LOVE STORY OF A SADDER KIND: PART I DOUBLE KILL

He was a little under 20 when I first bumped into him,.... with his perpetual smile and boyish innocence. Athletic and well built, he was previously a student in his village and basked in local popularity for his exceptional football talents. He was also a member of the Cadet Corps, an offshoot of the army for the youth. He had once dreamed of joining the Army and used to travel halfway across the district just to attend the Army recruitment preparatory course that I was running at my Company Operating Base.
Who would have ever thought that this same unassuming kid was once toting an assault rifle and walked tall as part of ULFA, a banned militant organization in a state which was treated like Congo for its resources of timber, oil and tea,...... a state which cradled a behemoth of a river the Brahmaputra, which was everyone’s excuse of not sending fruits of civilization to it. No electricity, bad roads and bridges later someone decided to change the demography by dumping the influx of Bengali Muslim refugees from a nation just freed from the clutches of an enemy state, Pakistan-the ‘bin laden haven’.
Soon, what started with a fight by the youth went on to graduate into a Chinese supported proxy war within a state… the weapons were high grade Chinese unmarked AK 56 assault rifles shipped from the Tibetan plateau via the teak laden jungles of Burma. The training camps were in nearby reserve forests of Bhutan, Bangladesh and Burma, and the funding was the hordes of outsider business class floating there since eons before the independence saga. A state where the natives were now a minority was given birth… It was a victim to British imperialistic strategy of shipping in cheaper labour, mainly tribal’s from states of Orissa, Bengal and Bihar in thousands. The audacity and blind ruin was so evident that an impending threat from the red dragon to the north made the nation build refineries deep inside the subcontinent by pumping crude oil through pipelines running thousands of miles like a railway track.


The grudges were numerous and once a popular movement started, it was too late to tranquilize a sleeping goliath seeking loopholes and bias in governance from the capital of politics and mainland India. That was ages back before a peaceful struggle went onto become an armed struggle which changed names from militancy to finally in its present form of terrorism.
Lalit Moran- I faintly remember his name get highlighted when I heard of the list of new recruits who had joined the banned militant org by a methodical framework of indoctrination. He was selected by the terrorists for his Cadet training Skills, physical abilities and popularity in the area where he was a football “Ronaldhino”.
I find it difficult to recollect how I first met him, though I kind of remember bumping into him soon after he surrendered and dropped at my office for introductions with another lady cadre Momi Baruah. His story was simple. He was never for the ideologies of the hardliners or their barbaric methods. He met Momi when they were together in their temporary militant hideout in a riverine island, about a thousand square kilometers of marshy dense forests, which were so impregnable and remote that army operations there were rare and useless. She was in her late teens, though a smarter and tougher version of Lalit. Together in the wilderness they fell in love and had decided to get married. However the oath of allegiance they had taken while joining the underground organization forbade them from such luxuries till the age of 35years and thus began the desire to quit militancy to live life like a normal couple without the constant fear of military operations or the days spent hiding in brutal leech and mosquito infested forests.
The Army had started spreading the welcome mat for them almost six months ago before they finally had the courage to flee the clutches of terrorism, walk days through marshy jungles, wade dingy flimsy boats and surrender to a covert Army team waiting across the expanse of the Brahmaputra River.
That was a fortnight ago.
Today he smiled and joked in utter innocence as he charmed us with their great escape and jungle romance. Momi was quite as she showed flickers of doubt and a suspicious glint in her judgmental look at her fiancé, as Lalit poured his entire story out like a jigsaw puzzle finally getting some shape. After a couple of hours I left him and moved on to my busy day of loads of coffee, 40 cigarettes, a thousand signatures and a billion phone calls on the four different phones I played with. Soon I forgot the little kid who charmed his way into our hearts.

