3 May 1999

The wind in Kargil does not howl.

It cuts.

It does not shout.

It whispers death in your ear and waits.

My name is Squadron Leader Mayank. And I died on those mountains once… even though my body somehow came back.

When I close my eyes, I still see the white.

Not the soft white of snow you see in postcards. Not the romantic white people dream about. This was a cruel white. A blinding white that reflected sunlight so sharply it felt like knives entering your skull.

It was 1999. The war the world now calls the Kargil War had already begun to burn quietly across those icy ridges. We weren’t supposed to be fighting at that altitude. No one fights at 16,000 feet if they can avoid it. Oxygen thins, thoughts slow, fingers numb, rifles jam.

But we were there.

Because someone had crossed a line.

The Line of Control.

Before deployment, I remember my mother’s hands trembling slightly as she adjusted my collar. She tried to smile. She had always been strong. My father didn’t say much — he never did. But when he hugged me, it lasted two seconds longer than usual.

That’s how fathers say goodbye when they are scared.

I told them it would be routine. Just heightened vigilance. Just monitoring.

I lied.

We all lied to our families.

When we first reached base near Drass, the cold slapped us like it was personal. Even breathing hurt. You inhaled and it felt like your lungs were freezing from the inside.

We were briefed about infiltrators occupying peaks that overlooked our supply routes. High ground is power in warfare. Whoever sits on top controls destiny below.

And they were sitting on top.

Our job was simple on paper.

Climb. Engage. Reclaim.

Simple.

The problem with mountains is that they don’t forgive mistakes. And the enemy above you doesn’t miss much.

The first climb is what breaks you.

You don’t walk upright. You crawl. You cling to rocks. You dig your boots into ice. Every step is earned. Every breath is negotiated.

Bullets don’t sound dramatic up there. They crack. Short, angry sounds. You don’t see them. You feel the air move near your face. You press yourself into rock and pray the mountain adopts you.

The first man we lost was Verma.

He wasn’t shot.

He slipped.

One second he was ahead of me, whispering a joke about how after this he’d demand leave in Goa. The next second, the ice betrayed him.

He fell.

There is no dramatic scream in thin air. Just a fading sound. And then silence.

War isn’t always explosions.

Sometimes it’s gravity.

Nights were worse than gunfire.

At -15°C, even thoughts freeze. You try to sleep sitting up against rock because lying down means not getting up again. Your water freezes inside bottles. Your lips crack and bleed. Your toes lose sensation and you wonder if they are still attached.

But the enemy had bunkers.

They had advantage.

And they had the arrogance of height.

We were tasked with retaking a peak that had become a thorn in our logistics. The slope was almost vertical in parts. We moved at night. No lights. No sound. Just crunching snow and pounding hearts.

Halfway up, mortar shells started falling.

The sky lit orange.

You don’t feel fear immediately. You feel heat. You feel vibration. Then your brain catches up and says: This could be the last thing you see.

I remember shouting orders but my own voice sounded distant. Like it belonged to someone else.

We split formation.

And then it happened.

An explosion behind me.

A wave of force threw me forward. My helmet hit rock. For a second, there was only ringing.

When I turned, two of my men were down.

One wasn’t moving.

The other was screaming for his mother.

You cannot describe that sound to someone who hasn’t heard it.

It changes you.

We couldn’t retreat.

Retreat meant more deaths later.

So we climbed.

Bleeding hands gripping frozen stone.

Bullets cracking past ears.

One of my corporals, Khan, looked at me and said calmly, “Sir, if I don’t make it, tell my son I wasn’t scared.”

He was scared.

We all were.

But courage isn’t absence of fear.

It’s climbing anyway.

When we finally reached the ridge line, it was chaos at arm’s length. There’s no cinematic music. No slow motion. Just snow spraying, rifles firing, bodies colliding, breath fogging in the air.

I don’t remember firing consciously.

Training takes over.

You aim. You shoot. You move.

You survive.

Or you don’t.

At some point during the firefight, something slammed into my side.

I thought I had been punched.

Then warmth spread under my uniform.

Warmth in that cold is wrong.

I touched my side.

Blood.

The world tilted slightly.

I didn’t fall immediately. Adrenaline is a liar. It convinces you you’re immortal for a few minutes.

We secured the position.

But I collapsed seconds after.

I remember staring at the sky.

Blue. So blue.

It felt unfair that the sky could look peaceful while men lay dying beneath it.

My breathing became shallow. Each inhale burned. The pain arrived slowly, like a delayed message.

Khan was kneeling beside me.

He kept saying, “Sir, stay with me.”

I wanted to tell him I was tired.

So tired.

For a moment, I wasn’t afraid of death.

I was afraid of not seeing my parents again.

Afraid my mother would receive a folded flag instead of her son.

Afraid my father would stand straighter than ever at my funeral so no one saw him break.

Darkness began to close in.

And then… I remember cold snow being pressed against my face.

“Stay awake!” someone shouted.

The helicopter evacuation came hours later.

Hours.

At that altitude, with blood loss, hours are eternity.

I drifted in and out.

At one point, I genuinely believed I had died.

I woke up in a military hospital days later.

The first thing I noticed was warmth.

Then pain.

Then the realization that I was alive.

A bullet had torn through muscle but missed vital organs by inches.

Inches.

Men stronger than me had died there.

Men braver than me.

And I was lying in a clean bed breathing.

Survivor’s guilt is heavier than any rifle.

When I was informed that the peak had been successfully secured and would later be associated with operations like those seen during battles around Tiger Hill, I felt pride.

But pride came mixed with something darker.

Faces haunted me.

Verma falling.

The soldier calling for his mother.

The silence after gunfire.

When I finally returned home months later, the country had celebrated victory.

People waved flags.

Strangers thanked me.

They called us heroes.

But they never see the nights.

They don’t see how you wake up gasping because in your dream you’re still climbing.

They don’t see how loud noises make your body tense instantly.

They don’t see how snow — even in movies — makes your hands sweat.

Years later, I visited a war memorial.

Names engraved in stone.

Some of them were mine to carry.

I ran my fingers over Verma’s name.

He never got his Goa leave.

I did.

And I hated that.

You asked how I survived.

Truth?

Luck.

Training.

And the refusal of the men beside me to let me die.

War doesn’t make you fearless.

It makes you aware of how fragile everything is.

I am Squadron Leader Mayank.

I fought in Kargil.

I barely survived.

And every breath I take today feels borrowed from those mountains.

Because up there, in that merciless white silence, a part of me never came back.