Reflections from a Veteran Reunion: Parasailing is a phenomenal experience. You glide straight into the sky and stare right at the horizon as the sun sets. The breeze around you tugs you shyly as you look down at the stillness below. It’s as if you exist in a limbo, between the past and the future. At the horizon, the sun sets and paints the sky crimson one last time before it leaves us. In that moment, when you’re high up in the sky, you finally see the things you could never fathom. And for once, your heart beats fast, not because of joy or sorrow, but for the peace of existing and experiencing this moment.
This stillness is more than just peace, however. It’s the absence of purpose and sometimes duty for the veterans. The absence of absolute orders that were guiding you through your life each day feels like a burden to some and a freedom to others. Routine and orders brought certainty, security, and a sense of belonging. Take that away, and what’s left of a soldier but a hollow machine with no purpose?
As you descend back down onto the land with the new experience in your head, you come to a certain realisation. It sticks with you as you catch the smell of kebabs and pakoras in the air and hear a jolly old song from the 90s humming in a low tone. You see the contrasts and similarities from the view above with the view in front of you.
The stillness in the sky is the same when you look into a veteran’s eyes. These people were supposed to be committed to decades of service, and yet after that, they are just as empty as any other. To break the stillness, someone talks about old times, when they were young and naïve. He brings up a funny incident, and the group laughs. But underneath that laughter is a roller coaster of emotions. They want to feel alive, and perhaps this is the only link to their liveliness. They spent decades in service with discipline, but never were they taught how to live. And so, they try to be mindful and try to be human in the smallest moment possible.
Reflections from a Veteran Reunion
In words, a decade seems like a short time. But on introspection, you will notice it’s more than a few years of your linear life. It is a barter, a trade. You exchange not only your time but also your passions and beliefs for a job that requires something else. They were hardened individuals, and perhaps they were also warriors. But they never got to be a father, a husband, and a human in their truest sense. And their families often wonder what if they were different. Was the loss worth it? That’s a question that lingers with them and their spouses.
It lingers with them when they sit back and sip chai. Only a few dare to face it, and never once do they discuss it. In a world where they were taught to suppress their feelings and emotions, they hardly ever do they spill them out. However, the glances exchanged while one man fills another’s cup convey a great deal of meaning. It’s the invisible wound that goes deep but never bleeds. Being from the same military system, they recognise it, but as accustomed to their trade, hardly ever resolve it. Their masculinity stays as a boulder between them, and somehow, a single pat on another’s shoulder after a quick joke seems to solve everything. Though in reality, it just buries the intrusive thoughts deeper into the heart. How could they even bring it up in conversations about logistics and results?
Silence grows, and it echoes between them. Bureaucracy and its environment were somehow a haven for them. But retirement doesn’t only relieve them of their duty, but it also becomes a symbol of moving on. The system progresses, frequently disregarding the names of those who served as the essential cogs and gears supporting its core. The system forgets, and they forget too. Certain uniforms, medals, and trinkets contain dust. The veterans often look at those, perhaps hoping to feel like they belong again. In a way, as they sit and joke around, you see they are not chasing victory anymore, just peace from a borrowed and fading memory. One of them just keeps staring at the horizon; another forgets a punchline midway through a joke. They have grey hair and perhaps wrinkled faces. Yet as they go to the podium, each one tries to erase the silence in their own way. You would say that after a lifetime, they would learn to accept the silence. But all I see are young people who were never allowed to grow, even though time was harsher than any war on them.
Society has a tendency to uproot emotional connections and a trend to enforce these restrictions on ageing men. They see their lives fading before their eyes. But as their ethos fades, they realise they lost something futile that they learnt as young boys. These odd concepts of masculinity deprive them of experiences that lead to a fulfilled life. Perhaps if there were a collective effort to actually amend such traditions, they would have a different story to tell.
Perhaps that’s what we all would do. High up in the sky, we often find ourselves lost in reminiscing about the things we’ve left behind. Oddly enough, I too was more focused on looking back and not ahead into the blue sky. Even though there was nothing but endless blue above me, I felt a sense of possibility and hope. And so perhaps when they leave the gathering, they would look up too. They would see that even though the world has become still and unforgiving, there is an endless blue ahead of them. It is a colour full of beauty and possibility.