It was some weeks later that I was tasked along with my Commando Platoon to undertake a search and destroy mission in an interior village close to the banks of the mega river, Brahmaputra. My senior subaltern, a brave boisterous, gung ho style operative had been diligently tracking radio intercepts for over a week now and had latched onto a general location of their base. We had our dinner, took skimpy naps and in the middle of the night went out in strength for the operation to seek and kill the originators of the radio conversations.
By early morning 0340 AM, when the sun bore down on the eastern part of the country, we hit the target village and started tactically searching for any traces of hostile elements. We had been up the entire night and now we were getting exhausted with the running around and bush whacking as slush and leeches greeted us everywhere.By morning 0730h, I married up with my senior subaltern, now a Canadian Citizen and concluded on the futility of the exercise, as we had mopped every inch of outhouse, teagardens, bamboo and wooded patches and were getting only ten degrees more exhausted and delirious than getting any leads. Lalit had been moving with my subaltern and I had another surrendered cadre who was from a different part of the district. Somehow as we sat there in a local village heads house and chewed on cucumber and salt to quench our thirst, I made a random decision to go ahead and visit the neighbouring notorious village, of which I had heard and mapped a lot, but never seen on ground. I split my team into three and decided to take Lalit as my guide as we treaded onto the village through the less frequented path through teagardens and dense bamboo patches.
We started off and I could see the boys with their sagging morale as they dreaded the beginning of yet another futile, humid and exhausting search. I halted the patrol and mouthed orders replete with foul words and cusses that were stinging at the patrol to gear up their killer attitude, range their assault rifles at 200m and move like trained soldiers. Seeing my anger the boys straightened up, weapons ready and senses alert as they trudged along.
Lalit tagged along quietly after my outburst, as we moved on, in one seemingly futile ops. All I wanted was to see this part of real estate first hand. All that the others wanted was a warm bath, hot meals, chilled water and the loving embrace of their beds- simple pleasures in an unearthly world. It would have perhaps been 10 to 15 minutes of moving stealthily through the grain of the country when we hit an ‘L’ junction. I saw two civilians a kid and a teenage girl approaching from one end and I started trying my broken local lingo on the poor souls, basically asking directions and a layout of the village. The sun was blistering and beating down mercilessly on us as my scouts moved ahead in a bid to scan the bamboo hutments about a stone throw away and more importantly get some shade from the sun.I broke off from the civilian duo and started moving ahead towards the hutments, ensconced within bamboo and jungle, as a thought flickered through my mind…..
…. Wasn’t the girl dishing fear in her eyes as she spoke to me, that look sure couldn’t just be the fear from an Army that had left behind a legacy of high handedness and ‘tough on the locals’ attitude. Over the years the concept of velvet glove and people friendly ops had seeped in and our unit had created a rather positive rapport with the locals despite the militancy situation there. ‘Not likely’ I said out aloud….just when,
RAT!...TARATA!...TAT!....RATTAT!...TAT.!
The unmistakable burst of AK fire pounded my ears from the location of the bamboo huts. For a fraction of a second I froze. Fear of losing my scouts, whom I could not see due to a right turn into the huts, made me sprint with my head under cover towards the target area, weapon cocked and shoulder ready. I saw my first scout generally the toughest of the lot, shaking vigorously with fear balking through his eyes as he muttered, …”fire came from inside the huts….. there are militants inside”,

The scene was ‘chaos incorporated’. Women and children screaming and running helter skelter, the gunshots being fired by a lady terrorist single handed with her left hand, who was fleeing using the group of ladies as shield…
My patrol was blood shot with excitement as they saw no fear or danger and went about cordoning the group of three huts with an intervening tea garden. I stood behind an 8 inch thick tree hardly three meters from the bamboo hut from within which the bullets were fired onto my first scout. My mind worked like a super computer and I assumed the hut to still be holding two to three terrorists.
The next couple of seconds is a blur and I just remember the incidents without actually recollecting the seniority of what happened when. First, I spotted one terrorist running almost 150m too far and using quick reflexs, took aim and did a double tap to bring down the bugger. I couldn’t make out if he was hit but assumed he must’ve made a dive into the tea bush to try and escape using cover. Was too far to do shit, so I just shouted and field signaled to my second scout to keep a watch for the terrorist in the tea bush.
As I am about to move to a better position of advantage onto the right side of the hut, I see my buddy jumping inside the four feet bamboo hedge right in front of me and spilling his magazine clean… one meter ahead of him in the bamboo and mud splattered wall of the hut, I could see the holes he made as he opened fire to kill the occupants of that unlucky hut. I shouted abuses to my buddy to take cover, fearing the lack of cover costing us more than bargained for……to my dumb shock I then saw holes being made by bullets on the same wall as they flew onto both of us. Bullets that came from within the hut…

.. I half dived- half ran to get towards my right…as I saw the burst from inside make a path towards me on the mud walls, as the terrorist tried to make a break for it while firing onto his invisible enemy… just as the bugger got out of the house my third scout only a meter behind him, who was painstakingly trying to take cover behind a five inch by five inch concrete construction pillar, got trigger happy and sprayed cold steel core bullets all through him. In a split second I saw a mist of pink spray as blood and tissue ripped through the terrorist. Almost a millisecond before, the terrorist assuming more soldiers in his direction of escape fired his Kalashnikov assault rifle and in the same line of fire, I saw a lady scurrying from the kill zone, get hit and drop down like a sack near a grove of banana trees on the edge of the tea garden.
I froze at the thought of having collateral in a bloody encounter. No one would believe it was the terrorist’s fire. Like all such incidents it would have to be my word for the media’s assumptions. I was already stumped when I turned towards my buddy and saw him still standing behind the same wall. Anger filled me and in uncontrollable fury I screamed at him to get the hell out of that area and move to cover,
… he looked at me, while holding his right leg and muttered in pain,, “sir I can’t, I’ve been shot” and took his gaze to his thigh where a bullet had torn through, his bullet proof jacket has taken three more rounds.. His combat trouser was wet with dark blood that seemed blackish due to the red of his blood mixing with the green of his uniform. I can’t say if I thought of the dangers or not, for in the next jiffy I just moved towards the hut and tried pulling my buddy out. His body weight was too much to handle so I reconnoitered to the left and broke the fence and dragged him to safety to a tree stump about 25 feet from the house, I was puffing and panting as I half carried half dragged my buddy and made him lie down,… I made a bandage for him, put another soldier with him and consoled him with words that were more of ridiculing his wound and calling him a tiger than anything close to conventional movie style pity bombardment. I could make out from the bleeding that no major artery was ruptured and neither had his bones taken the shot, .. He would be okay..

