A Homage to Our Brave Soldiers

This chapter is non-fiction: everything in it — the National War Memorial, the gallantry awards, the soldiers named — is real. But it is not written as a plain informative essay. Instead it is told through two letters exchanged between two school friends, Soumya, who writes from Jayanagar, Bengaluru, and Ananda, who replies from Chandigarh. The letter form lets the facts arrive the way a tribute naturally would: as something one person has just experienced and feels compelled to share, not as a list recited at the reader.

Soumya's letter describes an educational trip her school organised to New Delhi, where she visited the National War Memorial near India Gate. She writes to Ananda because, as children, they had once discussed war and the importance of peace, and she now has real answers to the questions that conversation raised: who were the brave Indians who fought for the country, and what happened to them? Ananda's reply, written ten days later, adds her own memory of a smaller war memorial in Chandigarh and brings in a poem and a soldier's memoir she had read about separately. No single invented "story" happens to anyone; the chapter's purpose is remembrance, not plot.

Because the text is non-fiction, treat every name, date and number in it as a fact to be quoted accurately rather than a detail to paraphrase loosely. When you write about this chapter, say what the letters tell you about the Memorial and the soldiers, and keep Soumya's and Ananda's own feelings — pride, gratitude, sadness, the wish to join the Armed Forces — as a separate layer, since those are personal responses to the facts rather than facts themselves.

The National War Memorial is the centrepiece of Soumya's letter. Construction began in April 2018 and finished in February 2019; it was envisioned and inaugurated by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in February 2019. It stands on about 40 acres of land near the iconic India Gate in New Delhi, and its purpose, the text says, is to make sure the cost of freedom is never forgotten.

Soumya's teacher explains why such a memorial is needed: even after Independence in 1947, India has had to fight several wars to protect itself, including the Indo-China conflict of 1962, the Indo-Pak Wars of 1965 and 1971, and the Kargil War of 1999. Each brick of the memorial is called a tablet, and together there are 29,000 tablets bearing the names of more than 26,000 fallen soldiers from these conflicts.

Soumya is careful to separate what she learnt from how it made her feel. The facts are reported as her teacher's words; her own reaction — pride, and being "overwhelmed" by the idea of an everlasting flame — is reported as her own. That distinction matters: a monument is first a historical record, and only then an emotional experience, even though both are real and both are worth writing about.

At the memorial's heart is the Amar Jawan Jyoti, an eternal flame kept burning day and night to honour fallen soldiers. It did not start here: the original Amar Jawan Jyoti, which also displayed a rifle and a helmet, was lit under the arch of India Gate in January 1972 to mark India's victory in the 1971 war. When the National War Memorial was inaugurated, the Prime Minister lit a new flame there, and the older flame at India Gate was later merged into it, so the two flames now burn as one.

The flame sits inside a 15-metre-tall central obelisk, which is surrounded by four concentric circles called Chakras, each with its own name and meaning. The innermost is the Amar Chakra, the "Circle of Immortality," which holds the obelisk and the eternal flame itself, symbolising the promise that the nation will never forget the fallen. Around it is the Veerta Chakra, the "Circle of Bravery," a covered gallery of six bronze murals depicting the Armed Forces in valiant action.

The third ring, the Tyag Chakra or "Circle of Sacrifice," is lined with granite tablets, one dedicated to each fallen hero of post-Independence India, with names etched in golden letters; its circular walls are designed to recall an ancient war formation called the Chakravyuh. The outermost ring, the Raksha Chakra or "Circle of Protection," is a row of trees, each one standing for a soldier who guards the nation's territorial integrity. Moving from the innermost to the outermost circle takes a visitor, in order, from immortality, to bravery, to sacrifice, to protection — a sequence that is clearly deliberate.

The teacher explains India's system of gallantry awards: the Param Vir Chakra (PVC) is India's highest wartime gallantry medal, below it come the Maha Vir Chakra (MVC), then the Kirti Chakra (KC), Vir Chakra (VrC) and Shaurya Chakra (SC). In all, 21 bravehearts have been awarded the PVC. Major Somnath Sharma was posthumously awarded independent India's first PVC for the Battle of Badgam in 1947; more PVCs followed for the 1962 war with China and the 1965 war with Pakistan, and one was even awarded for UN Peace Keeping Operations in Congo.

