Brigadier Ravi Datt Mehta’s pyre was still smouldering when V Venkateswara Rao’s son Aniket began performing his father’s last rites at the military’s funeral grounds on Tuesday evening.
Both diplomats were brutally slain on Monday morning when a suicide bomber crashed his car into their vehicle outside the gates of the Indian Embassy in Kabul.
I wasn’t acquainted with Mehta, but Venkateswara Rao, or Venkat, was known to me. Between 1995 and 1998, Venkat and I were in Colombo: he as a junior Indian diplomat and me a first-time foreign correspondent in the Sri Lankan capital.
There were friends, family, colleagues at Venkat’s funeral. Solemn faces. Some quietly shedding a tear. Venkat is a “shahid”, who died while representing India’s Foreign Service abroad.
His wife, Malathi, whom I hadn’t seen in a decade, was clutching the tricolour as her children stood by, dazed and stunned. Somebody had handed it over to her. I didn’t have the courage to walk up and speak to her.
I spotted some retired diplomats in the crowd. They, too, had come to pay homage to a young officer who had a promising career ahead. Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma was there, too, representing the government.
Finally, I mustered up the courage and walked up to Venkat’s wife and mumbled my condolences to her. There was nothing else to be done.
{{/usCountry}}Finally, I mustered up the courage and walked up to Venkat’s wife and mumbled my condolences to her. There was nothing else to be done.
{{/usCountry}}As Mehta and Venkat’s last rites were performed in the Capital, the bodies of Indo-Tibetan Border Police personnel Roop Singh and Ajai Pathania, who were on guard duty at the embassy, were cremated in their respective home towns of Hoshiarpur and Pathankot.
A slice of the Afghan tragedy had been brought home to India. The families of Venkat, Mehta, Roop Singh and Pathania will live with this tragedy forever.