Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Thoughts of Pahadi Dudes!


I've eaten your bread and salt,
I've drunk your water and wine;
The deaths ye've died I've watched beside
And the lives that ye've led were mine.

-- Rudyard Kipling

The hills behind, parts of them, are with enemy Pakistan. The boys, sitting outside their humble hut, were reluctant to pose, but soon their smiles turn wide. And free. They must have once slept to the lullaby of guns...They must have been watched from other forward posts when they went shepherding their cattle in the afternoons....

The LoC was such an overwhelming, intense, humbling experience....


For no apparent reason, the song 'Tujhse Naraz Nahin Zindagi, Hairaan Hoon...' from the movie Masoom (listen to it here) is playing in a loop in my mind.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

A Peek


Hello everyone, I am back. The picture you see above is a peek into what I was doing the last one month.

There is much to write. And write I will, for my memories to stay afresh, some dark, some humble, some others.
Highlights you ask?

The top one was patrolling with Indian Army troops along the LoC at Poonch sector, Jammu and Kashmir. There was a tanker ride. Then a day at sea getting burnt. Close to Pakistan, the 'enemy', talked about with contempt and hated with passion. The jawans who shared their rotis and stories of home. Melancholic songs of longing around a midnight fire.

A month of rajma and dal makhni and aloo parantha.

Humility, almost a reverence.

Yes, I have a lot to write about. And I will, very soon.