Sunday, July 26, 2009

We Are Not Indians!!!



Its 26th July, 2009............................All the news channels in India are celebrating 10 years of "Operation Vijay" in Kargil, remembering the martyrs and their martyrdom and condemning the govt for its negligence towards the celebration. Watching all this, I couldn't resist myself from remembering my time 10 years back.
I am one of the many privileged Indians to see our country coming out of a war with flying colours. I am also one of them who saw our country going through such a tough time. It was in June-July '99. As a 12 year old, I was not having that very much of understanding of what a war was and what our relationship with Pakistan was like. We at that tender age and being cricket fabs were only concerned with the Indo-Pak rivalry on the cricket field and had nothing of a political view or something like that. We had seen till then some of the war movies and so knew there was something between the two neighbours that was not good but the Delhi-Lahore bus service that was launched earlier that year brought some good for the realtionship between the two countries, at least for us, which certainly didn't later on.
I was in standard 7th then and had just finished our summer vacation. It was the time when something like a war emerged in Kashmir valley. We, at that time, had not the 24 hrs news channels like today and me, personaly, had no access to the cable connection at home. I was completely dependent on the 8:30 news on Doordarshan and the morning daily for the news on the war. In fact, it was the time when I started reading newspaper daily as a hobby. Listening and reading about how many soldiers gave away their lives without letting our country down, it certainly filled me with passion. In the school, I was the monitor along with my friend Mickey Anand. We decided to have a silence of 2 minutes every morning before our class started in order to condole rather celebrate the martyrdom of our soldiers. This act of ours became famous in the school and it became a regular practice in the whole school every morning to stand and remember our soldiers till the war ended. I can proudly say that we celebrated all the 527 martyrs and didn't wait for 10 years to do that.
One more thing that I still remember today about Kargil war. Our school collected some money from all the teachers and the students for the fund to support the Indian Army. We were expected to donate freely whatever we could or afford. I, at that time, had an envelope containing Rs. 51 given to me by somebody on my birthday as blessing and decided to donate that money to the fund. I did that and indeed in my section, I was the one who came up with the highest donation. I was again very proud to help my own armymen to the best I could do at that time.
Remembering this all today, 10 years since, again feels my heart with a feeling of proud but this feeling is diluted with a stronger feeling of shame for me. I didn't even once bother all these days to feel proud of our martyrs except when watching some war movie. I think many of us Indians of my age would be just like this. I am sure about my generation, I am not the only one and still there would be many more who are even worse than me. Do we really deserve to call ourselves Indians? Today, we all are condemning the govt and politicians for forgetting our heroes. But are we anywhere better than them? Well, it was expected like that from the f****** politicians but being the common man of our country, was it not our proud duty that we never felt proud of doing?
SHAME ON ALL OF US!!!!
F*** ALL OF US!!!!!!!!!

2 comments:

Anamay said...

The two incidents described here will really leave anyone agape. One of them was a testimony of a true leader and the other sacrifice, a 12 year old making a difference in a way as simple as that.

Aashu said...

Thanks for your kind words!!!
Anyways, well it was not my point as to what and how I was as a 12 yrs old boy rather what & how I am presently. I think this incidence, well, underlines the fact that "As you ascend in age, you descend in character". :(