Look back in honour

On the memorial, I saw emotional scenes — the Japanese were quite visibly moved as they laid wreaths for their erstwhile enemies in the ‘shrine room’, where the names of those killed on the Arizona are engraved on the marble wall. Their somber and dignified manner is a lesson for all humanity. For animosities to be truly buried, our grief must become common. I wondered how long and tortuous the trajectory of history would we need to negotiate before Pakistanis and Indians begin to honour each other’s martyrs as ‘ours’?

Before we were ushered on to the steamer bound for the memorial, we toured the onshore museum. Every single piece of memorabilia has been preserved with remarkable taste. The place evokes reverence. Pieces of equipment of men that went down fighting, parts of the ship and even the last letters of sailors to their loved ones, are all there, maintained with loving care.

“Dear Mom”… began one letter. I wondered how many similar missives written by our soldiers from Kashmir would have reached wrapped in body bags. “How touching,” I whispered to an Indian colleague, “wish we too could celebrate each one of our martyrs in this way.”

Our Russian scholar-friend, Nikolai Biryukov, overheard me. Without a hint of condescension, much less sarcasm, and a pointed matter-of-factness that we had come to recognise as a trait of the professor from Moscow, he asked me, sotto voce, “With a history of supreme sacrifices by soldiers as long as ours, Neeraj, if we preserved everything as a memorial, where will we find space to live?”