Those who hold up the sky

AROUND EASTER IN April 2023, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, six-year-old Taras and his mother, Daryna, went to visit his father’s grave, near Hostomel

- Mridula Ghosh

Taras was holding a small drawing of a big plane, with the words “Mriya never dies” written on them. I joined them. In February 2022, within a few days of Russia’s full-blown invasion against Ukraine, troops were nearing Kyiv. Taras’s father, Yevhen, who worked at the Hostomel airport, succumbed to fatal injuries received during heavy fighting on the outskirts. The world’s largest aircraft, “Mriya”, was housed in Hostomel and it was destroyed in a missile attack. It was symbolic, as mriya in Ukrainian means dream.

Daryna then was in Ternopil in west Ukraine with Taras, and came to know about her husband’s death only weeks later. Shocked and heartbroken, she told Taras that his father was holding the sky up, until it became too heavy for him. Falling, the sky crushed everybody, including “Mriya”. Since then, Taras believes that holding the sky up is the most important thing in this war. It is indeed so.

During February and March 2022, “closing the sky” above Ukraine was the most urgent need of the hour. Multiple campaigns led to no result. Ukraine’s allies faltered in becoming a party to the war and opted to give anti-missile systems instead. Colossal damages not only to military, but also civilian infrastructure, innumerable deaths, injuries, displacement and sufferings of people in places distant from the Russian border are all results of massive air raids.