Ashoka Chakra for Mukund and what it means to me....

On 26th Jan, Mukund will receive his Ashoka Chakra award through me..and all I can think about is how happy we would have been if it was him in the limelight..smartly dressed and proud of what he had done..walking up those steps to meet all those people one reads about in the newspaper...I wish ...what can I do but wish...

Today, I stand reluctantly in the limelight...staring at an ambiguous, taunting and cruel future right at its face, wishing I could return to those days of  trivial worries and pleasantly boring routines. Today, I don a mantle, so heavily drenched in the tears of family and myself that I stagger under its weight. Today, I adopt a persona of bravery and enact a charade of dignified control over my emotions, so often that my real emotions are no longer mine and are beyond recognition even for myself. Today, I receive his glory in the form of this award, I receive it for him...while I loose all that was mine and all that I thought made me..me..my husband, my friend, my love, my joy, my soul and my peace. Today, I feel pride too, for my husband, I feel proud that he did for this country, that I and he love, what I could never do...but it is pride with sorrow. Today, ideals and principles, passion and duty, it all wins and yet I lose in ways none will understand..Today, joy brushes against me but never paints me in its livid colours..I have been stripped of those..Today, I laugh and smile..but they cease at my lips and eyes and never touches my soul. Today, I live and yet I do not.