The event entitled 'Aakar-Sukumar' gets underway on Saturday at the District Sainik Board premises on Armed Forces Flag Day. The exhibition would be put up by Nirmala Sharma in the memory of her son Captain Devashish Sharma. Pride and grief seem to jostle with each other to be the uppermost emotion in the eyes of retired schoolteacher Nirmala Sharma, as she prepares for what has now become an annual ritual, an exhibition of her ceramic creations coinciding with the death anniversary of her only son Captain Devashish Sharma who made the supreme sacrifice in the war against terror as an officer of the Indian Army. "This year, I will display about 70 items including the pots, bowls, mugs, a basket and dogs," she told The Pioneer. like every year, the income generated would be donated to the Flag Day Fund.
Sharma's eyes reflect the indomitable strength to soldier on despite life's vicissitudes but also contain a tinge of the searing pain caused by the blow that fate dealt her and her now-deceased poet-husband Jitendra Kumar Sharma.
Capt Sharma, who was the family's sole representative in the Armed Forces, was posthumously decorated with the Kirti Chakra. The Jammu and Kashmir Government conferred the Sainya Seva Medal. While attached to the 10 Garhwal Rifles, the officer even received the Chief of Army Staff's Commendation. His mother has carefully preserved his uniform to this day. Nirmala Sharma, who taught Economics at kendriya vidyalayas, has a well-equipped workshop at her local residence for creating her eye-catching glazed pots. She assiduously painted lines of her husband's poems on some of them. In Phoolon Ki Ghati, Sharma who taught English and retired as Kendriya Vidyalaya principal in Hoshangabad wrote about the sheer excitement of journeying in the lap of nature with his son