City Monument – Three Unbreathing Soldiers, Teen Murti Traffic Circle
Souvenirs of a war.
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]
Almost everybody knows that Teen Murti Memorial derives its name from those three statues plonked in the centre of the landscaped garden… right?
But many of us probably haven’t been able to carefully inspect these bronze statues of soldiers, because the garden itself isn’t easily accessible–what with teeming traffic and other inconveniences.
Those who might turn up this late afternoon, here in Luytens’ Delhi, would spot a rose lying at the base of this memorial to Indian soldiers who died fighting in West Asia during World War I. The plinth is inscribed with some details about this brigade, both in Urdu and English; while the tablet soaring upwards lists the names of those killed or missing.
No one has any idea where English sculptor Leonard Jennings OBE got his particular inspiration back in 1922. One does immediately notice is that all three have moustaches and are wearing pagdis or turbans, with long tunics falling down to their knees.
They’re standing erect, as you’d expect, and each holding a lance: as though the regiment is being inspected by a general or perhaps even the King-Emperor himself.
The sculptor himself rendered most of his commissions in India. Jennings’ work included a 10-foot statue of King George V unveiled in Patna only a few years before Independence.
With the sun now setting, a Border Security Force soldier in this high security area of the capital now enters the garden and walks right up to the statues. Armed with an assault rifle, he gazes at a plaque inscribed with this thought: Their name liveth for evermore.
Lest we forget
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DVLCE ET DECORVM EST PRO PATRIA MORI
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
– Wilfred Owen
nice