KAMENG

I'm enamoured of irises and have always wanted to paint them. A few days back, I finally managed to coerce myself to sit down at a desk with my painting paraphernalia and begin work at actualising my long-held wish. And as I painted, I thought about the iris and about where I had seen one for the very first time. It was in Arunachal Pradesh in a place known as Tawang. An army officer posted to one of those treacherous icy slopes was growing bearded irises in the teeny-weeny patch of flat land behind his little hut. I had been thrilled to finally see a real iris and was mesmerised by its flamboyant beauty. That part of Arunachal is known as Kameng after the river that flows through it. Rugged, fiercely isolated, at places bare of vegetation and plagued by icy winds, avalanches and lack of oxygen, this place is a challenging terrain, to put it mildly. For the soldiers deployed here, each day, each moment is a battle to survive, a battle against the elements and a battle to stay one step ahead of the sneaky enemy on the other side.

While you are at Kameng, you are reminded of the story of the ’62 aggression, of how an ill-equipped army was sent to fight a war in those icy heights; a war, I’m given to understand ( though I am no military expert), was the result of failed politics. The soldiers were poorly equipped, inadequately clothed and incompletely acclimatised to the high-altitude environment. But they had fought fiercely, inspite of all odds, heroes till the end.

I had stood on the road somewhere up in those bare iced mountains and thought of these martyrs. The mountain slopes there are dotted with stones, which I think are Buddhist prayer stones and I remember telling myself how much they resembled people sleeping. I couldn’t help likening them to the fallen soldiers and I remember tearing up a little at this comparison.

I also remember that commanding officer and his men, uncharacteristically genteel and unequivocally cheerful in face of the harshness all around them, growing beautiful irises as they guarded our borders from aggressors.

The iris has since then, always held a special place in my soul; an eternal inspiration for cheerful positivity in the face of all forms of adversity.

This was nearly fifteen years back but I had always wanted to pen down something about Kameng. So here it is, my little piece dedicated to our soldiers deployed at the Himalayan borders.

KAMENG

On that slope, the grass has died,
Killed by the early ice.
In that bed of dead brown grass, thousands of black stones now sleep
On the cold mountain side.

Here, where blood flows like icy melt-water
And lungs freeze in the throes of hypoxia:
Sometimes, at times,
If the snow and wind permit
Gray mists rise from the frosted ground, float like wraiths
And caress these sleeping stones;
Tenderly.

If you can, for a minute stop your breath and put your face up-to the mist.
It will close in softly and touch you back with icy drops of dew.
Then if you can, close your eyes;
Listen and you might hear:
There behind and beyond the beating of your hypoxic heart,
The sound of marching boots....
Torn flimsy boots and the laboured breathing of soldiers marching in too-thin coat-parkas...
Marching without stopping.
Pawns. Pawned.
But yet straight, tall,
And oh-so-proud.

Wait with your breath still bated,
And you will hear
The short-sharp bursts of rifle fire
And the iced silence thereafter.

On this slope, now

A soldier with laughter-crinkled eyes

Tenderly grows
Deep purple irises
With hearts of gold. 

PS: Painting is that of a bearded iris. Watercolor on paper.