It was an evening of the dead in Ypres, the Flemish city in Belgium. In its monumental sprawl lay buried the memories of one of the bloodiest chapters in World War I-the Battle of Flanders. In these fields, as John McCrae immortalised in one of the most quoted war poems of remembrance, "The poppies blow between the crosses, row on row, that mark our place." They grow red on the blood of the dead, among whom were more than 30,000 Indian soldiers of the British imperial army. One of them, Khudadad Khan, a sepoy with the 129th Duke of Connaught's Own Baluchis, was the first Indian to be decorated with the Victoria Cross. On October 31, 1914, badly wounded and the lone survivor in his detachment, he continued to fire the machine gun. In the end, he was left for dead, but Khan managed to crawl back to his unit. Such legends of the warrior are scattered in the war-scarred Flanders Field, a chosen destination for travellers in the perforated provinces of history. They pass the Menin Gate, a reconstructed memorial to the missing soldiers of Britain and the Commonwealth but originally a narrow passage through which once marched the Allied forces to the warfront, as men humbled by the enormity of memory. Every evening at eight, buglers from Ypres Fire Brigade sound the Last Post at the gate, a homage to those who don't even have a marked grave. On Friday, November 10, on the eve of Armistice Day, they played it a few hours early.
 | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | WAR PILGRIM: lays a wreath at the war memorial At Ypres, a very special guest, perhaps the most protected and the least vocal Lady of Deliverance from the Orient, walked past the Menin Gate. | | It was an extraordinary day for Ypres-and for those Indian soldiers who died in someone else's war. On a wintry evening, a very special guest, perhaps the most protected and the least vocal Lady of Deliverance from the Orient, walked past the Menin Gate, her saree and shawl of muted colours in perfect harmony with the grey, funereal atmospherics of the moment. It was unlikely that, while crossing the arch that marks one of Europe's worst follies, she remembered-or someone asked her to remember-the angst of the dissenting poet: "Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride/'Their name liveth for ever', the Gateway claims/Was ever an immolation so belied/As these intolerably nameless names?/Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime/Rise and deride this sepulcher of crime." There was, indeed, another piece of poetry deep inside her coat pocket, which would not be read out but copied a few minutes later in the Book of Honour of the Last Post Association of Ypres. She was walking towards the Indian Memorial, the grim solemnity of the occasion-or was it just jetlag?-written all over her face, which would remain so for the rest of the evening. Remember, it was all about the dead in Ypres, and Sonia Gandhi was immaculate in her graveyard gravitas.
There were no red poppies to welcome her, but there were buglers and pipers, and most overwhelmingly, flashing cameras and desperate notepads, mercilessly controlled by security guards. Asia's most powerful woman was in granite stillness as the local buglers played the Last Post, followed by the Lament by Indian pipers. It was a tableau steeped in little ironies. There she was, a European who had gone native, paying tribute to those thousands of Indian men who were mere cannon fodder in a European war. No political leader of her stature from the subcontinent had been here before to remember the dead. Perhaps the moment required an Indianness unspoiled by accent. She didn't say a word. She did write a few borrowed-and eloquent-ones in the Book of Honour: "My being here to pay homage to the brave Indian soldiers who laid down their lives in the prime of their youth and so far away from their beloved motherland reminds me of the poet's line: 'It feels a shame to be alive when men so brave are dead, one envies the distinguished dust, permitted such a head'. I salute their memory." Thank you, Emily Dickinson. After this literary flourish, she and her entourage-local grandees and her Indian minders like Tourism and Culture Minister Ambika Soni, the Indian Ambassador in Belgium Deepak Chatterjee, ICCR Chairman Karan Singh and Director Pavan Varma-walked across the cobbled square to the town hall for a short reception. It was pretty obvious from the Belgian cops who guarded the gate: the highest security threat to Sonia in a foreign country comes from Indian journalists. So while the Belgians indulged the president of the Indian National Congress and the chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance with the reverence due to a queen (call it the extra-territorial aura of the Empress Dowager of 10 Janpath) in exclusivity, the despised scribblers had the choice of savouring the gothic splendour of Saint Martin's Cathedral or waiting for the lady to return in the next door café De Trompet. In a few minutes, she was back and led to a waiting Audi. Soni was the privileged co-passenger. It would be a 90-minute drive to Hotel Conrad in Brussels, where she would have dinner in Presidential Suite 307. If Day One of Sonia's two-day visit to Belgium, one of her rare foreign forays, was funereal in nature, the next would be celebratory. The fiercely guarded guest, though, would remain enigmatically remote: a presence less revealed; power that is felt but not heard; her every movement stage managed by the officialdom. It was very much on display when she came for lunch at the imposing Chateau de Laeken in the suburb, the royal residence. "The palace is a neutral place, so no questions please," the protocol officer warned the media, who have been bussed to the venue much in advance and placed in safe corners. "The lunch was sumptuous, especially the fish. Conversation? Oh, she talked about why Europe and India were natural allies," one of the guests revealed later. Finally, in the afternoon, moments after she became Dr Sonia Gandhi, Brussels would hear her at Palais des Beaux-Arts: "I was but 18 when I met my husband, and not long after, I married and moved to India. I am reminded of what my mother-in-law, Mrs Indira Gandhi, used to say, 'One's real education is in the University of Life'. What I am today is largely because of being a member of the remarkable family into which I married." It was supposed to be the inauguration of Tejas, a majestic exhibition of Indian art spanning centuries as part of the Festival of India in Brussels. It was the inauguration of Sonia Gandhi, India's Exhibit Number One in the understated capital of Europe. Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt decorated her with the country's highest civilian honour, Grand Officer of the Order of Leopold. The Free University of Brussels, by awarding her the degree of Honoris Causa, put her in the same league as Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel. And when she visited the exhibition, it was Sonia, not the ancient sculptures of Nataraja and Chamundi, who was the most watched-and photographed item. Of course, she had to hurry up; there was a private dinner with the prime minister, her last engagement in Brussels. Power choreographed could not have been more perfect. That was Sonia Gandhi in the placid city of Brussels: a stillness, a flash, a presence in fortified distance. She was at home.
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