Bopa Rai’s curse was never immortality. It was continuity.
He carried fragments of older lives in his bones—half‑memories that surfaced at odd moments, like echoes from a valley he had once crossed long ago. He was born again in Ferozepur, a border town where the wind itself carries rumours of the other side. Children there grow up with two lullabies: one sung by their mothers, and one whispered by the barbed wire.
But even as a boy, Bopa Rai sensed that the border was not a line between good and evil. It was simply a line between stories. His mother warned him that monsters lived on the far side, but he knew better. He could feel, in bone and brain, that only men lived there—men like them, men he had somehow known before.
He spent his childhood chasing birds, cockroaches, frogs—anything that moved unpredictably. His favourite pastime was throwing stones across the line of control. Not in anger, not in challenge—just to see how far he could send a message without words. Even then, he felt the pull of something older than this life.
From Ferozepur to the Academy
He grew up, did unexpectedly well in his final year of school, and cleared the NDA entrance with the same strange ease that marked his life. At the Academy he found himself among half‑formed men—boys who mistook braggadocio for courage and believed putting down juniors was a form of camaraderie. They strutted in borrowed swagger, believing noise was the same as confidence.
Bopa Rai watched them with quiet amusement. He had seen this theatre before, in other centuries, in other uniforms. He was not the strongest, not the fastest, not the loudest. But he was the one who never broke formation, never lost bearing, never panicked when the unexpected happened. The instructors noticed.
One of them said quietly to another, “This boy has the posture of someone who has already fought a war.”
They were not wrong.
Being from Punjab gave him an unfair advantage. He had grown up with the border as a neighbour, the enemy as a silhouette. The instructors told the cadets that boys across the border trained just as hard, that they were not monsters but respected antagonists, and that a gauntlet would be thrown in their lifetime.
The others heard a lecture.
Bopa Rai heard a memory.
Choosing the Regiment of the Ship
When commissioning came, he chose the Punjab Regiment—not because he was Punjabi, but because of the insignia: a ship riding rough seas. Something in that crest stirred him. It whispered of voyages, of old campaigns, of men who had crossed waters long before independence. He did not know the details of 1876, but he felt he had been there.
His favourite song—one no one else had heard—was a fragment from some forgotten life:
“Poet and the painter,
casting shadows in the water,
while the sun shines on the Infantry
returning from the sea.”
The regiment accepted him with the easy familiarity reserved for those who seem to have always belonged. The Subedar Major looked at him and said, “You’ve come home, sahab.” And strangely, it felt true.
Barsati Major: The Glacier Calls
Soon after joining 17 Punjab, orders came for Ladakh.
He was made Barsati Major—a Captain given a Major’s responsibility, authority, and pay. In the infantry, this was not a favour. It was a test. The mountains do not wait for seniority lists.
His destination was Chandan Post, one of the steepest climbs in the central glacier. The glacier was not hostile; it was indifferent. Men who had fought in jungles and deserts said the mountains were the only place where they felt truly small.
The glacier has no enemies, no allies, no favourites.
It only has rules.
The Ibex and the Mountain’s Warning
Halfway up, the column reached an old acclimatisation camp—canvas torn by wind, stones arranged in a circle, the faint smell of kerosene frozen into the ground. It was a place where men paused not to rest, but to negotiate with the mountain.
Some energetic jawans spotted an ibex high in the moraines. Hunger, pride, and the thrill of the hunt took over. They stalked it, shot it, and dragged it down to camp, laughing as they prepared to skin it.
Bopa Rai felt a tightening in his bones.
He had seen this before—another mountain, another life, another careless hunt that had ended badly.
Before he could speak, the mountain answered.
The ground trembled.
A deep, guttural sound rolled through the valley.
Then the rocks came.
Not a full avalanche—just enough to remind them who ruled this place. Stones rained down the slope, bouncing, slicing through the air. Men scattered, diving behind boulders, slipping on ice, shouting warnings drowned by the roar.
When it ended, no one was dead.
But everyone was shaken.
One jawan whispered, “Sahab… pahad naraaz ho gaya.”
Another said, “Ibex ka badla tha.”
But Bopa Rai knew better.
It wasn’t anger.
It wasn’t revenge.
It was a warning.
The Temple Below the Glacier
He ordered one platoon to remain behind—not for rest, but for ritual.
“Yahan ek mandir banao,” he said. “Pahad ko yaad dilao ki hum mehmaan hain.”
The men understood. Soldiers always understand instinct before logic.
They built a small shrine—stones arranged in a circle, a trident fashioned from broken ice‑axes, a flame coaxed to life with kerosene. As the smoke rose into the thin Ladakhi air, the glacier seemed to settle. The wind softened. The slope stopped groaning.
The mountain had accepted the offering.
And Bopa Rai felt something stir in his bones.
He had built such shrines before—in other lives, on other frontiers, under other names.
The Final Ascent
With two platoons, Bopa Rai resumed the climb.
The path grew steeper, the air thinner, the silence heavier.
Every step felt like a negotiation.
As they neared the final ascent, Chandan Post appeared—a jagged outcrop of rock and ice, perched like a watchtower carved by gods rather than men. The men stopped to catch their breath. Bopa Rai did not.
He stared at the post with a strange familiarity.
He had never been here in this life.
But something in him whispered:
You have stood on that ridge before. You have fought here. You have died here.
The Subedar beside him said, “Sahab, lagta hai pahad ne ijazat de di.”
Bopa Rai nodded.
But inside, he felt something else—not permission, not acceptance, but recognition.
The mountain knew him.