 1987 has been a unending nightmare. From a carefree young girl to a careworn mother, from a dear daughter-in-law to a detested widow, she made the transition in a day. Today, 15 years after her world came crashing down, 15 years after Prabhakaran decided to shun the media, she lives with her parents at Athoor village near Jagraon. A tired woman with a lined face who works as a field labourer, she has only one dream: to see her daughters settled.

Prabhakaran doesn8217;t know this. Sitting in the safety of his hideout, days after his let-bygones-be-bygones message to India, he can8217;t possibly imagine that bygones just can8217;t be bygones. Not for families of soldiers who were killed, and at times brutally dismembered, by his Tigers. Thambi can surely not even dream that somewhere in a dusty village of Punjab, the mere mention of his name makes a wizened old granny, bent double with age, sputter with rage.

8216;8216;Bring him to me, let me lay my hands on him,8217;8217; Ajaib Kaur of Gagra village, near Samrala, shakes with anger when you tell her about his forget-the-past speech. Ajaib Kaur lost her youngest son, 20-year-old Sepoy Amrik Singh, in the battle for Jaffna University. Her bitterest regret is that she couldn8217;t see his body one last time.

Kulwinder Kaur of Halwara was more fortunate. The body of her husband Lance Naik Chamkaur Singh was flown to Gwalior for cremation. But that didn8217;t make her pain any easier to bear. 8216;8216;I8217;d never imagined life would deal me such a blow,8217;8217; she wipes her eyes. 8216;8216;I was the only sister of six brothers, people used to think I am very lucky,8217;8217; she breaks down.

Widowed at 22 with two sons, hers has been a long, lonely journey even though the brothers came to her rescue when she was thrown out by in-laws. Now she hopes her two sons, one of whom studies at the Sikh LI Regimental Centre school, will do well. 8216;8216;I stopped dreaming for myself in 1987,8217;8217; she sighs.

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So did many others. Take the saas-bahu duo of Resham Kaur and Amarjit, who till the fields at Sehjo Majri village. Their only desire is a technical job for Amarjit8217;s daughter. Reason: Her father, late Sepoy Nahar Singh wanted that. Sitting in her ramshackle house, Resham cries as she shows you her son8217;s last letter. 8216;8216;He said he would come home for Diwali. I waited8230;8217;8217; words fail her.

Sukhwant, Nahar8217;s daughter who was a toddler when he died, sits quietly, gazing at her father8217;s large framed photo. 8216;8216;He was very handsome,8217;8217; she smiles through her tears. 8216;8216;Very brave too,8217;8217; adds Amarjit. 8216;8216;He was hit in the head,8217;8217; she sighs, 8216;8216;otherwise he would have survived.8217;8217;

Sushma Singh is better off than Resham and Amarjit, at least economically, but they have common ground in their hatred of Prabhakaran. 8216;8216;He should be punished,8217;8217; bursts out the widow of Major Birender Singh of the 13 Sikh Light Infantry, the first officer to be killed in the attack on Jaffna.

The resentment against the Indian government, too, is intact. 8216;8216;My husband led 31 soldiers in an attempt to capture Prabhakaran. But the Army failed to give him back-up support. Had their planning been thorough, my husband8217;s life would have been saved8217;8217;, she says.

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True, Major Birender Singh was posthumously awarded the Vir Chakra but it brought her no cheer. 8216;8216;What use is a medal when a man is dead? I was only 30 when he died.8217;8217; She was also allotted a gas agency and 25 bighas of land in Bikaner by the Congress government, but to her the loss of her loved one is irreparable.

For Surinder Kaur of Mehman Singh Wala village near Ludhiana, the death of her husband Subedar Teja Singh two months before his retirement was her worst nightmare come true. 8216;8216;I don8217;t know why, but I was consumed by this gnawing fear when I heard the battalion was moving to Sri Lanka.8217;8217; Today, the family sits under his imposing portrait, talking about how life would have been different had he been around. But the feisty Surinder is determined to make the most of it for her three children. Daughter Pinky, 21, is running the first-ever beauty salon in her village; the two sons are studying in 8216;8216;English-medium schools.8217;8217; 8216;8216;I want to make the elder one an officer,8217;8217; says Surinder, whose only moment of weakness comes when she talks about her younger son, who was barely two when the Subedar was killed. 8216;8216;He asks me why doesn8217;t have a father like other children,8217;8217; she says, her voice choked with emotion.

It8217;s a question which has no answer. Or may be Prabhakaran knows it.

with Sukhmani Singh in Jaipur