Gunjan Saxena - The Kargil Girl

Do I really have it in me? I asked myself almost inaudibly. A strange silence fell over me as I stared at my reflection in the glass window of the AC coach. My train to Mysore had just arrived, and I was supposed to board soon.

Am I worthy of becoming an officer in the Indian armed forces? I asked myself, looking at my reflection, unmoving. Even the PA announcement by the railway station staff failed to distract me. Beads of sweat collected on my face and at the back of my neck. Whether it was my bodys mechanism of cooling itself down on a hot July afternoon, or just me perspiring out of nervousness, I could not tell. We had been waiting for the train at the platform in the scorching heat for an hour, and it may have well been the weather of Chennai. But then again, the opportunity that I had been eagerly waiting for was just hours away, so it could very well have been nervousness, after all.

The train will leave in five minutes. It was my fathers voice that pulled me back to reality. All of a sudden, discreet chatter, PA announcements, the incessant hollering of hawkers, the trains honking, the sound of a radio somewhere playing the title track from Hum Aapke Hain Kaun filled the air. In this country, railway stations have always been crowded and busy. I turned to look at my father. His handlebar moustache, a style he had sported back when I was a child, had given way to a simple chevron above his thin lips over the years. I could not recollect if it had been a sudden and deliberate change, or merely a trick of age. It still added to the overall charm of his long, chiselled face. His round black eyes had sunk deeper now and his face looked more weather-beaten than I remembered. Drops of sweat had settled on the contours of his long, straight nose and above his thin, stretched brows. There were two or more wrinkles under his chin that I hadnt spotted earlier. Even when his moderately long hair, swept back on his head, and the shorter hair on the sides, wasnt entirely black any more, there was no change in his commanding personality as he stood tall in front of me.

Dark patches of sweat had formed on his khaki shirt, which he was wearing with black bell-bottomed trousers, but he seemed as excited as he had been on the day I had received a call letter for the SSB (Services Selection Board). I remember how he had jumped up in excitement and hugged me. I remember how he had marked the dates on the calendar and noted instructions mentioned in the letter in his pocket diary. I remember how he had rushed to Avadi railway station to book a ticket for me to Mysore, how he had carefully collected items I would require for my SSB exam, how he had ensured I had packed everything according to the checklist. To me, getting recommended in the SSB meant a chance at a glorious career. To him, it was validation of his relentless efforts in bringing me up the way he had. To make sure I would not miss my train, he had rung up the railway enquiry office every few minutes that morning to confirm whether the train was on time. Back in those days, we did not have the luxury of checking a trains running status on the Internet. It was an analogue world, crisscrossed with wires and cables; the label wireless was still struggling to find its place. And I was struggling to hide my nervousness from Papaji.