Tearful Day
This is typically a celebratory time full of spectacle and ceremonial and amongst the most complicated state occasions of the year. The grandest room at the government is all spruced up. There are reserved military uniforms decorated with chests full of shining medals, most of the awards handed out are always military awards. The President as well as the Prime Minister of the Republic takes the chairs over the proceedings. National power brokers, political as well as bureaucratic are all assembled. Everything is choreographed to convey a sense of pride.
This is how it should be. After all, it is the country and the state honoring those who they choose to honor. In usual times this should be a day of arrogance and happiness. But these are not ordinary times. These are inclined to be weepy times. And so, was the ceremony this year. It was not destined to be that way, but that is what it turns out to be. It still expresses a sense of pleasure, but it was pride soaked in too many tears.
The event started on a far above the ground note with the swear words in of the new Governor of Gilgit & Baltistan, Dr. Shama Khalid and afterward the merit awards for the military’s top-most nerve. But then came the bravery award, the Sitara-i-Bisalat, and it was as if the room changed in front of us. It was a procession of wives receiving awards for dead husbands who lost their loved ones in abused war against terrorism, mothers and father for dead sons, sons and daughters for lost fathers.
Each a moving prompt of the times we exist in. None more moving than when the immature son of Maj. Mohammad Akbar Shaheed, hardly 6 or 7 years old; came up to receive his father’s award. Decent in a child’s mock military uniform he walked up to the President to give a rapid salute. What might otherwise have been cute was outright heartbreaking. When the President picked up the child to give him an embrace he too was fighting back tears. I do not suppose there was a single person in that enormous hall whose eyes had not filled up. Some like us and at least a couple of the generals sitting next to me were no longer even trying to hold them back.
Afterward, it was the wife of an Army Captain, she is in the Army (Medical Corps), whose uniformed attendance repeating everyone just what cost we are asking our young men and women to disburse for our security from rebels. When the aging mother of one younger Shaheed began walking slowly to the stage and the President walked down to get together and cheer up her. Amongst the very few people who was given a Sitara-i-Basalat The wives of the protectors who died battling the terrorists who attacked Islamabad, the brothers and sons of tribal who were parts of Tribal Lashkars that battled against extremists, the mothers and fathers of policemen’s, too many who died in trying to hold back suicide bombers.
In a sad and solemn way, this was not a simple ceremony to sit through. We all need to sit through this. And to think deep and hard about just what we are living through, even as others are not able to ‘live’ through it.
To be sure, all of them complete us arrogant. But the conceit was soaked in too many tears. I aspiration and I pray that when the ceremony is held once more next year, there are less tears to drop. But let us end on a note of pride without tears.
One of the last people to take delivery of an award was young Ibrar Ahmad Ghazi from Konodass, Gilgit. Who must be in his teens or hardly out of them, place there in an orange T-shirt and black pant with white words and designs printed on it, guiltily jolting as his quotation was read. Hope he realized just how proud he made everyone in that room certainly he made us proud. His tale is one of humankind and responsibility to kindness. He originate himself walking over Konodass deferral bridge over River Gilgit just as two young nursery school girls fell 160 feet into the river. Others looked on them in horror; but young Ibrar Ahmad straight away jumped into the speedy flowing river and saved the both young girls. This was a story of bravery that made one proud. May all our stories of daring have happy endings with joyful pride.
This is how it should be. After all, it is the country and the state honoring those who they choose to honor. In usual times this should be a day of arrogance and happiness. But these are not ordinary times. These are inclined to be weepy times. And so, was the ceremony this year. It was not destined to be that way, but that is what it turns out to be. It still expresses a sense of pleasure, but it was pride soaked in too many tears.
The event started on a far above the ground note with the swear words in of the new Governor of Gilgit & Baltistan, Dr. Shama Khalid and afterward the merit awards for the military’s top-most nerve. But then came the bravery award, the Sitara-i-Bisalat, and it was as if the room changed in front of us. It was a procession of wives receiving awards for dead husbands who lost their loved ones in abused war against terrorism, mothers and father for dead sons, sons and daughters for lost fathers.
Each a moving prompt of the times we exist in. None more moving than when the immature son of Maj. Mohammad Akbar Shaheed, hardly 6 or 7 years old; came up to receive his father’s award. Decent in a child’s mock military uniform he walked up to the President to give a rapid salute. What might otherwise have been cute was outright heartbreaking. When the President picked up the child to give him an embrace he too was fighting back tears. I do not suppose there was a single person in that enormous hall whose eyes had not filled up. Some like us and at least a couple of the generals sitting next to me were no longer even trying to hold them back.
Afterward, it was the wife of an Army Captain, she is in the Army (Medical Corps), whose uniformed attendance repeating everyone just what cost we are asking our young men and women to disburse for our security from rebels. When the aging mother of one younger Shaheed began walking slowly to the stage and the President walked down to get together and cheer up her. Amongst the very few people who was given a Sitara-i-Basalat The wives of the protectors who died battling the terrorists who attacked Islamabad, the brothers and sons of tribal who were parts of Tribal Lashkars that battled against extremists, the mothers and fathers of policemen’s, too many who died in trying to hold back suicide bombers.
In a sad and solemn way, this was not a simple ceremony to sit through. We all need to sit through this. And to think deep and hard about just what we are living through, even as others are not able to ‘live’ through it.
To be sure, all of them complete us arrogant. But the conceit was soaked in too many tears. I aspiration and I pray that when the ceremony is held once more next year, there are less tears to drop. But let us end on a note of pride without tears.
One of the last people to take delivery of an award was young Ibrar Ahmad Ghazi from Konodass, Gilgit. Who must be in his teens or hardly out of them, place there in an orange T-shirt and black pant with white words and designs printed on it, guiltily jolting as his quotation was read. Hope he realized just how proud he made everyone in that room certainly he made us proud. His tale is one of humankind and responsibility to kindness. He originate himself walking over Konodass deferral bridge over River Gilgit just as two young nursery school girls fell 160 feet into the river. Others looked on them in horror; but young Ibrar Ahmad straight away jumped into the speedy flowing river and saved the both young girls. This was a story of bravery that made one proud. May all our stories of daring have happy endings with joyful pride.
0 comments:
Post a Comment