From the 1971 war, the text names four posthumous PVC awardees: Lance Naik Albert Ekka, Flying Officer Nirmal Jit Singh Sekhon, Second Lieutenant Arun Khetarpal and Major Hoshiar Singh. Naval officer Captain Mahendra Nath Mulla was among those awarded the MVC that year. The chapter reproduces Albert Ekka's actual citation: fighting at Gangasagar, he charged an enemy machine-gun bunker, bayoneted two soldiers and silenced the gun, and kept fighting even after being seriously wounded, before dying of his injuries once the objective was captured.

The letters add two more soldiers from the 1999 Kargil War. Major Padmapani Acharya, a Company Commander in 2 Rajputana Rifles, led a reserve platoon through artillery fire to capture a fortified enemy position; severely wounded, he ordered his men to leave him and kept firing alone until the objective was taken, and was posthumously awarded the MVC. Before the battle he had written to his father quoting the Bhagavad Gita (chapter 2, verse 37) about being unafraid of death in a just fight. Ananda's letter separately mentions Captain Anuj Nayyar of the 17 Jat Regiment, posthumously awarded the MVC — described in the text as India's second highest gallantry award — for the same war; his mother, Meena Nayyar, wrote a memoir about him titled Tiger of Drass.

Ananda's reply, written ten days later from Chandigarh, mirrors Soumya's gratitude but adds her own memory. Visiting Chandigarh's Bougainvillea Garden, she had once come across people offering flowers at a war memorial there and joined them out of curiosity, not realising at first what the gathering was for. That memory brings to her mind the Hindi poem "Pushp ki Abhilasha" by Makhanlal Chaturvedi, which she quotes: a flower that does not wish to be woven into jewellery or a garland, or placed on the bodies of kings or the heads of gods, but asks instead to be picked and thrown on the path where many brave warriors walk, so that it too can be offered to the motherland.

Ananda also shares what she has read elsewhere: about Captain Anuj Nayyar and his mother's memoir, and about a mobile app called "National War Memorial and Museum," which she describes as interactive and available in 21 languages. She mentions her own hobby of collecting stamps, called philately, and notes that she recently received a stamp commemorating India's independence — a small detail that ties her ordinary hobby to the same theme of national pride running through both letters.

Both letters end on a personal, almost ordinary note — Soumya mentions missing Ananda's mother's chhole bhature, Ananda mentions having idlis for breakfast — which is a deliberate contrast. It reminds the reader that these are real schoolgirls with ordinary lives, writing to each other about something extraordinary: the memory of people who gave up ordinary lives entirely.

The clearest theme is gratitude for sacrifice. Both letters keep returning to the same idea: the peace Soumya and Ananda take for granted — visiting monuments, writing letters, eating idlis for breakfast — exists because other people gave up everything, including their lives, to protect it. A second theme is remembrance as duty, which is really what the title means by "homage": a tablet with a name on it, a flame that is never allowed to go out, a presentation at school assembly, are all different ways of refusing to let sacrifice be forgotten.

A third, quieter theme is that ordinary people can act on what they learn. Neither Soumya nor Ananda is a soldier, but both respond to what they have learnt by planning to do something: Soumya's class prepares presentations and a school-assembly talk, and Ananda considers joining the Armed Forces and plans to share the idea of a collage with her own class. The chapter is quietly arguing that paying homage is not just a feeling but something you act on.

When you write about this chapter, keep three things separate: the facts about the memorial (location, dates, numbers, named soldiers and their citations), the structure of the letters (who is writing to whom, and from where), and the personal responses of Soumya and Ananda (pride, sadness, inspiration). Quote numbers and names exactly as given — 29,000 tablets, not "thousands"; the Param Vir Chakra, not just "an award" — since in a tribute like this, precision is itself a form of respect.