There is no roster. No medals, no monuments, no record that any of them ever served. The state does not recruit them so much as find them — three women the country had already left behind — and asks them to do what cannot be admitted.
They are not after revenge. They carry their fallen forward — seva, duty, the lineage of Rani Lakshmibai — and answer to honour, not to grief. Seen for a heartbeat, then gone, like smoke off a battlefield.
DHUAAN — धुआँ — "smoke." The ghost the state can never admit it has.