Right from the time the bullets were fired till I evacuated my buddy to safety, it would have taken about a minute and a half. The tremendous adrenaline flow made everything seem like a slow motion, matrix style firefight…
It was another twenty minutes when my senior subaltern reached the spot and took charge of the situation. First things first, we coordinated the arrival of our doctor, a rather lively and realistic chimney who was rushing in to evacuate my injured buddy. Then the battle began for confirming the kills and collaterals began as we opened covering fire to let our team close in to the house…

As we fired in a trigger happy spree, I saw the injured lady get up from under the banana stumps and in delirium trudge towards the neighbouring hut for shelter. My senior subaltern then called out in the local dialect for the occupants to move out before we blow the damn place down… just as we were about to start thinking of a house entry we saw a shriveled up scared old lady come out of the hut and in bewilderment walk towards us in shock. We escorted her and comforted her before asking her about whether there were any terrorists inside. When she confirmed there were none… my subaltern along with his buddy then lobbed a few grenades in and carried out house entry, only to further substantiate the lady’s statement.

A few more hours later, the search for the terrorists started. We had eliminated two terrorists both identified by Lalit by name with one of them part of the terror outfit’s enigma group, a secretive underground guerilla force tasked with the most gruesome acts of violence and political killings. On the downside my buddy was shot and the civilian lady had a gaping gunshot wound in her chest as big as a large fist. I immediately got a wooden bed improvised as a stretcher, bandaged her wound to stop bleeding and evacuated the lady first towards the ambulance at the road head, approximately half an hour’s walk away.


Soon the Doctor reached the site and had my buddy evacuated, after offering him a cigarette …. Through all this our friend Lalit was a silent witness as he ducked and hid in one of the drains near the tea bushes. His eyes were filled with fear for he sensed that the villagers would squeal about his involvement in the operation. I got him dressed as one of my boys and quietly evacuated him through the forest route lest someone recognize him. The lady too was in safety in a nearby district hospital about three hours drive away. It felt good to know she would survive.
That day went on from 0800 hours in the morning, when the first bullets were fired, till about three in the afternoon. We fell back to our post, debriefed, freshened and thanked heavens for pulling us through one more of many such days to come. Cheering and shouting was soon followed by beer guzzling, cherishing the operation in which we had been a hairline away from getting onto the other side with angels and puffed clouds.
Dual kill… a messy yet clean sweep. My buddy walked soon and started running in a couple of months. The injured lady survived with a couple of pounds and half a lung less. The weeks went by as the boys relived the moment of shock, fire and chaos over and over again.
Lalit’s life moved on too. He married Momi soon enough and was kept at the army camp for security reasons. They would be under our umbrella of help and protection for some time. As days went by and operations faded into each other, the din of existence took over and normality continued.

LOVE STORY OF A SADDER KIND- PART II HEAD ON COLLISION

Lalit and Momi became our rather close friends. They were part of our celebrations, we a part of theirs, as we danced and laughed with them. Soon normalcy drugged itself into each of us. Lalit was now looking for a Job and soon decided to stay at his own house a few kilometers away. We helped him set up his house and looked for some kind of employment for him from Security related to business contracts. Lalit tried his best to be responsible and fulfill the duties of a husband and bread winner.

But I guess things were not what both he and I expected. No one was dishing jobs around which he wanted, nor was the army throwing money on luxuries. Basic support yes, but the remaining was a slow battle of me trying to fight the system to get him his due. The best I was doing was giving him brotherly treatment. Whenever he was with me, he stayed at my place, ate with me, slept there, watched movies together and well we just were like the best of buddies who went for operations like one bloody maverick team.

Momi too had her ways and had slowly started settling as a house wife. From a fiery warrior she had mellowed down and used to keep her house clean and neat and attended social and cultural obligations like a good wife. She was hospitable and courteous whenever I went to their house to pick up Lalit for some work or just to catch up on some intelligence that I wanted. There was this unmistakable admiration that I had for her. I guess it was her qualities as a guerilla and fighter that I appreciated. To top that she was clever and considered the army useless and poorly trained and had a tendency of teasing me with challenges that if she were still with the organization, she could’ve given me hell and bullet fire. She once told me quite blatantly that she could bet that I would never get any success in her village. A village so remote and surrounded by forests and water bodies, that Army had never had any successful operations against the militants in 25 years of militancy. I had never been to her village to comment, as it lay in a different unit’s area of responsibility. I had however heard of previous fiascos the army had suffered in that area and about the godforsaken terrain with a zillion escape routes.

