NEW DELHI: The plaintive strains of the last post, men in uniform clicking their heels and a 17-gun salute. A fitting farewell with full military honours.
Together in life and together in death: The bodies of General Bipin Rawat and his wife were laid side-by-side on the funeral pyre, with about 800 service personnel in attendance.
Hours earlier, at the same crematorium, the General’s top aide, Brigadier LS Lidder, was also cremated.
By an uncanny coincidence, the last rites were performed by daughters — Kritika and Tarini in the case of the CDS and his wife Madhulika and by 16-year-old Aashna, in the case of Brigadier Lidder. All three of them, and ten others, died in the horrific crash in Coonoor. The families of the ‘ten others’ still await the bodies for the last rites, which can be handed over only after the formal identification is over. The lone survivor, Group Captain Varun Singh, is stable but still critical at the Army medical facility in Bengaluru.
Earlier, General Rawat and Madhulika’s bodies were brought to their final resting place in a gun carriage decked with flowers and draped with the tricolour, which wound its way through the streets of the capital as part of a solemn procession that included military personnel marching alongside.
“We must give him a good farewell… a smiling send-off,” Brigadier Lidder’s wife Geetika said as she and her daughter, Aashna, bid adieu. But even as she said so, TV footage showed her fighting back tears, as she knelt before her husband’s coffin with rose petals slipping through her fingers. Aashna kept her calm as she comforted her mother in their hour of grief. ‘‘I am going to be 17. So, he was with me for 17 years… we will go ahead with happy memories. It’s a national loss. My father was a hero, my best friend. Maybe it was destined and better things will come our way. He was my biggest motivator,” she said. It was only when the funeral pyre was being lit that she broke down.
The nation is in tears but tomorrow is another day. It will soon be time to wipe the tears, look beyond the pageantry and ceremony, at the legacy of what the General has left behind.
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Published on: Friday, December 10, 2021, 11:49 PM IST
