TRUTH OF A SOLDIER’ FAMILY

You remain away from home for months together

Leaving behind old parents, young life-partner, growing kids,

Friends, relatives and their affection, caring and warm touch.

To feel the truth of the members of a soldier’s family,

We need to grace a visit his native at the time of a war,

To witness how confidence and proud overpower anxiety and fear.

Old and ailing parents praying for the safe return of their dear,

Eyeing on the television screen, keeping close to ear the radio set,

For their blink-free eyes, days pass like months, months like years.

Feel the invisible pain of his newlywed wife, his soul mate,

Who silently weeps, but carries out rituals of karwachauth,

With merrymaking neighboring women in the absence of her man.

Watch how his tiny daughter without seeing him for months together,

Rushes to the ringing cellphone uttering “papa, papa”,

Gives smile of contentment getting a good-morning-kiss from her father.

Think what might be her mental state,

When she witnesses other kids in festival gatherings roaming gladly,

Enjoying ice cream and buying balloons holding the fingers of their fathers.

His sister waits anxiously for the last train of the day,

Expecting him to come home in Raksha Bandhan as per his words,

Without seeing him, she throws away the rakhi and sinks dejected in her bed.

Imagine of the mental condition of a soldier,

Whose leaves stand cancelled due to some emergency,

Arise out of a natural calamity that we face or a cross border conflict.

I salute the womb that sheltered, kiss the soil that nurtured,

The chevalier of the nation, my beloved soldier,

Whom we all should owe our life, pleasure and existence.