The speaker is an official working through a stack of Army Welfare Board cheques made out to soldiers' widows. At first the job is pure routine: he signs, ticks, checks figures against the screen, grumbles about his tired eyes and the workload, and keeps a polite smile fixed on his face. The list of names, each with "Wd/o Late Sepoy" attached, reads like paperwork, flat and bureaucratic.
Then the poem turns. Suddenly he sees the battlefield those men died in: freezing snows, burning sands, cannon fire, bodies blown apart. The names stop being entries and become Joseph, Pavithran and Gopalan, real men. The shift is sharp, and the stretch of vivid, violent imagery contrasts with the dull office opening.
The ending is quiet. He slows his hand and lays the cheques "gently" in the basket. That small change in behaviour shows his irritation giving way to respect, even guilt. The mood moves from weary routine to shock, then to subdued reverence.