[Reader-list] Ballad of the soldier's wife: War and the widow by Amitava Kumar

[Harsh Kapoor]

Himal
April 2003

REFLECTIONS
Ballad of the soldier's wife: War and the widow

by Amitava Kumar

BBC
Baghdad is bombed, 20 March 2003.

The news on the television is of the bombing in Baghdad. I came out 
of the bedroom this morning and saw my wife watching the news with 
tears in her eyes. My wife is five months pregnant and, in ways that 
I can only imagine, she is aware of just how much life is precious 
and also vulnerable. And yet, I know that she and I, sitting in a 
suburban house in America, are shielded from the real news of the war 
that is being waged in our name. There was a retired colonel of the 
US Marine Corps on CNN last night; he smiled, and even chuckled, as 
he described the bombs falling on Iraq. A brave woman called in - the 
show was Larry King Live - and said that she found the colonel's 
behaviour obscene. We are watching the bared fangs of the killers. 
Not one of the reports have described what has happened so far to the 
innocent men and women and children who deserved neither Saddam 
Hussein nor George W Bush.

There is much that is hidden from us, and it makes us feel isolated 
and helpless.

I would like to see the Iraqi women on television. We should know 
what a pregnant woman in Baghdad was feeling when the bombs were 
dropping around her. That must have been the thought, I decided for 
myself, that was making my wife cry. Once I started thinking of that, 
it occurred to me that I would like to know what the thoughts were of 
the wives and girlfriends of the American and British soldiers who 
have died.

I have no experience of war but I have met many widows. Today, as I 
watch the strangely disembodied spectacle of war on my screen, smoke 
rising in surreal shades in a landscape devoid of all human presence, 
I return to the memories of my meetings.

News
In a village called Kukurwar, about three hours' drive from my 
hometown Patna, I met Munni Devi, the widow of Sepoy Hardeo Prasad 
who was killed in Batalik during the Kargil war. Hardeo was a soldier 
in the 1 Bihar Regiment and his wife showed me his large, framed 
picture taken when he was a part of the United Nations Peacekeeping 
Force in Somalia. He was a tall, well-built man with dark skin and a 
light moustache, and in the photograph he wore the blue UN cap and a 
blue turtleneck under his camouflage jacket. Behind him was the 
Somalian photo studio's painted backdrop. It showed a garden and a 
house with a TV aerial and, further in the distance, a row of 
mountain peaks on which the artist had added a layer of white snow. 
Next to this picture was another glass frame with a one dollar bill 
pasted inside it. Hardeo had brought the dollar note back with him 
from Somalia in 1994.
Women would comment that she had got a house and a television after 
her husband died

Munni and I were sitting in the small brick house that was built with 
the compensation money that the government had given her. The room 
was not very large, it had just enough space for four chairs. There 
was a doorway to my right and we could hear Hindi songs being played 
on a loudspeaker in the distance. Now and then, I could glimpse a hen 
walking outside with five or six tiny chicks that had been coloured a 
bright green by the owner.

It was a winter morning and Munni, slight and barefoot, with only a 
thick shawl wrapped over her sari, continued to shiver as she spoke 
to me. When her hand shook, I would look away, concentrating my gaze 
at the picture of a smiling child in the Magadh Automobile calendar 
hanging on the wall behind her head.

Munni was 28 years old. She had three children, two daughters and a 
little son who was six months old when his father died. Her education 
had stopped at high school. At my request, Munni began to tell me 
about the different places where her husband had served with the 
army. First it was northeast India, mostly Assam, and then Somalia, 
before he was sent to Kashmir from where he had returned with some 
saffron and dreamed of trading in it. (Hardeo had begun to say to 
Munni, "Money is the only VIP". Munni looked up at me when she used 
the English term 'VIP'.) Hardeo left home for Kargil on 21 May 1999 
at the conclusion of a two-month leave.

He was dead less than a month later. While he had been home, Munni 
said, he did not do much. She said, "He would listen to the radio". I 
suddenly remembered that the 1 Bihar Regiment had been involved in 
the war from the start: the first army casualty on the Indian side 
had been Major Saravanan who had been killed on 29 May at Point 4268 
- and his body was among the last to be recovered in the war when his 
regiment captured the hill, on the night of 6 July, where he had died 
months earlier. While Munni and I talked, Hardeo's old father came 
and sat in the room. He did not say anything to me, and several 
minutes later, when I looked at him, I could not decide if his eyes 
were old and watery or indeed he was crying.

Munni said that they would listen to the radio all the time to get 
news of the war going on in Kargil, and it was through the news 
bulletin that they first heard of Hardeo's death. There was some 
confusion, however, because the radio had mentioned the wrong 
village, even though it had got the name and the regiment right. 
Then, the sub-divisional magistrate came and gave her the news in 
person. Munni had been sitting outside her hut. The brick house, she 
reminded me, had not yet been built. The officer said, "Is this 
Hardeo Prasad's house? He has been martyred".

Munni said, "I had been unhappy for the previous day or two. I had 
been crying for an hour. I was not surprised when the man came. I did 
not move from where I had been sitting outside the house".

At night, at two in the morning, soldiers in an army truck brought 
Hardeo's body wrapped in the national flag. The body, Munni said, had 
turned completely black, and, as if putting a half-question to me, 
she said, "The enemy had used some poisonous substance, perhaps". 
Munni said that the district officials had said to her that they 
would have to wait till Bihar's chief minister, Rabri Devi, came to 
the funeral with her husband.

