Bravehearts against the apocalypse

Looking back on the years spent wondering ‘what would I be when I grow up?’, I don’t have regrets about the various windows of opportunity that I might have stared through for a while but then left them behind, unopened… none save one… And that regret was acting up like a dull ache from an old war wound when I saw those images of commandos being air dropped onto Nariman House…

When I was about 13, I moved from my catholic missionary ‘boys-only’ concentration camp to what I hoped was liberation and freedom in the co-educational world of Central Schools (an anglicised moniker for the staid old Kendriya Vidyalaya). While my mates at the ‘missionary’ drew inspiration from the entrepreneurial spirit that had driven their families from post partition penury, to way up the socio-economic ladder towards plenty and prosperity, the boys in KV cared for one thing, and one thing only – life in the ‘Academy’ (the National Defence Academy). That, I suspect, had to do with two things. One, most of them had been brought up on tales of valour in the family and joys of life in the ‘mess.’ And two, you didn’t have a Chinaman’s chance with the girls unless you happened to be preparing for the NDA… because for them, cricketers weren’t man enough and movie stars were mostly pansy dandies… so unless you were training to be an army officer like her daddy, you could forget about asking any of them even the time, least of all for a date.

So after watching “Top Gun” Cruise taking their breath away, I declared that I too would become an air force pilot or, after some heavy duty persuasion from the Gubernator, maybe a commando. I dropped my cricket kit and went running with the boys, cranked out push ups and pull ups, watched “Platoon” and debated about the comparative virtues of the three forces…

That was a wonderful time and we spoke of how wonderful it’d be if we all made it to the ‘Academy’ together until… until one of the NDA hopefuls did not turn up for school. The year was 1989 and news came in that his father had come back wrapped in a tri-colour from Sri Lanka. Soon there were others who did not turn up for school. It was a gloomy winter, and when our friends returned, they seemed unrecognisable – gone was that enthusiasm which had fired our dreams. In its stead raged bitterness, anger and a sense of betrayal. We heard about how intelligence failures and political ineptitude had left our troops vulnerable and how some of our best soldiers had to pay with their lives because some one else sitting at a desk just wasn’t smart enough to back him up. Later, one of the boy’s uncles was heard complaining about how political indecisiveness and foreign policy misadventures by our political leaders result in the needless destruction of this country’s ‘only heroes’. It was a feeling echoed by others.

The ‘Academy’ never happened. Some of us studied engineering, others management, and all those women who couldn’t see beyond men in uniform settled down happily with power dressing executives and one of them even a psychiatrist. After that winter, none of us spoke of the ‘Academy’ ever again and I have a feeling it wasn’t just us. The IPKF mission did nothing to diminish the valour of our forces, and some like the Marine Commandos (MARCOS) returned as veritable super heroes. But the Lanka operations made it apparent to many Indians, including naïve romantics like us, that irresponsible and unintelligent governance can reduce the best fighting units to mere pawns in a bout of political eyeballing.

Some of my closest friends are serving in the ‘forces’ and they are amongst the people I admire and respect the most. In fact, in the presence of a battle-scarred soldier, irrespective of nationality, I always have this debilitating sense of awe and humility – I almost don’t feel man enough in their presence (and I’m pretty sure it’s because those snooty army daughters had scarred my teenaged psyche in school). And yet, since that winter, I’ve remained disillusioned with the idea of a career in the forces. All that awe and humility was always tinged with liberal doses of pity. For who knows how they’ll meet their end… would it be on a garden chasing their dog and the grand kids, or would they instead get blown up by an IED that had been planted by the very terrorist who they had apprehended and handed over to the cops only for the local politician to have him released in no time.

