We appall the world with our moral, physical, ethical weaknesses!

A few years back I had caught an Oprah Winfrey show where an eye catching woman, flashing diamonds, took the audience on a tour of her house. I still shudder to recall those images. That lady had a small dog and one of her loos was chock-a-block with small, black pellets. You guessed it…it was dried dog poo! Probably years old! And the rest of the interior matched that filth encrusted bathroom….things had gone so much out of hand that that woman came on the show and faced the disgust and horror of strangers to ask for professional aid in cleaning up herself and her home. I thought she should have burned down her house and started afresh!

Reminds me of Indians and India…we have let things get so much out of hand that we too have years of excreta jamming up all our systems and now look at each other and debate about what is to be done! The frailer ones decide to jump ship and emigrate…others just continue to exist in this unwholesome set up.

Nothing works here….and even when we are torn apart and blown up into bloody chunks, the survivors and onlookers debate!

If debates could replace action then we would be the most efficient people on the planet…the TV each day covers people from various fields…debating! Endless repetitions of what happened and why and how! What should be done, and can be done and how to do it!

Our politicians breast beat in public and apologise and…debate! What their party has done, and how and why they are superior to the other parties. And the only time their vacant eyes show steely determination, it is when they are direct contenders to the “kursi”….the rest of the time, they are on auto pilot. You can blow up their public to kingdom come and they would go about their business as if all was peachy perfect!

Its been a fortnight since the Indian public was ambushed and attacked, as it went about its business, by trained militants now proven beyond doubt to have come in from Pakistan …and we debate! Pranab Mukerji says that India will not tolerate any of this any longer. So what are we doing now? Aren’t we tolerating? And enduring? And what a fine message we are delivering to a world wide audience….come and kill us when you please and as you please and in as many innovative ways as you can dream up…and we will debate!

We are a scared nation who make public displays of lamenting and have the memories of goldfish…lasting precisely 5 seconds!

We are in deep, deep trouble.

Pakistan is showing far more fire and mettle….it will not give us Dawood. It will not send the ISI chief here although it is so very very sad about what went on here… where is the proof? All know about its policy towards terrorism…Pakistan has never been its advocate and will wipe out terrorism from the face of the earth….excuse their tiny training camps in their backyards….national security matters, you see!! Overlook the fact that Kasab is singing like a canary and spilling all the beans, in between calling out to his mother. Pakistan wants proof! And Pakistan always gets what it wants! So we aam Indians can like it or lump it! Life is unfair, get used to it!

We are going to get strafed again and we will catch a glimpse of hell on earth…the unluckier ones will get a bellyful of the terrorist might and in that aftermath too…we will debate!

We will continue to have no stomach for fights, and we will discuss fair play and dissuade the hotheads amongst us that anger never achieved anything, we will debate and backpedal and discuss terrorism till it feels like an old friend…and wait to be blown up again…so that we can again congregate and light candles and march and abuse our leaders and give vent to all the emotions that have no outlet ordinarily and wait again for some more bombs! After all we are a billion strong…can’t we spare a thousand odd countrymen every few months to some terrorist activity? Ha, ha..where is your sense of humour!

Circular paths! Retracing our steps over and over again! The sheer futility of life itself!

Whom can we call and where can we air the disgusting cesspool of our lives to get some professional help? Where is Oprah? Let us take her on a guided tour and show her the mockery we have made of our lives....let the audience gasp with loathing….who lives in homes like ours?

I feel a deep connection with that poor doctor who made it his business to check security in cabs and is now in police custody! He is trying to make a difference….he is fighting back. He realized that nothing would shake off our immense lethargy and inertia and tried to do his bit. Let the man off, for Christ’s sake and go catch some terrorists!

Aren’t we stereotypical bullies? All bullies are cowards…so we let other countries wallop us around and cringe! And when we catch someone weaker, don’t we just come into our own? Publicly lynching cycle thieves, dragging young boys, who wrote love letters behind tractors, beating up pregnant women who we suspect of petty theft, throwing people with children off trains and buses because they had no ticket, gouging out eyes of stray dogs and painting them with burning coal tar…..ah, then we are unstoppable! And how do we treat men who come and make mincemeat of us and our families, who machine gun us to the ground, who send us for months to hospitals, who orphan our kids and leave us with missing limbs?

We do nothing!
We debate!
We wait!
We make each other laughing stocks!
We appall the world with our moral, physical, ethical weaknesses!

Rabindranath Tagore had written a powerful poem which we had to memorise in school…

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken in fragments by narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depths of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake!”

Where is that India ? Did it exist only in the minds of the patriots? Was it only a figment of their imagination?

I too have a prayer…

May the sleeping Indian awaken, Lord! And during his slumber, do not abandon him, O Lord!