It was sometime during this phase of time when the army had raided a Temporary militant hideout in the forest island and eliminated twelve militants in a month long operation in the worst of weather conditions. The camp had provided tones of intel which took days to decipher. To make things easier the HQ had sent sets of similar intel material to different units. From matrices, to codes, radio telephony details, training manuals and other documents, we had a treasure trove of stuff to play around with. It was then that we bumped into certain land and financial documents, from fixed deposits, insurance policies, to bank accounts in the name of a person from a nearby area. It took me some time to put together the truth behind the entire episode and prompted me to dig deeper. It was a brutal story, painfully recreated using inputs from newspaper cuttings, police records and civilians staying close to the area.

The owner of these documents was the same person who about eight months back had helped the terrorists bury close to Six million of extortion currency in the middle of the forest somewhere close to Momi’s village. Greed got the better of him and a few months later he exhumed the booty and stole half the amount and fled his village. As a security measure he bought a new house very close to the colony where the military base was. He then went on and purchased bonds, insurance and land in his family’s name. It wasn’t long before his family was hounded through relatives and soon a death letter was issued in his name. This was handed over by Lalit when he was a militant cadre, personally to the man’s wife. Finally, as a last resort the militant organization requested him to bring all the financial documents to their camp in the middle of the Brahmaputra and they would let him live for old time’s sake. This individual took the dire measure of going to meet the militant cadres, who bound, tortured and shot him in the head. Lalit was witness to the entire episode and shuddered when narrating the barbaric methods of torture used on him before he was killed and buried close to the camp. I felt like a detective digging out a crime scene with only the evidence lying around. It was further corroborated when we recovered the skeletal remains a few days later from the forest with Lalit leading the way for us. It was a jack pot of sorts which could have highlighted the evil side of the terrorist organization. Somehow we needed a witness apart from Lalit. We just didn’t want him to get involved in all this and so we went knocking at the dead individual’s family staying at Momis village. It was on the second trip early one foggy morning when I had been tasked to escort the wife and village head back to base for questioning that things got bloody ugly. Out of some tactical insight I inadvertently split my team in two. One team was tasked to hit straight for the ladies house through the village while mine would reconnoiter from the east and decided to approach the ladies house from the forest side.

Weapons ready and senses tense we half ran half scouted through the edge of the forest towards the ladies house. Somewhere in between I saw a clearing in the twenty feet high foliage and decided to cut across into the village from there. I halted my team and field signaled them to move into the village using that clearing. My scouts would have just moved thirty or forty meters to a clearing when they bumped head on into a fleeing terrorist making way for the jungle after having spotted the other team entering the village. The next instance was a thunderstorm of bullets whizzing past with both my scouts and the terrorist getting trigger happy with just about twenty meters between them. By the time I could understand what happened, the terrorist was dead and writhing in pain. The bamboo hutments behind which were horrifyingly in the line of fire of my scouts, had hordes of ladies and children crying and screaming like banshees. We had been served the first success for the military in 25 years of counter terrorism operations in the most hostile and impossible area. Though the rather easy operation made me feel good, it created a suspicion in the terrorist organization that this success would have happened only if Momi had leaked inputs about the village.

Momi on the other hand was surprised at our success. I could sense that after this particular operation she started silently giving me my due as a soldier. It sure was a treat to get acceptance for ones soldiering from someone as tough spirited and rebellious as her. It felt all the more satisfying as it just wasn’t her to admire the army or appreciate their abilities. She acknowledged this operation along with the one I had been with Lalit and the numerous others she had heard of and started treating me with more respect than before. It was a silent mutual admiration for soldiering abilities that only soldiers would know of. She had slowly started confiding to Lalit that she was comfortable of him going for operations only with me. She trusted me with her husband for reasons she knew best. It could have been the brotherly affection we shared, the tactical acumen I might have had or just plain faith that I would take care of him. Lalit more than once disclosed of his wife’s trust in me and more than often I had him skip dangerous and difficult operations in blatant contravention to my orders, just to keep him safe. Kind of never wanted him to get exposed to the same evil he left. I wanted him to start a new life and live away from the influence of the army.

Lalit and Momi were living their own lives and our interactions now were only as friends. I had out rightly stopped taking Lalit for operations and saw him as a lifelong buddy. I adored the couple which fought, made up and fought some more like children and were pure and simple at heart.

To the dismay of certain factions in the army who were finding Lalit obsolete as a good source, I continued as a good friend, helping him find jobs and helping him in whatever way possible.

