Vultures are circling the sky....look up!

I have been writing till my fingers cramp this past week…why? Why did I remain silent when Delhi saw blasts, during the Jaipur dhamakas? I lived in Delhi when we saw bombs going off in different places on different dates. So it is certainly not because of that I’m here now. It is because I saw a real threat, a very big danger to all India. This time the terrorist has planned and plotted for a long time and has reached a level of competency which surpasses its previous attempts by far. BY FAR! We are in terrible danger and the clock is ticking!

Today the level of this danger lies exposed when Pakistan has been reprieved by the US…Pakistanis have the world’s most wanted hidden away in their country which gives it an edge… America wants Osama so much that it would sell its mother to get at him. We have NO allies. We stand alone in the world today. I have 2 generations of Forces blood in my veins…believe me, we are on the highway to disaster if we do not take a tough stand today. The civilian may be unaware but this exact scenario is what we have talked about for years in the fauji circles…..ask them, it comes as no surprise there. What do you expect when Pakistan has gotten away with murder, no pun intended, for years? It was stated ‘Ki humko ghar mein ghush kar marega Pakistani’ if we did not show our teeth. We have miles and miles and miles of borders….impossible to patrol all the time. We have infiltration going on all the time….even a country like Bangladesh knows how easy it is to get into India . The Nepali comes and goes as he pleases. The terrorist comes and goes, tea in Pakistan , lunch in India , breakfast again in Pak!! God! Aren’t we gluttons for punishment! Can we check the billion Indians each time they travel…and their baggage? Is it humanly possible, especially now when the politicians’ long sweet siesta has resulted in terror cells all over the place… Hyderabad , Delhi , Mumbai…the terrorists have safe houses all over the countryside!

I repeat…hit them now and hit them hard. Hit the hands that feed them…attack the terror camps in Pak and blast them into kingdom come….the Armed Forces are ready. If there is anyone who deals us a winning hand it is them. The fauji wins every time…despite all odds. And we need to stop being scared so much…the person who has sympathy with the terrorist is nobody…he has no religion, no country…stop labeling them and pussyfooting around. We have to stop being defensive, stop protecting...we have to go on the offensive….make them protect themselves…let them also get a taste of blood and terror. The enemy will not stop, I stake my life on this fact. We will have to make them.

The vultures are circling in the sky….look up! We think the US is our godfather…fat chance! The US would be our best friend if we suddenly discovered oil….till then I am afraid, that you and me will have to protect each other’s back.

I am ready….are you?

If I do not sing long and loud today, then when do I?

A few friends feel I am taking things a bit too personally. Yes, I do that. India and Indians have been lampooned and lambasted enough in my opinion. We are a beautiful people. If you need to know what hospitality is all about, go to a village home. Go to an Indian anywhere in the world. In an obscure town in the US , a Gujarati running a motel, made me some most welcome masala tea after the dishwater I had been forced to ingest and fed us dinner. He did not charge a penny and told me that I was at my brother’s place. Look at the face of hospitality our Taj staff offered their guests when under attack…staying put when they could have fled, guiding and calming them and acting like human shields! A waiter doing this as part of his duty? I will look at a waiter with new eyes from now.

If you want to see bravery, meet the average Indian. The Bapi Sen who gives up his life saving an ordinary woman from hoodlums, the men who jump in raging rivers to save complete strangers from drowning, even my father who refuses to pay even the smallest of bribes (the chai-pani) and will run endlessly to get the smallest job done for months and dare you suggest that he simply pay that dratted bribe and be done with all the rigmarole …they are the simple ordinary folk who want to make a difference. One of our constables threw a chair at the terrorist firing with an AK-47…a chair!! It is like me standing at the border and spitting at the enemy…that futile but isn’t it simply a marvelous gesture.? Especially since the constable admits his legs were quaking!

You want to see courage under fire then you need to meet an Army jawan. He is one of the most ill-equipped, most disadvantaged pawn who goes in to fight losing battles, thanks to policies made by people who might collapse if they had to spend a night in a bunker at a remote post, and he still turns the tide. He wins the war. He certainly does not do it for money or recognition…he is just a pawn and will be just as easily be sacrificed.

You want to see tolerance then see us. We not only accept all our diversities, we tolerate such conditions of living which would make the inmates of Hell rebel. 48 hr power shortages, 10 hour power cuts daily, roads that would make a camel throw up, traffic jams that stretch endlessly during office hours and make us hit the road an hour early simply to escape the worst of it…and the poverty that we tolerate…deaths due to starvation in a world that staples it’s stomach to stop eating!

