So, I dub thee “Unforgiven”

This is a random bunch of entries I had made a long time ago in a diary. I chanced upon them yesterday. I guess you could call it a short story. The title is part of the refrain of “The Unforgiven” by Metallica

5th July
The day my life took a u-turn of sorts. I had come home from work. God knows how I had a job, what with the unemployment rampant due to the war going on. I had barely entered when I saw the letter. I had been drafted. Chosen to fight for my country. The letter gave details as to where and when I was to report for training and ordered that I leave the very next day. My mother tried to restrain me by pointing out that the risk I was taking was immense. I was in my prime, had a job. Why throw it all away, like Father had? She pointed to his portrait gesticulating wildly. I wouldn't listen. I was too excited, high on adrenaline.

7th July

I’m on my way to the army camp. Boarded the train at 7am. Should reach there sometime in the next 4 hours. Feeling nervous, excited and also elated. After all, it IS an honour to serve your country. Am I worth it?

9th August – Base Camp 0500hrs

Two months later, I can hardly recognize myself. I’m fitter, faster and can shoot to kill. I am a soldier. And the icing on the cake is; I have been assigned to my father’s regiment. I sent a few letters during the course of these days to my mother, but she rarely replied. She is still begging me to come home.
Our camp is about 4 miles from the front. It’s a bloodbath out here. We are entrenched and have machine guns covering the perimeter. But nothing protects us from air raids carried out by the enemy. I killed my first man yesterday. Man? He was in his teens. My hands were shaking. I don't know why, I felt a surge of pity. I sort of froze, and he aimed his gun at me. I shot him in the chest and had run on to join my squad. Happened in a heartbeat.

11th August- Base Camp 0700hrs

Trouble sleeping these days. Keep having nightmares. I see that kid’s face. The sarge says it’s just first kill nerves. The camp is under siege and we are trapped. Repeated raids by the enemy. We buried five men yesterday. The hill just opposite our perimeter is our target for now and we plan on laying siege to it. My squadmates and Captain Reily presiding over us to “keep us in line”.  I felt like those soldiers in Tennyson’s poem as I ran up the hill. Our attack didnt work out. They’ve got Panzer tanks covering the area. Once agian we are entrenched. Trapped. We need air support or else all of us are dead.

12th August- Entrenchment 0645hrs

Air support is here. Dropped some much needed medication. People are dropping like flies and our camp is beginning to resemble a cemetary. We lost the Sarge so Reily is now the C.O.
The good news is that the Panzer tanks are blown to bits. We might be able to counter attack now. Waiting for Reily’s signal. Is it just me, or is our C.O. getting cold feet?

13th August- Entrenchment 0700hrs
We are making our move today. We are going to hit those guys with all we got. I’m loading my carbine now as I sip the muck they call coffee around here.

17th August- Hospital in unknown location Time unknown

I do not know what happened. The last thing I remember is charging up that hill with the squad, facing a hailstorm of bullets and wondering if I am going to live to tell the tale. Now I find myself in hospital. The doctor said I took a grenade to the face and have shrapnel in my face. I am now scarred for life. I have also lost sight in one eye. I do not know how I came to be here, or how many of us survived that attack. I hope we managed to secure the sector.

20th August- Hospital 1000hrs

I’m going home. Useless it seems in the state I am in. Got word that we did secure that sector. Some consolation. Reily died but. How many have we lost? I cant remember.

1st September-Home

It’s hell. Everyone looks at me like I am some sort of freak. A disgrace. They wont look me in the eye. Mr. Bracken called me a coward just the other day. They all seem to have forgotten I took a grenade to the face. Hypocrites.
My mother has taken this the hardest. She keeps crying. “Look at what they did to you”, she said when I walked through the door.  All I got now, is that bottle of Scotch. Then they will accuse me of being a drunk.

They all say it’s an honour to fight for your country. They tell you tales when you are young, of the heroes who fell and the battles, conquests. The guts, the glory.

No one tells you what a war does to your mind. That hole it leaves in you.  No one tells you of the fingers they point. I guess, it must be all a “part of the plan”. No one tells you what an utter waste a war is, or how stupid the reason for one is.

Never mind my scars, or that half my face is gone. The real thing is, how do I wash off all that blood on my hands? How do I forget? Will the mothers of those people I killed ever forgive me?

I guess that’s why it’s been a long time since I prayed last……


The Bilge Master

The Joke is on Me

My friend Siddharth Sinha recently sat for the entrance test at Jadavpur University and he showed me the question paper. There was an essay topic there which was something like “True humour originates from sorrow” It got me thinking, and I am going to give the essay a shot.

True Humour Originates from Sorrow

“Life is full of tragedy and therein lies it’s comedy” This was a chance remark I made to my mother just this morning. We have all heard the anecdote about the man who slipped on a banana peel. Our first instinct should be to help him but instead we laugh at him. His pain. Why? It’s because we have all been there. By that I mean we have all been in pain and laughed it off. I guess that is where the term “Grin and bear it” comes from.

Think about this for a second. Why do we laugh when Tom tries to blow up Jerry’s mouse hole and fails or his bowl gets upset by the aforementioned mouse? All the elaborate schemes that Wile-e Coyote hatches to catch the Roadrunner inadvertently end up with him falling into his own trap. All of us have been in splits whenever we see these cartoons haven’t we?

Permit me one more example. There was this serial in the 1970’s called M*A*S*H which was short for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. It was about a team of doctors stationed 3 miles from the warfront. Each day, ambulances, helicopters and jeeps used to flock to their unit containing mutilated bodies. Soldiers who had been wounded. The doctors would operate for days, “meatball surgery” as they called it, desperately trying to save as many of the soldiers as they could. Their unit was nothing but a bunch of 5 odd tents. They had to be ready to move at anytime because there was no telling when the enemy would begin bombing. No proper sanitation, cockroaches, lice, dysentery and of course death all around. In the midst of all this, some of the best one-liners and other jokes I have heard.
Once again, we find this sorrow playing out before us funny. We can identify with it. All of us have our inner demons, fears and struggles to go through in our lives. That’s why we humans need a little something to keep that sorrow at bay. Call it a necessity, or just our instinct of self preservation. You see, humor is not just your friend cracking a joke about something or the other. Even when the joke is on you. Humor is a weapon, programmed into us that helps us forget the troubles, the pain, the loss and just makes us let it go. It prepares us to face the next downslide. Humour builds up a wall, a dam protecting us from sorrow.

To close, let me ask you a question. What if one day, you woke up and found that all the humour in the world was gone? You would be able to see the sun, read the newspaper, tell black from white.

But, would you be alive? Would you be….sane?

The Bilge Master

Insomnia

She watches the day slip away,

And as the shadows draw in, part of her knows
That it will be time soon….
A wraith she stands, while around her everyone sleeps
She can see what they dream of…..
The banker, waiting to go home
The teenager’s baseball spinning past her….
The homeless guy, squatting on the grass
And the watchman with his whistle….
We sleep, when she awakens,
Standing witness, in a cloak of shadows…
Listen well, for she will be there, each day
Watching, protecting, avenging
So make merry, say your prayers….
And when she beckons obey the call…..
For she is the Night, and in her embrace you will see no light…..
But you will be shown a rare sight…..

The Bilge Master