In Silent Requiem

As I walked among the rows and rows of memory stones, reading the engravings upon each, an agonizing comprehension dawned that almost all the war heroes whose souls have been interred here were just teenagers or slightly older soldiers, nipped from the stalk of life in the prime of their youth, by the wars, the first and the second world wars. The Kirkee War Cemetery in Pune, maintained to this day by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, remains a tribute to the valiant lives of thousands of service personnel, lost as part of both the world wars, while living & serving in India during the colonial era.

It was not a planned visit, but one that abruptly materialized during our drive through the military cantonment area across the Mula road along which the cemetery rests serenely wrapped in green. The drive itself was a beautiful experience with the summer blooms sheltering the smooth roads and occasional sightings of old stone buildings and grassy expanses of land. We were headed to Bavdhan and never had inkling that such a sight would greet us on our way. 

The Kirkee war cemetery did not look like a cemetery at all at the first glance. It looked like a vast and well kept park, but a park that appeared to have mushroomed out of some exotic travel channel that one could have possibly stumbled upon in the course of a regular TV channel surfing activity.
It is the majestic cross that prominently towered at the centre of the green spread that corrected my perspective of the place. I've always felt deeply about cemeteries. We all do. I have seen beautiful cemeteries before, where graves of different shapes and sizes dot the land. The neatly arranged rows of memory stones at the Kirkee Memorial strongly reminds one of the order and decorum of army life, an aspect that appears to have been beautifully replicated in remembrance too. They stand in rows to this day, as how they must have stood once, waiting for the unknown. 

 Apart from this, a morose fact exists that the names and achievements of the 2.5 million brave Indian soldiers who fought alongside the British troops, supporting them in the world war remain largely forgotten and do not find mention in this tribute or elsewhere, maybe because they died fighting for a colonial government back then. No trace remains of the valiant Indian Sepoys to whom the Empire owes their maiden victory in East Africa or the defeat of the Japanese in Burma.. perhaps, everlastingly doomed to remain nameless and lost, having survived then in limbo suspended somewhere between the dusk of colonialism and the dawn of freedom.

Beyond the tranquil banks of the cemetery land, the Mula river flows calmly and beautifully. Rest in peace all you brave souls, named & un-named.