CHANDIGARH: It’s not just another official project, it’s an act of gratitude for us.’’ At most times, S K Sandhu, the bureaucrat heading the UT administration committee working on the Chandigarh War Memorial, is a man of few dry words but mention the memorial and he lets his enthusiasm talk.

He is not the only one. At the ruby and emerald Bouganvillea Gardens, every person associated with the memorial, quietly unfolding behind a silvery tin curtain, is passionate.

Framed by a jacaranda tree shooting a purple spray on the ground, executive engineer Harsh Kumar, gropes for words as he underlines the uniqueness of the project. ‘‘The design needs regular monitoring, every day, every inch. We have to work with military-like precision... after all it’s a tribute to our soldiers.’’

A people’s initiative led by The Indian Express which garnered over Rs 57 lakh, the first-of-its-kind memorial for the martyrs of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal resonates with popular participation. Conceived by former Punjab Governor Lt Gen J F R Jacob (retd) at the instance of The Indian Express (which had earlier led a similar initiative in Pune) in 2003, the Memorial will enshrine the names of nearly 9,000 martyrs who laid down their lives for the nation.

THE model of the Memorial was designed by two young students of the Chandigarh College of Architecture (CCA), Nanaki Singh and Shivani Guglani, whose entry was adjudged the best by the people of Chandigarh after a competition was held amongst students.

Today contractor Rakesh Chander calls the al fresco petal-shaped memorial— imagine the figure of 6 intertwined with 9—his most challenging project to date. ‘‘It’s a series of elliptical circles with two or three radii, then there is the gradient—the memorial tapers down to 5.6 ft. We had to make special shuttering plates besides employing highly skilled labour,’’ says Chander, who is bemused by the 6 and 9. His house No is 69 and so is that of his vehicle. Talking of numbers, there is also a 786 emblazoned across a temporary toolshed. ‘‘Like the forces, we are very secular,’’ grins Kumar.

Though the groundbreaking ceremony got over in April last year, it was some time before the project could take off, for the engineers had to synergise the undulating terrain with the circular memorial. Then, there were three young Kusum trees that would have faced death by axe had the memorial come up in the exact place allotted to it. So the design was tweaked just a wee bit to ensure that the trees were saved. UT’s Chief Engineer V K Bhardwaj and Chief Architect Renu Saigal conducted a series of meetings to overcome the hurdles and get the project going.

IT’S a project so unique that Dalbir Singh, the cheerful assistant engineer stationed at the site, says he’s never worked on such a project in 27 years of his service.

‘‘Nor have I,’’ chips in Shams A Shaikh, the young assistant architect from Mumbai who not only fine-tuned the memorial layout but also designed its 22.5-foot-high sculpture at the centre, which is today the talking point of the team’s weekly meets on Tuesdays.

‘‘He took a while to design it but it’s worth every second that went into it,’’ enthuses Sandhu. Shaikh, a JJ School of Arts graduate, who breaks into Marathi every time he picks up his cell (It’s my wife, he grins), says the sculpture, which looks like a cross between a rose bud and Eiffel Tower (Shaikh winces when you put it like that) represents three wings of the armed forces that merge into one at the top. Fashioning it out of stone would have been problematic so Team Memorial decided to shape it out of brass.

‘‘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.

Unbidden, my mind flies to a World War II cemetery in Imphal and a little plaque placed by the parents of a young British soldier that read: ‘‘A soldier to the world, he was the whole world for us.’’

These brave men, they will always mean the whole world to us.

Shrine to a soldier

• Chandigarh War Memorial was conceived by former Punjab Governor Lt Gen J F R Jacob (retd) in 2003 at the instance of The Indian Express, which had earlier built a similar memorial in Pune in 2003

• Its groundbreaking ceremony at the majestic Bouganvillea Gardens took place in April 2005 and the memorial will be ready by end of July