The Love letters
- Rahul Agarwal Pg 1 2 3 4
Sukhbir smiled as he walked towards the tent he shared with
two other soldiers. He had just given another letter to Major Singh to be
posted to his village in Punjab. He entered the tent and lay down on his
bunk in the left corner of the small canopy. As his eyelids closed over his
eyes, all the events of the twenty years of his young life flashed across
his mind screen.
He used to live with his family in a small village in Punjab. His father was a farmer and tilled their ancestral lands from dawn to dusk. In the afternoon, little Sukhbir would go with his mother to the fields. As his father would sit down to have his food; Sukhbir would play around on the farm. How beautiful were those times! In the evening, his father would return from the fields, tired and worn out and Sukhbir would rush out to greet him. Then lying on the bed beside his father, Sukhbir would listen to the various tales told to him by his father. As Sukhbir grew up, he too started going to the fields with his father. He enjoyed working in the fields - to plough the fields, sow the seeds, watch them sprout, watch the wheat plants grows and finally harvest them. Sukhbir was enchanted by this cycle of Mother Nature; it all seemed so methodical and planned that Sukhbir was sure that there did exist a God somewhere who managed this entire state of affairs. All this Sukhbir remembered so clearly and vividly that it seemed as if it had taken place just yesterday. He could still see his father and mother standing in front of him. It seemed so close and yet it was so far off, so far that Sukhbir could never get it back.
Sukhbir was thirteen when he met Parmeet. Parmeet and her father were Sukhbir's new neighbours. They had left their old village when Parmeet's mother had died of malaria and had moved to Sukhbir's village. Sukhbir's father was willing to use some help in his fields and so he and Parmeet's father entered into a sort of partnership. Parmeet's father invested some capital into getting a tubewell bored for their fields and he and Sukhbir's father started working together in the fields. With the constant supply of water from the tubewell and hard work from Sukhbir, his father and Parmeet's father, the fields flourished and the end result was a bounteous harvest. In the afternoon, Sukhbir's mother and Parmeet would bring food for the three of them on the fields. They would all sit down to eat and talk about different matters. In the evening, Parmeet and Sukhbir would play together. From their very young ages, they knew that they were the ones for each other. It was only a matter of time before they disclosed their love to each other. What followed were the happiest times of Sukhbir's life. They would take time out during the day and in the evenings to meet each other. Through Parmeet, Sukhbir discovered the simple joys of life, the joy of enjoying the mere presence of someone, the joy of talking with someone you love, the joy of laughing with your sweetheart, the joy of sharing your life with someone and being a part of someone's life. At that time, it seemed to Sukhbir that life was just one beautiful moment followed by another and so it would continue for ever and ever. But this was not to be.
One day Sukhbir's parent had gone to the city to do some shopping. There they were killed in a terrorist bomb attack. Sukhbir was seventeen at that time. He was not even able to perform the necessary death rites for his parents, as their bodies could not be recovered. Sukhbir was plunged into grief. Parmeet and her father did what they could to console him but he was unable to get over the death of the two people around whom his entire life had revolved. After a week or two, he started working with Parmeet's father in the fields but his mind would always be somewhere else. He could never understand what wrong had his parents done to have met such a cruel end. All this while Parmeet stayed at his side giving him support and courage to live. He would frequently cry in her arms and she would just sit without speaking because she knew that words alone could not heal the deep wounds that life had inflicted on his heart.
With time, the tears in Sukhbir's eyes dried and all that was left was an intense hatred for the terrorists. He left his village to join the Indian army. The exacting rural life had kept him in good physical shape and he was inducted into the army-training center at Jallandhar. After one year of arduous training he joined the Indian army as a soldier. When he had come to Jallandhar he had had visions of massacring all the terrorists of the country and avenging the death of his parents. But the serene atmosphere of the training camp had helped him get over the death of his parents and bring his mind down to more rational levels. Now he did not think of taking revenge on the terrorists but of serving his national as a sincere soldier.