This was a phase of my life where I had proved my bit in the face of bullets and odds and stood strong before the men I led as a true military leader. It was a period of mythical proportions, the locals adored us and we them, the popularity charts in local circles was soaring with random people one met miles away telling you that they have heard about you. It was a period when I sported a devilish beard and a clean shaven head making me look like a psychopath. I danced the local way, sang their songs, spoke their tongue and loved every bit of being with them. Life was a high.

LOVE STORY OF A SADDER KIND: PART III TILL DEATH DO US PART

It was somewhere towards the beginning of the year, the first quarter was almost getting over. We were in the middle of a state wide unrest following custodial death of a local Tantric priest who stayed close to Momis village. The Strikes and demonstration got ugly when a mob of a hundred thousand and more assaulted and hacked three soldiers of the Central Police Reserve and injured the district Commissioner and Police heads.

The same day I had planned and conducted an operation of epic proportions and eliminated one terrorist using a multi pronged covert operation. We waited for the civil administration to take over the body after inquest and necessary formalities. The operation was conducted in the afternoon and by 1300h we had the militant in a heap of bullets with blood oozing from all over his body.
When there was no news from police or the Magistrate till about 0200h the next morning, we started evacuating the now half decomposed body through the dark expanse of the hinterland towards the nearest police station about an hour’s walk away.


It was sometime around 0330h that we reached the police station. The Police station was a battle zone. The Commissioner, and police heads were bandaged from stone pelting and mob lynching. There was an eerie quite as these men who hours back ran an entire district were caught in the middle of a storm. I guess they were replaying the evening’s incidents to get some solution on whether their actions were justified. The story was that during the demonstration when the policemen were hacked to death, the remaining policemen in a bid to save themselves had opened fire killing almost 10 civilians including women and children. More embarrassing was that the crowd had managed to rob the police of a few weapons and radio sets in the chaos. To top it all, during my operation there were almost 10 more terrorist who were cornered in the area where we conducted our operation. In a bid to escape they used a human shield of over hundred local villagers and escaped towards the south. This mob in its wake burned the railway station and post office in the main road axis down. Things were real bad when the district commissioner started working out a solution on curbing further chaos by declaring curfew in likely flash points in the area. As a young officer I too was there and advising them on the strategic requirement of enforcing curfew in a pattern more likely to be effective.

What followed for the next couple of weeks was a dawn to dusk curfew, enforced in and around our base by my team. We were an effective lot and left the colony adjacent to our base free to move around while we cracked down heavily on the other important township nearby by sending regular patrols in and by using psychological means of enforcing curfew. The funny thing was we didn’t even touch a single person. It was sometime during this period that the army took a back seat in operations and my interaction with Lalit and Momi dwindled.
Lalit mistook this two month long break and felt as if the army was leaving him on the lurch to fend for himself. He was going through depression. Somewhere in the market he was threatened not to go back to his village. He had started drinking at local shops. Something he never did.
I remember him coming over to my place one day sloshed and in tears and pouring his heart out. He was crying on everything from the militants threatening him to why I wasn’t calling him. He felt as if a life line was missing. I took him to our Commanding Officer, an officer with vision and true grit. He was asked to come over the next day with his wife early morning to the unit’s temple.
Even I was surprised the next day when he came over with his wife to the temple and our commanding officer coerced him to give up drinking completely and take care of his wife. He was made to take an oath at the temple altar. Lalit broke down and took the oath and Momi wept when she saw her husband’s resolve and determination. For us it was almost childlike innocence and the beauty of it all as I admired a simple step my CO had taken to bring back the essence of their marriage.
Everything seemed to work like a dream. Momi and Lalit came a few days later with garlands and homemade sweets for our commanding officer who had saved them both in ways only they knew. Lalit Momi seemed back on track. The honesty evident in their eyes made me feel good on how things had turned out.
It was the festival season there. There were drums being played through the night, Cultural dances and singing spread love and joy everywhere. There were only a couple of more days before we were getting posted out and we were celebrating our raising day with pomp and show.
It was sometime in April.
It was sometime during this phase of revelry that we went all out to live the last few days at an unreal place of good and evil. It was one such drab evening while we were at the badminton court. We were playing vigorously under focus lights illuminating the court, when I got a phone call from one of Lalits relatives whom I had met at one of the festivals dance and singing shows. I was trying to be courteous and was greeting him with my broken local dialect when his words horrifyingly registered.
Lalit was shot when he was on his way to hi mothers place to give them sweets as per traditions in vogue. Lalit was shot, I asked him if he was still alive. I asked him where and when, as emotions and angst slowly took over. My commanding officer saw all this and came over worried. I was thinking of how to break the news of Lalit’s incident to his wife Momi, when his cousin broke down on the phone and said Momi was also shot with Lalit,... They were returning together from his mothers village on a motorcycle.
The next few moments were a blur and daze as I shouted orders to get a quick reaction team well equipped for a little war to get geared and mounted on vehicles. My CO and I along with the doctor started for the location where the incident had occured in three vehicles and an ambulance.
It was a dry and dark evening as we reached the spot. Lalit and momi were lying about fifteen meters apart in a gruesome scene. Both had bullet wounds all over their bodies and both were very much dead. Momi had been five months pregnant, made it so much more painful. An entire family wiped by evil. The motorcycle lay at one end with their belongings strewn all over.
There were over sixty or more women and a few odd men there silently mourning. They were sitting along the muddy road and crying silently as if in fear that their sobs would not be taken properly by the militant cadres in the area. I was holding my wits together just like an officer was meant to before his troops. In a calm and composed way I went about the site recreating the scene and discussing with my CO on what course of action to follow. The cops soon arrived and were going through their rigmarole of recording a homicide. I slipped towards the civilian crowd standing there and spotted Lalit’s elder brother. I took him to a side and very calmly asked him in the local dialect as to who had done this. He was sniffling but kept shaking his head in ignorance. I was holding his shoulders as my black Bulgarian assault rifle slung towards a side. I looked into his eyes and said slowly,
“this will Not end like this. I will not leave whoever did this”…
My voice trailed as involuntary tears welled up in my eyes and I broke into breathless sobs. I just couldn’t control myself as the pain of the episode drenched me in misery. In some hysterical way Lalits brother too broke down like a baby and in that darkness we were both holding each other like brothers and letting go of emotions. The womenfolk soon started crying as they saw an otherwise seemingly invincible soldier breaking down. The night was illuminated by only our vehicle headlights and torches, while the bodies were removed by friends and family for final tributes before their cremation scheduled the next day.
It was the evening of the cremation. Lalit and Momi were in stretchers, their Jaws tied with bandages and cotton stuffed in their noses.
I saw the bodies and shivers went down. I just couldn’t believe all this was happening. I wished it was all a nightmare and things would be better when I woke up. But the truth was me standing next to their combined funeral pyre as the flame caught on and in a blaze brought absoluteness to their death. As I stared at the leaping flames my resolve to get the perpetrators pay hell, built with a passion and fury I couldn’t fathom.