And I am taking it too personally…I think we all should! We make one of the world’s most beautiful people such underdogs that my very body organs are rebelling. What do you feel when you see an animal beaten to death, a small child being hit, a man standing up to twenty and being killed? Multiply it a thousandfold and that is my feeling. I know that I might achieve the very pinnacle of success personally but it means nothing if my countrymen are being bombed on a daily basis. Personal growth and development is nothing if we stand where we are today….if God himself told me that I could be a Lakshminarayan Mittal today if I just turned a blind eye to all the horror, I would refuse.

Life does go on…take away all four limbs and the eyes and cut off the ears and the nose and the tongue and life would go on. Is that what life is all about…mere tenacity? A stubborn hanging on to the breath in our body? Or is it achieving what our Maker had in mind when He made us in his image?

Why I write is because every army has a band it marches to. I am in the band. I believe the glory of my country and I am not afraid to sing it out aloud. It is a song I heard as a child and it reverberates in me. If the song dies, I die. And if I do not sing long and loud today, then when do I?

Open Letter to Mr Unnikrishnan

Dear Mr. Unnikrishnan,

You do not know me but I owe you a great debt. It sits on my shoulder like the body of a much loved brother, it shrouds my heart and casts a pall on all that I do….I know not how to repay you and that is my biggest agony. I see you as you speak to the media without a quaver in your voice, I see your wife with a broken heart and I am lashed with a pain that has no voice. Your son died saving my son and it weighs me down…speak to me and ask for something in return…I will give you my blood and the very marrow from my bone! Forgive me as I am the cause of your brilliant son fading…I did not see the enemy neither did I recognize it and when it attacked me with the ferocity of a thousand lions, I could only run and try to hide. I left the battle to your son and he has gone to the soldier’s paradise. He has done his duty and asked for nothing and I am cursed.

I am cursed as I lie at night wrestling with sleep as images of the dead and dying call out to me. I am cursed when I see the beautiful face of your son. I am cursed when I look at the face of grief that is your wife. I look at my sleeping son lying safe in his bed and I am overwhelmed. I cannot begin to imagine what courage it takes you to get up in the morning and face another day.

If it gives you any small iota of relief, let me tell you that it is the sacrifice of soldiers like your son which make me hold up my head high. It ignites a feeling of great self esteem and it is what makes me hopeful. If we have men like your son still left in India , then we will come into our own. These men show me a bright, shining vision of the future and make me a believer. Our fat, ugly, disillusioned sorry caricatures who are our politicians who suck out hope and glory and tarnish all that is good in our world fail in their task of destroying our faith. Men like Major Sandeep who live by their ideals unflinchingly are our saviours. We see them and recognize in them a pure spirit burning bright. They are our beacons…they shine forth like our star of hope and we can weather all storms.

Mr. Unnikrishnan, you are the exceedingly brave father of a lion among men. In your grief, know this that all Indians have seen him and his faith and his love for our country…in his death he has become immortal.

Death will come to us all. It will carry us away leaving only our loved ones sorrowful…your son’s funeral has made a whole nation grief-stricken. It has made all Indians say a prayer for him and his family. It has made us sit up and has lit a fire under us. He single-handedly silenced Mr. Raj Thackeray with his deed. This sorry politician’s career is over before it began…the so-called leader of the Marathi hides his face at home when a soldier rams home his point in so direct a fashion. Raj Thackeray was cowering beneath his bed when “his” Mumbai was burning and the men in uniform fought and gave up their lives for an India they unite and protect. No talk, no rhetoric just a heroic fight to the finish!

Mr. Unnikrishnan, if we have more men like your son then India WILL become a superpower.

I salute you and your family.

God bless you all.
An indebted Indian.

I sing because my India will prevail!

My friends ask me why I do not send my mails to newspapers. I am only a songbird and I sing in my agony…if I could be more, I would be a soldier. If I could be more, I would be a patriotic politician. Since I am not, I will just sing my songs since I seem to do this best…I do not care about the size of my audience, it lessens my pain!

I sing to my countrymen of an India in peril.

I sing about the unsung bravery of our defence personnel.

I sing to warn us of a looming disaster we have seen yet fail to recognize.

I sing that a terrorist deserves nothing more than he offers.

I sing for a march against all enemies of India …whether they come from foreign lands or from within.

I sing that we all realize that we are Indians and we rise and fall together.

I sing that the bullet is blind and the bomb does not care…we can be Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Farsi, Parsi, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker for all it cares.

I sing that a dead Indian has no price tag…he is irreplaceable.

I sing about the terror we all experience and endure yet do nothing to curb.

I sing because I have no place to go and we have no place left to hide.

I sing because my house burns and my heart burns and I find only apathy and helplessness around me.

I sing too because there might be a glimmer of hope.

I sing because we might have been pushed too far.

I sing because the Indian might get up and dust himself off and ram the enemy head on.

I sing because there might be something stirring inside a slumbering India .

I sing because this foolish bird has pride in her breast and a great blooming hope.