But all that changed on 27th November, 2008, when I saw these modern day ninjas storming Nariman House in a bid to not take lives but save them. And don’t let the Israeli Defence Minister and Curry King Ghulam Noon’s criticism of our commandos mislead you. Indian special forces like the NSG, MARCOS and the Para Commandos are amongst the absolute best in the world, and I’m not the only one saying this. John Geddes, ex British SAS (Special Air Service – the mother of all Special Forces units) and now a celebrated and battle hardened PMC (Private Military Contractor) wrote pretty much the same thing in one of his books. And thus the regret…

There were brave people amongst the hostages, some of the hotel staff, but while these were heroes by chance, these soldiers are heroes by choice and design; heroes of not just this moment but of this nation. And while I wouldn’t agree with what my classmates had said about our sportsmen and actors, who happen to be this nation’s ambassadors and cultural flag-bearers, there’s no denying that these masked crusaders, much like comic book super heroes who save the day and then disappear without a trace, are the only real action heroes of our times. Looking back, I feel it’s a shame we gave up on the Academy, for lousy bosses notwithstanding, there’s nothing like saving lives for a living, especially if you have the skills to put your own on the line and get out alive. Nevertheless, the SF are better off without us, and here’s to our gallant men in black. May they continue to save our face and lives, and may they live long and prosper… God bless them, and a billion more…

The slip stream

Methods behind the madness

The Mumbai siege proved the state’s failure on all fronts – political leadership, security, intelligence – except one: concerted action by our own ‘top guns’ in the moment of crisis.

The training schedule of the Indian Special Operations Forces like the National Security Guards (NSGs), the Marine Commando Force (Marcos), and Para Commandos would suggest of a torture order, so much that the drop-out rate of the candidates is around 60-80%! Consider the NSG. Created around the time of Operation Bluestar for intense counter-insurgency operations, NSG recruits are subject to severe physical and psychological tests through the training period. For e.g., incumbents are required to chart a 780-metre obstacle course complete with gaping chasms and vertical scaling, all in a maximum of 25 minutes, which some accomplish in nine! Awaiting at the end of it is a target shooting session with a partner standing right next to the aim. Reaction times of the commandos are conditioned to be as low as 0.26 seconds.

Marcos are trained for swift amphibious assaults, considering they are mostly reserved for maritime operations, and are referred to as ‘water hens’ or ‘crocodiles’ for their abilities. Para Commandos are proficient at conducting aerial recces and are experts in HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) parachute jumps.

On god’s blind side

Toby’s an interesting character. He once learnt to ride a motorcycle while on a trip to Kathmandu and then bought his own– “a Royal Enfield, what else” and rode his iron steed all the way back home to “England, where else…” He now runs a voluntary organisation called Flying Kites that has been working with children in Kenya. But this is not his story. He’s merely the voice of the ‘greek chorus’, in a drama that is staged every day in the frame of our car windows…
I met Toby in a restaurant in Delhi. He was digging into baklavas and speaking passionately about an upcoming trip to India’s coal-belt. He was in India to make a film about street children, the ones we meet everyday on our way to and from work, begging for “ek rupaiya” or rubbing a greasy cloth on the windshield or brandishing ugly burns and wounds wrapped in flies and rags, hoping you’ll part with that “rupaiya”. And he was going to the coal-belt to find out what prompts so many children to leave the sheltered environs of their villages in the region and head for the capital’s streets. There seems nothing right about that choice, and yet, everyday would find scores of waifs, between 6-14 years of age, alighting from the train at a station in Delhi, in search of a ‘better life’- a life that in all probability will be over before they touch 30. Toby wanted know why…

“One of the boys I met at the Old Delhi Railway Station told me how he got here…” recalled Toby. “While back home in his village orchard, while up on a tree, he had dropped a mango on his father’s head who was sitting under the tree… His father dragged him to the railway station, bought two tickets for Delhi and once there pushed him out onto the platform and left him… ridiculous… maybe he was lying…” and maybe he wasn’t, for haven’t stranger things happened between parent and child?

