A wounded daughter remembers, the stoic widow's eye stays dry

CHANDIGARH: Charanjit is a stoic warrior widow. In her heart, she bears a void that cannot be filled, and in her left leg, she carries a grenade splinter that cannot be removed. Yet, not a tear glazes her eye as she recounts that night of February 10, 2018, a darkness of unspeakable horror when widowhood embraced her.
Her unarmed warrior husband, Subedar Madal Lal Choudhary, had acted as a body shield and taken several terrorist bullets while blocking the door to their family quarters at the Sunjuwan Army Station, Jammu.
Charanjit's daughter, Neha, underwent the third of her surgeries on Thursday for an AK-47 rifle bullet that went through the tibia bone in her left leg and shattered it that night. Another surgery is scheduled in the next six months. Neha lay for four hours, nearly bleeding to death, before she was evacuated by the Army. Charanjit's son, Ankush, is training at the Army's Officer Training Academy at Gaya, Bihar. He dreams of joining his late father's battalion, the 1st JAK Light Infantry, a fine regiment born during the first Kashmir War of 1947-48.
The warrior of this very resilient family, who passed into the eternal hall of sacrifice, took on three terrorists of the Jaish-e-Mohammad at 4.30am that fateful night. His weapons were in the military station's armoury, so Choudhary rushed to the door and blocked the terrorists' entry with his bare body, which was promptly perforated by several bullets. But that resistance allowed Neha to shut the other door and save the lives of Chaudhary's family.
The Choudharys have come down specially to the City Beautiful from Hiranagar, Jammu, to attend the Military Literature Festival at the Lake Club. They are not VIP speakers, but humble folk, whose sacrifices and silent bearance of pain for a lifetime, is what invisibly strengthens the sinews of India. The Choudharys were brought to the MLF by another remarkable personality: Vikas Manhas of Bhaderwah in Jammu. Manhas has devoted his life to visiting the families of martyrs and bringing their forgotten lives to the forefront of public consciousness. He has visited over 300 martyr families ever since he commenced his pilgrimage of homage and hope just after the 1999 Kargil War.
The pregnant wife of another soldier, rifleman Nazir Ahmed, was shot in the back during the attack. She was immediately taken to a military hospital, and delivered her baby successfully. Six soldiers and a civilian died in that attack. Neha is a unique witness to a terrorist attack, she saw her soldier father die and she faced the bullets left in the terrorists' rifle magazines. Her mother, Charanjit, got a splinter from a grenade lobbed by terrorists and that is still embedded in her left leg. Neha's aunt, Paramjit, also received a splinter wound.
"We heard firing and thought it was from the firing range nearby. But my father knew it was an attack. As he rushed to the door, I could see the muzzle flashes of the terrorist rifles firing in the darkness. I fell down after I got a bullet but managed to close the other door. As I lay bleeding, the firing was so heavy that no one could rescue us. I somehow got to my mother's cellphone and called my father's Commanding Officer. He told us to hold on and that troops were coming to our rescue," Neha, a Masters in English Literature from Jammu University, told TOI.
As she lay bleeding and thought she was entering death's door, one thought kept making her battle on like a soldier's daughter. "My brother, Ankush, was not with us that night. I thought my father and mother may not live through this night, but I must survive so that my brother is not left alone in this world."
May India offer many salutes to Madan Lal's braveheart family and to innumerable such clans that our warriors have left behind.