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?

Only the strong can experience peace

In a saner life, I am a homemaker. I am also greatly interested in the occult and I do what almost all Hindus do…pray at the drop of a hat! I do free tarot readings because I believe that there are two realms, one is here and now and then there is a higher one and money cannot bridge these two. I have a happy home, I believe, and the future holds a promise. Had you asked me this question a week back, I would have said that I was a happy, content person, on a quest to connect myself to an elevated power.

Today, there is a samurai inside me and he struggles to throw away the yoke of mother and wife. I believe I hear my nation calling….I hear it in my dreams and I am writhing. I, who have never run half a kilometer in my life…I, who fall asleep during political debates…I, who always back down from the neighbour who fights over parking space!! I hear a call to arms.

Strange that I no longer pray for peace. My prayers do not have any conviction and when I gaze at my Gods, they seem to be looking back inquiringly. The time for prayer is past. One must protect his home and hearth, only THEN he has a right to ask for divine help too. It has taken me a long time to awaken. I could never see the terrorist as a human being though and all debate over what makes a terrorist seemed pretty pointless to me. The terrorist cannot be seen as a normal person…there is something very rotten inside him which spews forth the venom of a mamba. There is no heroism or bravery there…how can shooting ailing people in hospitals and injuring babies be anything but yellow hearted cowardice! There is no thought involved, no awakening in the terrorist. He is just a killing machine, devoted to darkness and its Masters. And since he is not human and he literally shoots his message into us, we would be quite frightfully stupid to use emotion while dealing with him. Which brings me to the other monsters we have slowly created and now when they stand before us in all their vile glory, we look askance at each other. And we panic!

When our politicians stand up for election and they have criminal records, who tolerates them? We are told not to hire servants without police verification and we choose men with police records to run the country? Do you see the irony here? We choose those as our public face whom we would not open our homes to! Why are we disgusted at them now? They have not changed. Did we not catch them out over and over, in countless sting operations over a period of years, buying and selling each other, going about their business in so filthy a fashion that all of us agree that politics is not for the fainthearted? Remember our drunk MLAs firing unlicensed weapons during marriage receptions and laughing it off the next day! Remember what the ruling party did in Bihar when Laloo’s daughter was getting married? They hold the nation to ransom themselves, no wonder they are so soft on the others who do so!!

I go down on my knees before the educated. Please stand up for election…be our candidates. You may be a principal of a school or a retired Forces personnel, or just someone whose endurance with our system has finished. Stand up for your country. We will muddle through this together….things cannot get any muckier. We are already bombed till our wits are addled. Anyone other than these fat buffoons…PLEASE!! Doctors engineers, anyone who feels the burden of our hopes and aspirations and who will not sleep easy at night till the mission is accomplished.

It is an impossible mission…a mission to make us find ourselves, a mission to ignite national pride, to take the Indian juggernaut on the road. But it can be done if the Indian gets up with steely determination. It just needs a tremendous love for our country and it is clear that almost all feel this love. This public anger and outcry is the manifestation of national love. The media is also one of our strengths. We all can feel the force of its power used constructively…it has become the voice of our torn spirits. It exposes our self serving leaders mercilessly…did anyone see them run around so much with such grave expressions till they realized they would have to go? Disaster for them is losing their seat of power, not the bodies of the 500 sacrificed at the altar of their pettiness. A leader who cannot take responsibility when things go wrong and who fights to take credit for all that goes right is pathetic. He is a loser!

We are standing on the threshold of change, let our legs not tremble now. The common Indian has lifted his voice in unison and it is like a river bursting its banks….we see our strength when we are together! Do you now understand why every politician seeks to divide us into manageable chunks? All together we are a formidable force!

There is a time for peace and a time for war. And believe me, down the ages only the strong have experienced peace. This is no time to sit still and lick our wounds and question our strength. Not the time to preach caution and tolerance. If today we do nothing, tomorrow we are dead. There will be no second chances, no replays. The politician will be more shameless, less accountable, the terrorist more murderous and better armed, other countries more contemptuous and further ahead, our tears endless and our hopes dead! If we are struck once more, we can start planning mass migration because India ’s future will be as bloodstained and bullet riddled as the marble foyer of the Taj.

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?

We have to find our pride and speak up

A small group of monsters sneak into the heart of India , kill and maim in the ratio 1:50, shatter our landmarks, our national pride and our morale and we are left to pick up the pieces. Unfortunately the politicians again are protected by their Master, Satan, and are spared. What are we going to do? Many of us burn with indignation and fear and helplessness. This time, we are confronted with our mortality and realize that but for the grace of God, the face of the dead could have been us and our dear ones.