As I’d once written in a previous column, I often wonder what one ought to do when these kids, from butt-naked toddlers to cocky teenagers, surround one’s car, their filthy happy faces, belying their bleak existence. Does one give in and give them money, or does one pretend, inspite of the persistent knocks on the window, as if they just don’t exist? Or does one holler at them for ruining the car’s paint-job with their grimy hands? “Maybe you’re better off not giving them any money. Once in a while, there might be a guy who’s starving and could really use the money, but most often, these kids, even if they’re starving, would only spend it to buy glue… to sniff it and get a high,” said Toby. “There are a few NGOs striving to rehabilitate street kids, taking them into rescue homes but the kids don’t want it. They’re just too hooked to their life on the pavements” sighed Toby with a sense of resignation. “One of these kids… he must’ve been 11, had puncture wounds running all along his arms… heroin! Through our translator, I suggested that we could take him with us to a ‘shelter’ and he could be tended to. While our translator spoke, the kid smiled at us. Then he seemed to get rather excited and we felt he was ready for deliverance – we would be saving a soul after all. But alas, it wasn’t to be, for even as our translator spoke, his expression darkened and he walked away. Apparently, he got excited because he thought we might be interested in buying the drug. But when he understood our offer, he was disappointed. About 30 percent of these street kids have already been to various homes and have in fact ‘escaped’ back to the streets. These children prefer the hazards of living on the street to the claustrophobic security of a ‘home’.”

These streets dehumanise these kids. Innocent urchins, mostly boys, many girls, reach the station and find their way to various night shelters. There, these mean streets drag them through a baptism by fire where these vulnerable children are sexually exploited by older inmates and even outsiders with ‘local influence’. Physical abuse and further exploitation, even by those they ought to have turned to for protection, strips away every layer of dignity until they’re left with nothing. “The child inside is dead before long. They act like cold hard adults before they hit their teens. But at times the glue brings old repressed emotions back to life, and like the Kosi, these dammed emotions erupt and all the shame, hurt and indignity consumes them. One boy at the station had a deep six inch long gash on his forehead. Once in a while when ‘high’ he would break down, cry and bash his head against a wall. When I met him he was being restrained by his friends but he wriggled out, and in tears, ran to the tracks and started bashing his head against the tracks even as a train hurtled towards him. His friends and I had to wrestle him away, and just in time too… he lay for about an hour in their arms, sobbing and screaming till his emotions subsided… At least they had each other…”

Many of them will graduate to petty crime and some, if they survive long enough, will graduate to worse. But there are some, admittedly a rare few, who’ve truly turned the corner. One of them, for instance, had become a promising photo-journalist and Toby feels that it is amongst them that we can find our future leaders and change agents–people who’ve crawled out of the city’s dark underbelly and into the light, for who’ll know better than them what it takes to get there, and thus show others the way.

“I had come here hoping to ‘free the children’ from the factories and the streets. But once here, I realised that freedom for them meant giving them opportunities and choices. And it is possible… But we need to ensure that these opportunities, especially education, reach every village. And in our cities, rehabilitative care needs to be more sensitive and it needs to add value and meaning…”

But until that happens, the streets of this great country will stand mute testimony to our collective failure as a humane and civilised society.

Mean Streets

The plight of street children visits us in moving montages as we weave our way through traffic. But a deeper understanding of their stark world, an understanding that can help us help these blighted souls, can be attained through some of the most powerful works of literature and filmmaking. In fact, even to watch/read the following would require us to step out of our comfort zones:

City of God: A great book; a greater movie. A gut-wrenching tale of pre-pubescent protagonists in the slums of Rio de Janeiro – a veritable hell on earth – playing out their destinies of violent crime and exhilarating redemption. Feel it shake you up.

Salaam Bombay!: Mira Nair reconstructs the life of homeless street kids in Mumbai with help from the real subjects – 10 to 12-year-olds struggling in the shadow of Bombay’s glitzy lights, their raw emotions retouched in drama workshops with the filmmaker.

Street Kids: The Tragedy of Canada’s Runaways: This, if you thought street urchins to be the bane of the third world alone. Written by Marlene Webber, though much of it is in the words of those deemed the godless ones, it is an excruciating recount of causes and effects of life under the sun, unprotected and unforgiving.