Nothing was the same again, or ever after. Nothing could change the gruesome way life played a joke on us. Just when things were working out, everything was snatched in brutality.
Three days later I had apprehended the chief perpetrator of the killings and held a public meeting in Lalits village to let him confess of his devilish intent before Lalit and Momi’s relatives. At the end of the speech I saw the anger and pain in people’s helpless eyes as they silently thanked what the army had done in days. For weeks after, I was drinking in my room and crying to myself as images of the couple flashed in my mind in overlapping sessions of cheerful living and brutally mutilated dead bodies. I could just think of them and I would break down as I felt I was to blame for their deaths. I was the closest to them. My successes had cost them their lives.
The actual perpetrators were still at large. I knew their names and their faces but within the next three weeks we were off to different lands. Till date if I speak to someone from these lands, I ask of these terrorists and what happened to them. The good news is not yet in. Maybe someday I will get to go back and finish what was meant to end ages back.
Until then, may Lalit and Momi’s souls Rest in Peace

KINDERGARTEN GUNSLINGERS

KINDERGARTEN GUNSLINGERS

1. Captain Rambo, that’s me, I am 12 years old, don olive green overalls, flash a General purpose machine gun like some Chinese toy which is taller than me. I gorge what the jungle offers, I walk like a man, I am armed from head to toe…machetes, daggers, and catapults with zero remorse killing instinct

s…. I am a Child soldier, an expendable "cannon fodder," and the bane of terrorism in my little African paradise.

2. The terrorism here is a brutal concoction brewed by the colonial powers who raped the rich diamond, Gold and mineral haven, which has bedazzled the banal and evil in men for eons. From a legacy of blood diamonds to warlords running the uncivilized remains of an imperialistic aftermath, I have heard it all. Am I patriotic or do I owe allegiance to tribal streaks, well it doesn’t make a difference as over years of power mongering has made the difference negligible.

3. CAAG- ‘child associated with armed groups’ that’s what the ‘Blue Helmets’ from Kofi Anan’s bastion call me. I don’t care what the world thinks, I like it this way, I get my respect from all, where I lay my head is home, what

I want is mine and my way is always the right way. My counterparts running around in tatters and playing with Rhino Beetles are not even trusted for getting stuff from the market. Here I run the market and control taxes… I am the law, the justice department and the police in one mean package.

4. I have no fear, fear makes you doubt. I have no remorse, that devil sitting on your right shoulder, whispering in your ear, telling you it hates you. So there it is - don’t dare mess with someone as little as me with even lesser values on humanity, religion and all things the colonialists export as the white man’s burden. They too have killed kids my age with carpet bombings and push button messiahs of death called Drones, only to conveniently label it as collaterals. Like they say ones safety is in the grip of the weapon one holds. I fight, therefore I live.