And I sing because my India will prevail…there are too many of us for it to do otherwise!

I have had enough, I can not see one more dead, I am ready for change

I thank some of my friends who mailed me back and shared their thoughts with me. I have written these impassioned words as I am filled with disquiet and foreboding. I refuse to speak diplomatically....diplomacy has no place when one's countrymen lie with limbs torn asunder in their own homes!

I am a Forces person, I have seen the Armed Forces from within...we have seen this coming. We are a nation who do not remember nor respect our defenders and heroes. We pay compensation for valour and following one's dharma! What price do you place on a jawan who dies on our border, defending us, unsung and forgotten with an entire family dependant upon him? What price a fauji who knows that he is ill-equipped and fighting a battle with his hands tied behind his back yet who forges forward shouting "Veer Bhogya Vasundhara"! What price a DTC driver who drives his passengers to safety and goes blind trying to dispose of the parcel bomb safely? What price a constable who chases armed goons with only a lathi? We then dispose of such sterling men thinking they merely did their duty. If doing our duty was this easy, we would not be in this fix today.

We can run only so far. Sooner or later we will have to stop and fight. Let us not be the Pandavas, righteous yet weak, running away from our cousins, refusing to stand up when we are first struck, hiding behind false notions of 'dharma' and compassion! We have run away from Pakistan over and over again. Pakistan is no bogeyman...it is our deepest and darkest enemy and what it is doing to us follows the principles of war...we do not see them coming, they use deception, darkness and terror, they spread maximum violence with minimum means. And they use the media, home and abroad to yell how India troubles them. This is war! Even if they write us a letter headed "WE ARE COMING TO KILL YOU AND YOUR FAMILIES AS YOU IDIOTS LIE THERE SLEEPING", we will still ask for proof and ask "Is it really them or are they being used as scapegoats"?

Please go to our borders for a day and see for yourselves. I beseech you to judge for yourselves...and take your kids along. Ask your Army friends for this favour...have your eyes opened...WE HAVE BEEN AT WAR WITH PAKISTAN FOR YEARS...it is a secret war where stupid Indians, who are the most image conscious hypocrites alive, tie their hands behind their backs in some dumb reasoning and take on the merciless Pakis who gouge out eyes of our patrol parties, who capture our fishermen in our own waters, who penetrate our borders and recruit our misguided youth under our very noses.

Go to Jammu where there is a war raging on...they will shoot you as you walk under the Chinar trees, smelling a rose....it is our land yet we are the enemy. Why do we need more proof? Why does your heart not burn? Why can you sleep? Why do the cries of our ambushed not reach our ears? Why do we shrug our shoulders and say "God's will"? Why do we content ourselves with 'Kya kare"?

Let us start a movement and do something. Let us not have to choose between political candidates where one has 20 cases against him and the other is simply a murderer. Let us get some honest guys on board...We can do it...we did it for Jessica Lal...we did it for Priyadarshini Mattoo...we can do so for ourselves. Our thoughts shape our actions and actions define reality! let us make it real, people!

I have had enough...I can not see one more dead...I am ready for change.

This time around, let us fight for peace!

See, what I've been yelling from the rooftops is slowly being proved…that these were no ordinary run of the mill terrorist attacks. Now they are talking of "mother ships" and satellite phones and rocket launchers and definite links to Pakistan . I can see the future and I am terrified. The Pakistanis have come to our door to fight and we are unprepared! Wake up people and smell the coffee. They will attack schools next…do we want to hold our dead futures in our arms before we decide we will make a stand!

Even the media is taking strength from the presence of the Indian Army in our midst. And we say 'all will be well' when we see them go in to fight for us. Let us acknowledge our Armed Forces and give them what has been long overdue….honour and our trust. And some moolah too! They take bullets in our stead, they keep you and yours safe. They stand between us and anarchy…

And make the politicians accountable, for God's sake. These pigs have gone too far. They release ferocious terrorists from prison for ONE politician's daughter, they shell out a pittance for our safe-keepers, they divide us over ridiculous issues…Mr. Raj Thackeray, in those OG trucks are men from all over India , those from North India and South India , who come under one banner, our tricolour. Do you have the guts to send them away from "your" Mumbai which is burning fiercely, can you defend your Maharastra? The enemy is knocking on your door and I do not see the "lion of Mumbai" around! All I see is the olive green uniform.

I am burning too from indignation and a sense of loss. I mourn the blameless dead and the wounded. I mourn the fiercely burning Taj …it is a symbol of Indian pride going up in flames. I am ashamed that the world's biggest democracy and the most populous country, the awakening economic superpower is this vulnerable. I want the Indian Tiger to get up and roar so that the world listens!!

This time around, let us not forget! This time around let the dead be avenged!

This time around, let us not endure! This time around let us fight for peace!