Hyderabad:
Rashmitha was fast asleep when her father was brought home for the last time. Her aunt, carrying the sleeping toddler, was wailing, "What will I say when she asks for her daddy?" The three-year-old slept through as her father, 28-year-old late signalman Yadaiah, was given a final farewell with full military honours. Her younger sister, 10-month-old baby Ashmitha, oblivious of the irreparable loss she has suffered, gave us a happy baby glee noticing the red of our gun-mike.
The last time the children had seen their father was on June 2. He had been home on a two-month holiday and told the family he will be back soon. But no one expected him to be back so soon, that too in a box. A tragic loss but a hero nevertheless for his village, district, state and country.
Yadaiah had joined the Army when he was hardly 18. His father says Yadaiah had been very keen since his school days and he had to sell his oxen, so Yadaiah could join the forces. Ten years later, Yadaiah died on Monday in Srinagar fighting militants, on the eve of the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi's visit. I told Yadaiah's father that his son is a martyr and will continue to live in the hearts and minds of a grateful nation. He nodded, looking almost dazed. Both the father and mother seemed in a state of shock, unable to accept what had happened.
Yadaiah's cousin Raju asked me why no political leader had come visiting the last visiting the last two days? "They have come only today when all of you are here. I don't think they respect the life of a jawan. Otherwise how is it possible that in one part of our country, militants just shoot at men in uniform in broad daylight and get away with it? If soldiers are not safe, how can the people be?"
Sumathy, Yadaiah's 25-year-old widow was inconsolable. There were no words coming out of her mouth but the pain in her heart was showing in her eyes as she involuntarily reached out to me, a complete stranger, in an embrace and asked "how will I bring up my two little children without him?"
Hundreds of friends, admirers, relatives, school and college students, youth from the village and neighbouring villages joined to pay their last respects and get a last glimpse of the man who had left the village a jawan and came back a hero.
The mortal remains of Yadaiah was given a guard of honour and wreaths were placed on his body on behalf of the three services both at Hyderabad's Shamshabad airport and also on the ground in his native village of Kondareddypally where Yadaiah was finally laid to rest after a traditional three-round gun salute by ten men in uniform. The country needs to show his wife and the mother of his children that they are not orphaned. That the nation will always stand by them, with gratitude and love.