5. My journey from boy to killing machine follows a horrifying tale of indoctrination, including being forced to execute well known faces in proof of allegiance. We are easy to manipulate and will do the unspeakable without question or protest, partly because our morals and value systems are not yet fully formed.

palmistry... faking it or real science

WHAT YOUR MOUNTS REVEAL:

Love is God – this is your philosophy. Since your highest priority is love, you can attract opposite sex easily. Eventually you will involve into love affairs. You like luxurious life. Generally your married life will be very happy. There will be an interest in jewelry, dance and subjects like chemistry. Medical lab technicians, cinema artists, singers will come into this group. You will excel dealing in luxury goods, jewelry business, cinema production and exhibition.

You will have low level of confidence. You may postpone many projects just because of your laziness. Your own friends may deceit you. Promotions and progress in your job will be delayed. You may suffer from diseases of digestion system, problems to head and eyes.

WHAT YOUR LINES REVEAL:

You are practical and at the same time yield to your heart feelings. You have well balanced nature in love and romance. However, there would be difficulties to overcome in the life.

You have fertile imagination. You are endowed with good and fast communication and language skills. There would be interest in music, singing and fine arts.

You will enjoy full life span. You will be blessed with children and healthy sexual life.

There would be influence of opposite sex in your life. You will be successful in love and romance. You will get good prospects after your marriage. Possibility of long voyage is there.

You will have interest in business, occult and philosophy. You are endowed with good leadership qualities and executive abilities. Married life will be good. There is a possibility of going abroad.

GLINT OF THE BAYONET IN AN ALIEN WORLD

1. It is hot and humid in the tropical rainforest somewhere in the heart of United Nations peacekeeping mission in DR Congo, Africa, where stories of Phantom – the ghost who walks, are part of jungle folklore. We are out on two ORYX Helicopters from the South African UN Contingent. Below, I can see the Nyragongo Volcano – smoking subtly yet gloomily. It seems like an enormous creature straight out of a Jurassic landscape as it looms large over the vulnerable town of Goma, waiting patiently for its next overdue catastrophe. We are heading towards one very untouched part of this country where civilization is itself like a tourist leaving behind scattered traces of modernity.

2. We were geared up for a heli based extraction operation to capture and arrest the leader of an armed group wanted for war crimes, especially for the recent rapes of over 250 women in one of the villages. Our briefing was elaborate, Checks and re checks have been carried out with deliberation to plug all contingencies, rehearsals and honing of battle drills have been drilled into each of us. Battle ready we silently watch the dark green landscape beneath the choppers as we make way through dense tropical jungles with meandering rivulets and inundated areas. As I look on, my mind drifts back to the words izzat, courage, guts and glory…I am sub consciously dragged into another era…

“… an era with tales of legendary proportions, which goes back almost ten years. I was enlisted from the regimental center into the battalion a year back, fresh meat ready for the butcher fields, It was sometime before our parliament was assaulted by some terrorists with an overzealous yet blind ideology based on heaven, holy wars and infidels in their neighbourhood.

‘No Guts- No Glory’. It is quite an impressive one liner but for this very one liner my unit had been to hell, (AKA the terrorist infested landscapes of our country) played hide and seek with Hades and come back alive, walking tall among mortals as legends and heroes. I had often heard these tales from these walking talking Rambo’s over and over again about the firefights and raids in the confines of a bunker or on Langar chats. The stories of bravery and honour were contagious and kept each of us fighting tough despite extreme conditions. When you have so many tales of honour to dot the units daily bread- it is inevitably that one is drawn to ape such acts of sheer courage.

It is mid May and the snow lingering on the terrain spelt out that winters was not over as yet. There was general intelligence from an A1 grade local source about a group having infiltrated from across the LC. We have been on a 72 hours ambush on a ledge overlooking the ingress track to the dhoks near the line of control. We have been munching Special rations and living on water from a nearby spring to keep us ticking.

Before leaving the ambush the patrol leader a lieutenant fresh out of the Officers academy, decided to check the ridgeline for any trails. I was leading scout and along with my buddy deliberately scanned the terrain for any sign of terrorist activity. In the neighbouring sector we could hear the enemy arty shells booming in deep groans as it ripped through the rugged terrain sending shrapnel’s addressed to ‘whomsoever it may concer’. The shelling will be soon shifting onto our fwd posts along the bloodied line of control.”

3. We are still flying over dense dark forests as a team of two heli based teams supported by the MI 35 attack helicopters trudging along. I can see the other South African ORYX helicopter flying along in a threatening posture as it moved just a few stories above the tropical treetops.

4. It had been quite an interesting three months since I had moved to the mission area in Congo in the Paltan’s second rotation. Our company was fortunate to have been nestled in the midst of the negative groups strong hold, deep in the middle of the unforgiving jungle with patches of hutments blotched here and there. The area was largely untouched by civilization’s perks or the governments influence and was a breeding ground for child soldiers, Inter armed group conflicts and banal lawlessness.

