The Kargil Girl by Gunjan Saxena & Kiran Nirvan

The Kargil Girl by Gunjan Saxena & Kiran Nirvan

Author:Gunjan Saxena & Kiran Nirvan [Saxena, Gunjan & Nirvan, Kiran]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353058838
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2020-07-24T00:00:00+00:00


December 1986

‘I don’t want to eat,’ I said as we all seated ourselves at the dinner table.

‘Why? What happened?’ Maa asked as she passed the pickle to Dada.

‘She misses Beauty,’ Dada filled in for me. ‘I miss her too.’

‘I want to go back to Jammu,’ I said melancholically. Beauty was buried in the backyard of our accommodation in Jammu. She had left us five months after Papaji had been posted to Jammu in March that year. Whenever I missed Beauty, I’d go and sit in the backyard. But I couldn’t do so here in Vadodara, where Papaji had come to attend a course for over seven months.

‘Or maybe we can get another dog?’ Dada suggested.

‘No more pets until we get posted out of here,’ Maa said at once.

‘But you must not disrespect the sanctity of a family dinner,’ Papaji said to me. ‘Eat your food.’

‘But I’m not hungry at all,’ I said. ‘I feel sick.’

‘It’s okay,’ Maa said to me, and then turned to Papaji. ‘She’ll feel better in the morning.’

I hardly had a nibble that evening, and went to sleep. I could not understand whether it was my grief or if I was actually sick. In the early hours of the morning, I woke up with a high fever and nausea. Before I could scramble out of bed to rush to bathroom, I threw up on the floor. The loud retching woke Maa up and she came running to my room, only to see me standing before a puddle of vomit, looking embarrassed. ‘It’s okay, don’t worry about it,’ she said and tied my fluffy hair up into a ponytail before I could rush to the bathroom. After I had thrown up thrice in an hour, I was taken to the military hospital without delay. I felt so weak I could hardly walk to the car. I had been feeling sick for a week now, but careless as I was, I had just taken a paracetamol tablet every day rather than tell my parents about my worsening condition, afraid that I would be given injections. Injections scared the soul out of me. But I had no choice that day.

The medical officer checked my pulse rate and flashed a small torch in my eyes, after which I was told to furnish a blood sample. I looked at Papaji with terror-filled eyes. Before he could say anything, the nursing assistant (NA) pricked my finger with a needle. The blood sample was taken care of, thanks to the NA’s nimbleness. But then the real horror came, when I overheard the medical officer prescribing some injections. My heart sank.

‘I’ll take any medicine they give me, but no injections. Please,’ I pleaded, teary-eyed.

‘But you’re very weak, Gunju, the injections are necessary. It’s okay, I’m with you,’ he tried to make me understand.

But I was already panicking. I would have fled if I had the energy to run. But I sat in the wheelchair, helpless. When we entered the injection room, the NA made me sit on an inclined chair and asked me to place my arm on the armrest.



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