It's been just two months since Lance Naik Nazir Ahmad Wani -- the first Kashmiri to be chosen for the Ashoka Chakra -- lost his life while gallantly fighting six heavily armed terrorists, but his wife is already working on a meaningful tribute to him which she knows would have made him proud.
"In my own way, I will try to show the right path to children and youngsters. I will tell them that you have to do something for Kashmir," says Mahajabeen, a school teacher and mother of two.
"If I see anyone taking the wrong path, I will stop him or her," she says, adding her inspiration has been her husband's "resolute sense of duty" which made him take on the militants on the fateful day of November 25 , though he knew he might not come out alive from the gunbattle.
Mahajabeen is here to receive the Ashoka Chakra, the country's highest peacetime gallantry award, that has been conferred on Wani posthumously on Republic Day.
"He telephoned me on the evening of Novemver 24. He told me about the encounter, and knew he is going to die. But he was resolute in his sense of duty.... He told me to sleep well and asked me not to worry," she said, adding despite the danger involved in the operation it did not blight his resolve.
Though Mahajabeen, who is in her late 30s, did not want to talk about the situation in the Valley or militancy in the border state, she opened up when asked about youngsters in Kashmir.
"I want to do something for the youngsters, school children. They are the future of Kashmir. My husband's fearless persona and love for me have been driving me to do something for them," she told PTI in an interview.
It was love at first sight when they first met at a school in South Kashmir around 15 years back, said Mahajabeen when pressed to talk about her journey with Wani, the militant-turned-armyman who hailed from Cheki Ashmuji in Kulgam district of Jammu and Kashmir.
"I did not cry when I was told he is no more. There was an inner resolve which did not allow me to cry," she said
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