5. Our Tactical Operating Base (TOB) had been there for over a year and had built a brotherly rapport with the local Nyangas, Tembo, Hundes, hutu and Mushi tribes in the area. ‘MONUSCO’ as we are known are the only ‘saviours’ the people have in a place where they are sandwiched between the atrocities of government forces (FARDC) and the negative armed groups predominantly the Rwandan Genocide based FDLR (Foca) and the locally organized MAYI MAYI.

“We had been walking a couple of hours through the pine canopy when I hit upon a half burnt cigarette stub.. on close examination I could make out that it was maybe a day old at max and more likely a couple of hours old…the unmistakable mark of “Moorven” cigarettes frequently used by terrorist made it all too obvious that the hunt had begun… like a blood hound in pursuit of game we started looking for a trail nearby… broken blades of grass, upturned pebbles, foorprints anything that unfolded the story of the owner of that stubb. Further ahead, I saw the unmistakable trail left by at least a track of 4 to 6 terrorists with loads - jackpot! now all that was needed for a blitzkrieg of humungous proportions was combat tracking with elite battle craft skills…”

6. Today was the first time since I had come here that the ‘blue helmets’ were going offensive against the Negative Groups. The United Nations Mandate had till date had been teaching me the very essence of people friendly operations apart from the unique opportunity of interacting with armed forces, cultures and ethos of other countries. We had been winning hearts and minds of the populace with a professional and humane face as we conducted people protection Area Domination Patrols deep into Negative Group dominated areas to restore faith of the populace in the United Nations resolve to bring back normalcy in a rift torn warzone.

7. We have already constructed a women’s community hall, secondary school, Basketball Court, numerous foot bridges to restore lifelines to remote areas, Conducted Automotive Training capsules for youth and the football competition which we organized here which saw some fledgling Maradonas and Peles. Our frequent ‘URAFIKKI’ or Solidarity meets with the locals too helped win over the support and understanding of the community. Today was very different, it was time for the iron hand in the velvet glove to make its mark to put things in order.

“We have been walking for over two hours painstakingly following the trail up the slopes of dense Pine forests of the Shamshabari. The exhaustion was showing on each of our faces. Though the urge for attrition glinted in the sweat on our brows. The longing for some rest, a bath, a shave, cleaner clothes and hot meals was a dream that seemed to get further away as the trail meandered on.

Just when we were on the verge of giving up we came to a rocky outcrop a few hundred yards ahead... I Signaled the Patrol to halt and inched ahead using cover with my buddy scout to scan the area for any threat…weapon cocked senses heightened I move from tree to tree when I accidently stepped on a fallen twig, breaking it with a sharp noise, which resonated in the still forest. Instantly I had my weapon to my shoulder and through the line of sight of my AK 47 assault rifle looked ahead. It was almost simultaneously that I saw a shadow move in the corner of my eye. As I focused right towards the rocky cliff, my gaze froze and in utter fear looked straight onto the eyes of a bearded unruly monster with weapon pointed at me almost 45 meters ahead.

The next instant was total chaos as a burst of steel core rounds shuttled between us barely missing me by inches as it scraped bark from the tree I was taking support of. I had almost spoofed my entire magazine when I realized the terrorist rolling down from the rocky outcropping like a sack of rice was indeed dead.

The patrol commander who immediately moved up and took control of the situation realized that from where the first terrorist fell, there was a well hidden crevice in the rocks that had “hideout” written all over it. As if to confirm our suspicions, a Chinese grenade soon made its way through the cave and onto us. The rest was a story of another six hours of rocket launchers, grenade lobbing and an insane session of mouthing foul words before we had eliminated six hardcore LeT terrorists in a clean sweep. For it was my first blood, First blood in a moment of chaos and violence which Battle inoculated me for more dare devilry ever after.”

8. I could see the target village football ground - a clearing in an impregnable tropical forest dotted with a few bamboo hutments with palm leaves roofing. I took a deep breath and with a feeling of confidence which derives from good training and soldiering experience, peered below as the choppers started descending towards mother earth.

9. Under the gaze of the South African soldier manning the mounted machine gun on the Oryx, we dismounted the chopper and immediately deployed around to secure the LZ as the negotiating team with my company commander started moving towards the Negative Group strong hold. We could see hundreds of armed cadres walking through the village intermingling with the civilians, women, children and all. The MI 35 Attack Helicopters were circling above thwarting any nefarious designs by any trigger happy armed cadre. After almost an hour of negotiations with the leaders of the armed group, the escort party rounded and arrested the armed group leader accused of war crimes and escorted him back peacefully to the waiting choppers as throngs of nearby villagers watched.

10. As the Oryx noisily drifted back to base, a feeling of pride and glory settled on me. We had once again treaded on difficult circumstances and come out winners. The unit had one more sparkling achievement on its plumage to glorify the bravery of the infantry soldier who performed par excellence every time for Country, Paltan and izzat whether in our nations backyard or some Alien country thousands of miles away.