Welcome to global terrorism…this is what lies in our future, unexpected attacks where we are easy pickings in front of a trained, bloodthirsty predator. Guts ripped apart and no place to hide! Only a whirlwind of fear and pain and destruction at the end! We are people who just do not fight…when the kaccha-baniyain gangs bludgeon entire families to death we are only too grateful that we are not the ones to be murdered as we lay asleep, when young women get acid thrown on their faces to make them lead lives similar to lepers in the medieval times, we pay no heed, exact no retribution. When women are abducted from our streets we shrug and say that it cannot be helped….what WILL make us get up and say that this is not the India of my dreams and I will do something?

Young children kidnapped from outside their homes and held to ransom has become a profession...it is not a crime anymore. I think…no one cares anymore that 4 year old Raju was picked up and tied up in a gunny bag and thrown like garbage down a sewer while his distraught parents collected the money for his release…after all we do not know Raju and thank God! We have raised ours.

Today, we are under severe threat from Pakistan and China and our very own home grown terrorists, our politicians. And if you think I am seeing nightmares in smoke, China openly has declared that Arunachal Pradesh is theirs. Pakistan is telling us that we have no proof…NO PROOF with 500 dead and maimed!! Did Kargil not happen? What was THAT all about? What about the bodies of their dead army officers found on Indian soil killed after pitched battles?

Pakistan speaks of collaboration and joint inquiry…collaboration in raising terrorist training grounds? Yes, I am ready for that and make me the first volunteer…I am willing to go and kill the innocent and damn my soul forever if that is the price I have to pay for the peace of future generations. At least I will be spared the helpless agony of watching the Kerala CM making asinine remarks which lacerate my spirit, that grinning fat face of Vilasrao who sticks his own son to his breast while mothers are bidding farewell forever to their only sons, cut down in their glorious youth; the sheer impotency of a Government that we have voted into power and which symbolizes the failure of a 100 crore strong democracy.

Take me today, Lord, in your infinite wisdom… I cannot bear to watch this circus on TV anymore with the media hounding our leaders for some bit of accountability and answers while the politicians dance to the tune of some madman only they hear, sidestepping grave issues with the nonchalance of either born idiots or worse still, a callous and heartless lot who only hear the jingle of money and respond only to the lure of the ‘kursi’! Naqvi can see blood staining mouths red of the the scores dead and is appalled by the living??

Has the world ceased making sense or am I the madman! I am in a way relieved after the carnage…we all saw how major a threat lies like a deep, black abyss before us…and shutting our eyes will not prevent us from falling in that void. Didn’t we sit up and take note that the terrorists brought war in our midst, holed up inside our very homes and threw out a challenge, “who will dare stop us?” They actually thought that they would invade our heartland, kill as many as they could and then return back! That is really scary…they think we are this soft, this easy to take down!!

Where were our politicians…I saw no one even pretending to don a bulletproof vest to take an initial survey…when bullets fly, patriotism is easy to spot! And in rolled our men in OG…the ones who have seldom taken the spotlight..who live and die for us in barren spots with no witnesses that can testify to the sheer poetic bravery of their last moments. Young idealistic men who really see only the nation and their colleagues when death comes calling…even terrorists call out for mercy at the end….the soldier dies believing that he stands for truth and honour and duty. And we refuse to give them their due!

If we did we would tear that aged jackass of a CM limb to limb when he spat on the family of a soldier felled in battle! A nation that does not honour its defenders will itself be forgotten…so goes a saying. A nation that does not honour itself deserves to perish! And India lies forgotten. The world does not care…tomorrow they can blow up any city here and kill a few thousands, the world will cluck its tongue and move on. After all we ARE a third world country, brown to top it all! We look to them for approval in internal matters…yes, terrorism is a deeply personal matter!

Did we object when after 9/11, Americans made us stand in our underwear for “security checks”…they made the world and its mother strip, take off footwear, unwind turbans, take off the burqua…did we hear any complaints? No, we praise them for their strength! We know that if we want to enter the States, we have to obey their rules. It all boils down to pride in the end.

We have to find our pride and speak up. Do anything, however small. Whatever we think will mark a beginning…nothing is ridiculous, nothing is too small. The day you and I begin to think that we are just a tiny cog in this giant machinery and do not count, that is the day we have taken a bullet in our heart and may as well lie dead!

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!

I have a dream for my India

Am writing about something very personal and close to my heart. We all have heard and seen the news and it has saddened us all. It has outraged me as it is no longer a terrorist attack but war. Pakistan has brought the war into our homes and we are still talking about a Hindu-Muslim divide. I believe we are standing on the brink of devastation with blind politicians and an illiterate populace which will see what is shown....we need to see the writing on the wall. Pakistan is at war with us. And we do not seem to realise the gravity of the situation. We send out our police to deal with a highly trained and brainwashed enemy...the three top cops just walked into bullets because they thought they were dealing with ordinary terrorists. Our lathi wielding, overweight police are no match. A case of letting the fox among chickens! What can the chickens do other than flutter and die amidst a lot of clucking!