The dignitaries arrived by helicopter and the chief minister offered 
a few words of support to Munni. She also gave her a cheque. Months 
later, Munni said, women in the village would comment that she had 
got a house and a television after her husband died. This hurt her, 
Munni said. She would rather have her husband back.

I asked Munni if she knew how her husband was killed. He was hiding 
near a hill with an officer, she said. They were being shot at and he 
was hurt in the right arm. The officer said to him that they should 
get medical aid but Hardeo said that he was okay. Munni said, "After 
two-three hours, he began to suffer a bit".

Four men from his regiment carried Hardeo to the place where medical 
aid was available. He asked for a drink of water. He told them about 
his family and then he said that he would not live.

Correspondents
When Munni had finished speaking, I stayed silent. She had kept her 
head bent and hardly ever looked at me when she spoke. I had noticed 
that the parting in her hair was bare. As is customary for a widow, 
there was no sindoor in the parting. When I asked her what was it 
that Hardeo wrote most often to her in his letters, she quietly got 
up and walked out of the room. When she came back, she had a few 
letters in her hand.

The first letter I read was actually written not by Hardeo but by 
Munni herself. It was in broken Hindi, and began "My dear husband 
..." The other two letters had been written by Hardeo and they were 
dated about eight-nine months before his death. They inquired about 
Munni's health and then instructed her to take care of the children. 
Both were addressed "Dear mother of Manisha ...". Manisha was their 
elder daughter.

Hardeo signed his name in English with some flourish. That signature 
and the address were the only words he wrote in English. I reopened 
Munni's letter. I was embarrassed to read it in front of her, but I 
went ahead anyway. I thought that her way of addressing Hardeo was 
much more playful. "Priya Patiji, Namaste, Namaste". (Dear Husband, 
my greetings, my greetings.)

Her letter mentioned that Hardeo had been a more regular 
correspondent; she had simply not had the time to write to him more 
frequently. Manisha was staying at her maternal uncle's house; she 
was attending school in Jehanabad town. Munni wanted Hardeo to come 
home for the chatth festival, and if he got leave, he was to inform 
her in advance.

Munni had also written, "What else can I write? You know what a 
family is like. And for a wife it is the husband who gives happiness. 
The wife's happiness is not there without you. What can I do when 
this is written in my fate?" Then there was mention of the potatoes 
that had been harvested, and the rice that had been threshed. There 
was mention of loneliness here but also a hint about some tension in 
the wider family. I thought of one of Hardeo's letter, in which he 
had scribbled in the postscript, "Do not fret too much and whatever 
people might say or do in the house, you should not utter a word in 
response. Okay. Ta-ta".
"You have taught young men that it is not only Kargil but also Lahore 
where the Indian tricolour will fly"

Hardeo's younger brother, Vinod, a pleasant, unemployed man, had come 
and sat down on the ground near me. He was holding a yellow sheet of 
paper in his hand. When he gave it to me, I saw that it was a rather 
bombastically worded tribute to Hardeo on his first death anniversary 
observed only a few months earlier. The tribute ended with a 
declaration in Hindi: "By being a soldier and by assuming command, 
you have taught the young men of your village that it is not only 
Kargil and Kashmir but also Lahore and Islamabad where the Indian 
tricolour will fly. For the peace of your soul, the District 
Development Forum takes this solemn oath".

Tea and sweets had been brought for me on a small stainless steel 
tray. I said to Munni that I would quickly drink the tea and leave. 
She brought me an album of photographs. There were only a handful of 
pictures in the book. A few of them showed Hardeo in Somalia, and in 
one picture he was standing in front of a temple in Bhutan.

There were photographs from the funeral, including one of Hardeo's 
body washed and laid out on the ground with a brown cloth wrapped 
around the torso. The hands of the villagers were propping up the 
head and shoulders for the photograph.

There was one picture of Hardeo and Munni together. It had been taken 
during their happier days. It said "Prabhat Studio" in the bottom 
corner. Munni was difficult to recognise in the photograph: she wore 
her hair open on the side, and her clothes were new and bright. She 
appeared amused as she looked at the camera. I asked Munni if I could 
take a picture of her. She solemnly took down the framed photograph 
of Hardeo in Somalia, and then posed for me with her eyes fixed on 
the ground between us.

I wanted to ask Munni something before I left. I asked her if 
she would have anything to say to a woman in Pakistan who was also a 
war widow like her. Munni said, "Why should I say anything to the one 
who took away my husband?"

"But the women, the widows, they were not fighting. They did not take 
away Hardeo", I said. But Munni shook her head. She would not relent. 
Maybe she was right, maybe she was not.

Maybe the fault lay in my fantasies. I was dreaming of a dialogue 
between all those who had suffered from war's injustice. I still hold 
on to that dream. I cannot help feeling that Munni was the war's 
double victim. She had lost her husband, and she had lost a link to 
the broader world which shared her suffering.

As I look at the television screen today - from where all signs of 
life have been banished, as if there were no human beings in Iraq - I 
wonder whether a woman sitting afraid in Baghdad knows that there is 
another woman, in a small town in suburban America, shedding tears 
for her. It is not much, but it would take away, for a moment, the 
horrible isolation we all feel amidst this violence.