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Heroism and the mournful melancholy of a soldier’s life

CultureHeroism and the mournful melancholy of a soldier’s life

General G.D. Bakshi’s poems from the battlefield are disturbing and soul-stirring. They evoke in the reader a sense of gratitude and respect for the lives our soldiers lead, writes Vinita Agarwal.

 

I walk alone in the mist. The stars form a ladder to the sky…One day I shall climb them to heaven alone—as I was when I came.

There are only a few poetry books dedicated to soldiers. Charles E Stebbins’ collection is one such book. General G.D. Bakshi’s Freedom is an Eagle is another. It is perhaps the only Indian compilation penned as a tribute to the sacrifices of Indian soldiers stationed at remote outposts along the Himalayan border. The book is dedicated to Gen. Bakshi’s elder brother, Captain S.R. Bakshi, who was killed in action in the war of 1965, and to all the men of the Steely Sixth, the sixth battalion of the Jammu and Kashmir Rifles, who laid down their lives in Kargil (1990-1991). But largely and more significantly, the poems are an offering to “those who are cursed to remember” the terrible sights of war and death, and grapple with crippling loneliness in their line of duty.

The slim book is divided into two parts. Book I is titled “Freedom Is An Eagle”. Book II is called “The Killing Fields Of Kargil”. The latter contains about 20-odd poems themed around the Kargil war. The first part forms the bulk of the book. It strives to find meaning in war and in questions of death, the poems in the second section are hard, combat poems aimed at giving the most hardened reader a shiver down the spine.

The threat of war surrounds us like perpetual dark clouds. Yet, only a few of us appreciate how intensely lonely it is for soldiers to be posted at remote border outposts. Gen. Bakshi himself was posted for two years in the Sikkimese Himalayas. Most of the poems in the book were written during that span of time. In the poet’s own words, the poets represent “a faithful record of the moods of a soldier engaged in a long and nerve-wracking vigil…as he sits out his exile from the world of men”.

Have you felt

the sublime

silence

of the mind

where thoughts drift soundlessly

Where memories

and long forgotten

faces

with no sound

dance

in the embers

of a desperate

fire?

I have

and have never been

the same ever since.

No one

returns

the same

from the snows.

—From “Have You?”

There is an all pervading sense of desolation and an almost brutal emptiness in this collection. The stark solitude is not just emotional, but visceral and temporal. Through Gen. Bakshi’s keen imagery one can ‘hear’ the crunch of a soldier’s boot as he paces up and down in the snow.

Surely the concept of freedom must take on a larger meaning in these surroundings. As the brave sentry protects the freedom of his country, he also scours the bleak landscape and vast skies for a deeper interpretation of the word. In his opening poem Gen. Bakshi invokes the sheer elemental beauty of an eagle in flight as a true symbol of liberation. “Freedom,” he says, “is an eagle.”

None of us are unfamiliar with loneliness, but the anguished solitariness kindled through these poems scrapes new depths in the troughs of life. An aching cold blizzard of aloneness ravages the territory of this soldier’s heart. Ink turns to blood and time to stone, and that is how the outpost makes an indelible imprint on the reader’s heart.

…of what need we talk

you and I

tonight

O moon?

—From “Talks With The Moon”

Clearly, the spasms of loneliness are felt more acutely at night and therefore several poems engage in a rhetoric conversation with the moon. The questions are the same—groping for something to speak about, and the answers in return are the unwavering—”nothing really”. The sights and sounds of the harsh Himalayan landscape are personified to represent an abject distance from habitation. The scenery resonates with the poet’s own feelings: dewdrops are tears of stars, the Orion twinkles in wordless debate, the loud thunder of the clouds akin to firing of artillery and the “forked tongue of lightning” is a “crack of savage glee”. Most of all, it is the cold that is lethally personified as the real killer. An apt metaphor perhaps for the cold-blooded intent of enemies.

Gen. Bakshi uses simple but engaging language. His words sprout organically from the topography he witnesses. For instance, at Christmas time, the valley is “a whirl of blue and white milk”.  And, “…the cold freezes the tumult of thoughts in my mind to awed hush”. The sentences are extremely short and crisp. The structure of the poems provoke an imagery of a narrow bunker heavily riddled with cold, and the pen barely making contact with paper, thoughts barely squeezing out of the fingertips.

I had gotten

so used

to talking

with myself

I did not know

if I could

still

make conversation

with other men.

—From “A Visitor To My Post”

The poems read with gut-wrenching impact. It is hard not to be moved by verses evoking abandonment by even one’s own self—even shadows abandon the soldier in the “dark nights of the soul”. One is compelled to question the necessity of these outposts. Compelled to question the tenets of war itself…its terrible inhuman fallouts, its compulsions that completely hollow out the individual. Peace then seems to be the unequivocal option, a utopian coexistence where outposts become unnecessary. But then, doesn’t idealism always arrive with a sigh of impossibility?

The unique strength of this collection is that it brings the reader up, close and personal with the solitary soldier stationed in bleak surroundings. It breaches the sanitation of distance and throws harshness in your face. It does not allow one to be a mere spectator of grim realities, rather it draws the reader into the understanding that while there is heroism in a soldier’s life there is also a mournful melancholia. The poems are all derived from Gen. Bakshi’s firsthand experience, so that can’t get more authentic than that.

The greatest punishment

is to dream

and to look forward

to the fulfillment

of a future

for an end

to the bitterness

of your present.

—From “How Much You Plan”

Gen. Bakshi engages in a fair bit of philosophy as he explores his experiences at the outpost. The Gita, Advaita, Upanishads, Buddhism, suffering, Carl Gustav Jung are all gently grappled with for a deeper meaning. He tries to make sense of his situation by turning to masterly texts on questions of existence. The poems move in a linear fashion, arriving at each dimension of life step by step before moving further and deeper in their quest for answers. In a sense, this collection could be read as one long poem. There is also a whole set of poems devoted to the eagle, the uncompromising stalwart of freedom.

I read the words

of the Charioteer

In the Sixth discourse

of a celestial song

and for no rhyme

or reason

I burst into tears,

just like that.

—From “And What Of Him”

I have two favourites in the book. First, “The Mournful Procession”, a narrative poem about a dying soldier with “a bellyful of hot metal” in his intestines. The stretcher-bearers carrying him in a mournful procession. “It was all so still/ like one of those/ movies/ where you wonder/ what has happened/ to the sound.”

And second, “The Dawn Attack”, where the soldier standing at the head of a long assault line, raises his fist to the sky and screams “Na Hanyate (It does not die)” referring to his body as exemplified in the Gita 2.20, only seconds before being reduced to a “twitching corpse”:

Even our wars

have their interludes of beauty

Angry, glowing embers of light

that sail across the abyss

of darkness.

Their touch is the kiss

of death

an endless abyss of no light.

From—”The Tracer Show”

Gen. Bakshi’s collection of poems from the outpost are disturbing and soul-stirring. They act like a trigger to the conscience. They evoke a pledge to remember soldiers of war with utmost respect. They burn a hole deep in our psyche, we for whom these brave men endure the unendurable, we who forget to remember them with the intensity they deserve, with the respect they deserve.

Freedom is an Eagle: Poems from an Outpost; By  G.D. Bakshi; Publisher: KW Publishers Pvt Ltd; Pages: 127; Price: 399

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