As promised, I am back again....(!!) with more nuggets about the ‘Gorkhas’. 
Kashmir Valley (1996-97): While deployed on the southern periphery of Srinagar city we often made forays into the jungles beyond the city limits looking for ‘hideouts’ and had numerous encounters with militants.  But, one that I distinctly remember is where we lost one of my most accomplished soldiers, Havaldar Shyam Kumar Blon - an extremely fit, athletic and tough individual from Nepal with oodles of guts and a never-say-die attitude. He was a mountaineer of repute and an expert skier who had served as an Instructor at the High Altitude Warfare School in Gulmarg. It was in fitness of things that Shyam was handpicked as leader of my ‘company’ Quick Reaction Team (QRT), to operate directly under me. 
16th May 1997: Based on ‘hard intelligence’ about presence of militants, a ‘cordon and search operation’ was launched in a village approximately 10 kms south of my ‘base’. ‘Cordon’ was established by midnight and as we waited for ‘first light’ to undertake the ‘search’, silence of the night was interrupted by staccato bursts of gunfire.  Apparently, two militants while attempting to break through the cordon had opened fire when ‘challenged’ by our troops. ‘Challenging’, by the way, is a part of operational procedure we adhere to even at the cost of losing ‘surprise’ and thence, the ‘advantage’ too, lest innocent civilians become casualties of war inadvertently. I quickly repositioned my QRT to intercept the fleeing militants, and as it began to daylight, we spied one militant in ‘phiran’ (a long cloak or robe worn by women and men in Kashmir) entering a hamlet on the fringe of the village. A thorough house-to-house search of the hamlet was quickly undertaken but all in vain, and as I stood mulling over the next course of action, Shyam suggested that we search the haystacks piled up alongside the houses. While he started the search, I took time out to make radio contact with other parties in the cordon. A little later, as narrated to me, when Shyam was removing a bundle of hay from one of the stacks, he came ‘face to face’ - perhaps, geometrically a bit misaligned (!!) - with this huge six feet tall bearded militant at hugging distance! Since there wasn’t enough space to manoeuvre their weapons, they got into a hand to hand combat. Shyam, all of five and half feet tall in his boots, unmindful of the ‘size differential’, grappled his opponent, cursing and punching with such ferocity and so relentlessly that the giant ‘fidayeen’ was almost knocked down in a matter of minutes. I sprinted towards the fighting duo to intercede because I wanted the militant caught alive for good reasons, but Shyam, who by then was in a state of frenzy, swiftly ended the duel with one swipe of his ‘khukri’! End of the story? No....more was to unfold shortly.
Soon after, another ‘fire fight’ broke out inside the village as one of the ‘search’ parties was fired upon by the second militant. It was then decided to lay a smaller cordon around the house from where the fire had come last, and as part of the plan, Shyam quickly moved to a shed, close to the intended target-house, to place a light machine gun (LMG) to cover the front exit. As he began picking up bundles of dried flax plant stems stored in the shed to make room for the LMG, the militant who, probably, had moved unnoticed in the milieu of the gunfight and was hiding behind one of these bundles, opened fire from point-blank range even as Shyam tried to pounce on him and emptied an entire magazine of ‘ammo’ on Shyam, hitting him in the abdomen and left thigh. Despite the injuries Shyam crawled out of the shed, propped himself up against the wall and signalled at us to indicate the exact location of the militant. Unfortunately, as the militant was in close proximity to Shyam, heavier weapons couldn’t be employed to neutralise the militant. At the same time, lobbying grenades through the loopholes, the militant kept us at bay for nearly twenty minutes. Shyam was finally extricated by, then Lieutenant and now Brigadier Kartik Sheshadri, in a daring rescue operation.  Incidentally, the initial plan was for me to ‘go in’ to retrieve Shyam while the others provided ‘covering fire’; but Kartik, my second-in-command, volunteered and protested vehemently when I refused. He argued that he was a bachelor and hence had lesser liabilities; and that, I had nothing more to prove to the troops while he was still a ‘greenhorn’. He was so ardent in his plea that he not only won the argument but my respect as well, that day. Mind you, it takes a great deal of spunk to run through a hail of bullets, that too, carrying a dead weight, not knowing if you could come out alive at the end of it! As Shyam lay on ground with his head resting on my lap, I gave him a few sips of water to drink and tried to pep him up while we waited for the ambulance to arrive. Before being whisked away into the ambulance he held my hands, looked pleadingly at me and said (in Gorkhali), “Saab, I don’t think I will make it through, but get that ‘bastard’ for my sake! Also, please help my son join this ‘paltan’.....I will be eternally grateful”. I was too choked with emotion to speak at that moment in time but nodded in the affirmative as a silent promise. As it turned out, these were the last words of a ‘brave heart’ and a concerned father. He attained martyrdom and left for ‘Valhalla’ the very same day. Shyam’s soul, however, would have surely found some solace when we eliminated the second ‘fidayeen’ a little later. I shed a few tears that day as I grieved the loss of a brother-in-arm and a ‘soldier par excellence’ the likes of who are hard to come by. He was rightfully awarded the ‘Sena Medal’ for gallantry and his son joined the battalion two years later, as promised.

Life goes on, but ‘Gorkhas’ will remain a part of our folklores and I will continue to cherish my years with these ‘bravest of the braves’. My ‘musings’ will continue too, unabated! Ciao then till the next...!

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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