A LOVE LETTER AMIDST WAR - INDIA_PAKISTAN

In the Shadow of Mustard Fields: A Love Letter Amidst War!!!

Biswanath Bhattacharya

It was 1971. Although the drums of formal war had yet to sound, Tripura pulsed with the restless heartbeat of conflict. Everywhere, the air shimmered with tension—a tapestry woven from the threads of anticipation and dread. I was then a youth of twenty-one, wandering the familiar lanes of my beloved alma mater, NC Institution, a place as dear to me as the laughter of childhood. The school itself had taken on new life in Madhuban—a name that bloomed poetry on the tongue, promising a sanctuary of beauty. Deep forests pressed close on every side, and the institution, like a crown, rested atop a gentle hillock. But war, ever the thief of innocence, had claimed the hillock for its own. The Indian Army had set up camp there, and suddenly our school grounds became a shared world, where the promise of learning intertwined with the harsh cadence of marching boots.

One afternoon, as golden sunlight filtered through the latticework of teak leaves, I strolled beneath the canopy, lost in thought. The air was perfumed with earth and distant gun oil. A voice beckoned from among the trees—a Sikh 2nd lieutenant, his beard thick and his eyes kind, reclining against the bark as if seeking refuge from the world’s troubles. He was a friend to us, the teachers and the students, and his presence was as reassuring as the steady rhythm of the monsoon. He waved me over and, with a conspiratorial smile, pressed a folded paper into my hand. “Read this, sir,” he urged, his eyes gleaming with something both bright and vulnerable.

The letter was a whisper from another world—neat, feminine handwriting, delicate as the veins of a leaf. It began, “My dearest Harjeet,” and was signed with all the tenderness of a spring breeze: “Your Paramita.” Embarrassment flickered in my chest, chased by curiosity—why offer up one’s private heart to another, unless the burden of love was too heavy to bear alone?

“It is from my fiancée,” he explained, his voice a river running deep with longing. “She lives far away in Punjab. Our wedding was meant for this year, but war has shuffled the cards of fate. Each week she writes, and I answer. She is the sun to my sky, sir—the kindest, wisest soul I know. A teacher, like those of NCI, she brings English to the lips of little girls and poetry to their hearts. She is music itself, sir, and I am hers.”

His words spilt forth, bright as fireworks against the night, and I found myself swept up in their light. Here was a man in love, yet shackled by the demands of duty—a soul straddling two worlds: one built of devotion, the other of danger. In the crucible of war, Paramita’s letters were his amulet, casting a circle of hope against the encroaching darkness.

“She sent me this, too,” he said, producing a wristwatch as if unveiling a relic. The leather strap was supple as devotion, the silver dial gleaming with promise. On the back, a tender engraving: “To Harjeet, with love, Paramita.” Tears threatened my composure—a lump blooming in my throat like a stone dropped into still water. The watch was more than metal and glass; it was a timekeeper for their hearts, ticking away the moments until reunion, or perhaps until farewell.

“She writes that she loves me more than life itself,” he breathed, voice trembling between pride and sorrow. “She prays for me, waits for me, trusts me. Every day, she hopes.” His face was a canvas of contradictions: happiness and grief, gratitude and anxiety, hope and dread—a man balanced on the sharp edge of fate.

“Sir, if I fall—should I not return—promise me you’ll write to her. Tell her I loved her, till the very end. Tell her I died for her, for our land. Tell her I am sorry, and that her happiness is my last wish. Promise you’ll carry my words to her heart.”

His eyes, wide as dusk, searched mine for the assurance he needed. The oath I swore then was forged in the quiet forge of friendship, hammered by empathy and respect. “Yes, Harjeet,” I whispered, “I give you my word. But I pray you will need no messenger. I hope you return, marry her, and wrap the years around you both like a silken shawl. May peace return, and may you walk together in sunlight once more.”

His smile was a sunrise, fragile and luminous. He embraced me, urging me to watch over the school, the teachers, the children, the trees—all the little worlds that war threatened to swallow. “I will come back, sir. For her. For you.”

Fragments of Paramita’s letter floated through my mind—stories of running together through mustard fields, memories like sheets of gold unfurling beneath the June sun, the air a river of molten honey. The thrill of it rang through me like the clear note of a flute. She spun tales of sugarcane groves where ghosts wandered the wind, spirits caught in the sweet cages of stalks, tallying their silent numbers against the living—souls weighed down by the laws of men, by the unseen hands of distant emperors.

By the end, my cheeks were damp with tears that shimmered like morning dew. The officer, too, was weeping quietly—two hearts adrift on tides of longing and fear. I was young then, scarcely beyond the threshold of adolescence, and in that hour I learned the true shape of love—a force that could make the bravest warrior weep.

I promised to meet him again the next day. But when I arrived, he was gone, swept away with his unit toward the border, into the maw of uncertainty. I watched them vanish, each step echoing into the unknown. Night fell, and with it, the thunder of artillery—a requiem for dreams left unfinished. Perhaps our young Lochinvar had been summoned to the final field, his fate sealed by the indifferent dice of war.

In the quiet that followed, I found myself wishing for Paramita’s next life to hold him close once more. For isn’t life the blossom, and love its honey? To be loved deeply is to find strength; to love deeply is to discover courage. Love is the pulse that grants us true life, the only treasure we never tire of giving or receiving.

As I pen these words, my eyes are once again pools of memory, brimming with tears that catch the fractured light. The eyes—those fathomless oceans—harbor stories too sacred for the tongue, tides of longing swirling in their depths. Every tear, a pearl cradling the universe in its fragile curve, glimmers with the ache of absence and the radiance of love cherished. These tears, these silent jewels, are born of agony and hope, binding together what was lost and what endures.

And so, in the shadow of mustard fields and the echo of promises, this story drifts—an unspoken letter, folded within the heart, waiting for peace, for reunion, for dawn.

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