Only our Armed Forces stand between us and disaster. And they are a taken for granted, ill equipped, demoralised lot. Perhaps they question their importance too. But I know that what saves me and mine is that 24 yr old boy from Haryana who is more afraid of being laughed at than he is of catching a bullet, the tall lad from Punjab who will do what his saab tells him, the diminutive Gorham who is bravery personified and their young idealistic officers who lead from the front. Why I say idealistic is that the Army offers nothing other than honour and duty...and the ones who respond to the call are the true patriots. There was a time we held patriots dear and acknowledged our debt to them...now idealism is another name for foolishness.

I remember the Kargil war and the unbelievable acts of bravery and raw courage it threw up....who can forget Capt. Batra's laughing bearded face and that immortal line "YEH DIL MANGE MORE!" And a 19 yr old Yogendra Singh Yadav with 3 bullets in him, climbing up a grueling 60 feet to reach and neutralize an enemy bunker and engage in combat…our only living PVC, Capt Vijayant Thapar whose farewell letter should be read by us aloud to our kids.... "I have no regrets...if I become a human again, I will again join the Army and fight for my nation....if you can, please come and see where the Army fought for your tomorrow....never forget the sacrifice of these men...Papa, you should feel proud....Live Life King Size!" He was all of 22. Capt Anuj Nayyar, whose heroism fuelled a movie and numerous TV serials…, this roll call of honour goes on and on. And it still brings forth tears from me…tears of pride and sorrow and personal loss. And a feeling that we cannot take these sacrifices for granted anymore. The least we can do is learn from them…our enemy has a face…it is not Muslim…it is Pakistan! Pakistanis do not see you and me as Hindu, Christian, Sikh, doctor, engineer, poet…we are their faceless enemy and to destroy us is the only game plan. Why can't we see what they have made so plain?

I will go and donate blood and I will be vigilant in public places. I vow to take note of abandoned stuff and report it…and I will sit up all night when I see my country under attack and hold my head in my hands when I see the dead, the dying and the injured…is it enough?

We should take a leaf out of Israel’s book…I am no politician nor am I interested in political correctness..What I see is that the world fried and baked and grilled the Jews…millions of them and NO ONE spoke up…no one saw anything! While smoke was billowing from the crematoriums and the stench of human flesh was all pervading, no one saw or heard or smelt anything…they were the unseen dead. So they decided that they had to take care of themselves and that history would never repeat itself for them again. How many of us will have to be dismembered, to die anonymously in battle without knowing that they were the enemy….how much more will we take…how much is enough…is a 100 dead and 200 injured less…tomorrow when the tally is 500 dead and 1000 injured, is it enough? When do we get up and say that one dead Indian is one too many! How many more of these endless, bloody harvests do we have to witness and endure?

There are mails which proudly declare that India has never invaded any country in her entire history…when will we circulate mails stating that we gouge out the eyes that look at India sideways and tear out limbs that rise against us! And when will our war-cry be "ENOUGH"…

When will we reach out for our golden future which lies just around the corner? I KNOW it does exist…I can Feel it! I can feel the throb of a mighty Indian awakening. There is so much of hope in me, I am a believer!

The question is when! When will my brethren see in each other an Indian! When will India become our motherland and not a 'developing' country one must flee from! When will our national anthem bring tears of pride in our eyes! When will a Raj Thackeray never dare verbalize his stinking politics for fear of a public lynching from his very own 'marathi manoos'! When will the politician become a patriot and a leader! When will we find ourselves!

I will end with some of my favorite martial quotes:-

Pain is temporary, pride is forever.

What doesn't kill you, strengthens you.
And its unofficial continuation…
What kills you, strengthens your mother!

Persistent defence, effective intimidation, battle we must when enemy is in sight.

Sarver Izzat o Iqbal
(Prestige and Honour Everywhere)

Balidanam veer lakshanam
Shastra se shakti.

My Israeli favorite:
In the place where the (tank) treads stop, there the border will be decided!

The hard we do today, the impossible we do tomorrow.

A personal favorite:
An army builds a nation.

No one wounds me with impunity.

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious.

Sun Tzu, the famous Chinese General, said around 500 BC:

In peace prepare for war, in war prepare for peace. The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence under no circumstances can it be neglected.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.

If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result is victory, then you must not fight, even at the ruler's bidding.
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May we all find our hidden warrior
May we always stand up for what we believe in
May India always prevail.
JAI HIND, JAI HIND KI SENA!