“When you go home, tell them of us and say for your tomorrow, we gave our today.”
India is a country held together not just by our leaders, students and working men and women but also those standing at the borders with guns by their sides and watching the borders with eyes like hawk.
These are the paramount Indian army soldiers, braving all climates and conditions and putting their lives on the line for our safe future.
As they move towards the enemy to fight head-first, these soldiers become oblivious to the blasting sounds of guns or the silence of long, waiting nights. However, in the moments when soldiers get wounded, it is to the mercy of others to save their lives.
Such is the story of Captain Mahajan, who was posted in the 56 mountain regiment (artillery) in 1971. He was severely wounded when the infantry battalion attacked a Pak post in Telikhali.
Despite, being rushed to the field hospital, the doctors had laid him among the dead soldiers as they could not find his pulse. It was only after a nursing officer saw Capt. Mahajan’s shaking hand did they tend to him.
“My jaw was totally shattered. They had to take out a lung of mine” says Capt. Mahajan. “If (earlier) people had not donated blood, I (wouldn’t) have survived.”
Like him, many soldiers have escaped death but not without suffering injuries to which they would have succumbed to had no one come to their rescue. In most cases, these helping hands come in the form of an organ, tissue or blood donation.
The painful and traumatizing ordeals which the soldiers go through have significantly amplified the value of organ donation in their lives.
Colonel HN Handa, who was commissioned to join the Indian Army at the age of 20, lost his leg to a mine just ten years after that. This altered the path he was on but made him realize the importance of donating organs to save those who might need them in the future.
In his own words, Col. HN Handa expresses this feeling by saying that “life would be more joyous in giving than taking.”
Similarly, when Major DP Singh, now known as India’s blade runner, lost his leg to an enemy attack, he remained undeterred from his plan of serving for his countrymen.
“On LoC, I was defending the post when (during) an enemy action a bomb landed next to me” says Major DP Singh as he recounts the day he lost his right limb. “That bomb disintegrated into millions of pieces, shrapnel (of which) some stuck to me, some cut me through and some are still kept inside me.”
Even though he lost his leg, Major DP Singh kept on believing that he has more to give. “All the body organs which I am carrying with me, I don’t need (them) after my death” he says.
“It is better I donate these (organs) now and let (them) stay alive in others who need it more than me, after my death” says Major DP Singh as he echoes the essence of this initiative.
