‘‘We are looking at longevity and maintenance,’’ says Shaikh. With footlights beaming on it, the sculpture will gleam bright day and night. So will the surrounding black granite walls on which will be etched in gold the names of about 9,000 martyrs from the North. Sandhu is acquainted with at least 22 of them.

‘‘I attended their cremations, met their families, felt their anguish,’’ says Sandhu, taking you back to 1999 when he was the deputy commissioner of Gurdaspur, which lost 22 young soldiers in the Kargil War. ‘‘I can remember each one of them,’’ Sandhu shakes his head, telling you how for once dead soldiers ceased to be mere statistics for him.

IT’S uncanny how almost everyone associated with the memorial has an army connection. The three engineers—Harsh Kumar, Dalbir Singh and Lalit Chugh —were NCC C certificate cadets who still cherish their month-long stints with men in OG that had them handling guns, doing night patrols and going bath-less for days; the contractor’s brother is a serving colonel, and there are others like work inspector Hardayal Singh who are looking forward to the memorial, for its walls will carry a name from home. ‘‘Sepoy Sunder Singh of my village is among the martyrs,’’ says Hardayal, who wasn’t even born when Sunder laid down his life in the 1962 war.

Birdsong fills the air as we make our way around the memorial awash with silence. It’s the perfect resting place for those brave men, we muse. ‘‘With our deadline—July 31—approaching, now we are in the process of selecting a befitting plaque for it,’’ says Harsh.

... contd.