Idhar Udhar Ki Baat

  “Why do faujies fall prey to the Ponzi Schemes?" Asked the doctor traveling with me while going through a newspaper. I knew he had seen the article regarding a retired colonel swindled by a fake broker. I thought hard to find a suitable answer so that the doctor doesn’t feel that we are all chu***as. I said, “others also get trapped, but because of our truthfulness we declare that we have been duped while the others just hide.” The doctor just smiled. And that was more hurting. Regarding the truthfulness I remembered that year after year our newly inducted officers in the counter terrorist duties were trapped by the uneducated, unpolished villager called ‘source’ in believing that he has the information of some injured terrorist. The officer starts salivating and day dreaming of decorations. He is fleeced of cash for a month or so by that source, till the time it dawns on the officer that he is being made a Charlie. But the beauty of all this is that the officer never shares...

“There is something off,” I told myself. But then, the cool breeze brushed against my face, distracting me with the first hint of the changing season . The plants swayed gently as if nodding a warm “hello” on my morning walk. As I reached the far end of the park, the lights in the park went off. The darkness pleasantly reminded me of night patrols from my army days. There’s a special kind of confidence that comes with slinging a weapon over your shoulder. In fact, I might have even welcomed a threat, if only to have an excuse to feel that familiar weight again. I heard the peacocks calling out and I realized that I was early for the walk. The peacocks I feel make that noise when there is a sudden drop in the temperature in the morning which is around half past three. Looking at my watch, I realized that it was exactly that time. A good ninety minutes before my normal walk time. Waking up early has become a second nature because of life in fauj. But waking up this early can be blam...

"Dadaji, did you also do something like the pager and walkie talkie blasts against the terrorists?" Asked the grandson of my friend. The boy is smart at  fourteen years of age.  I felt elated to have a captive audience after three years of my retirement. My heart said chal beta phenkna shooru kar de . But my mind said bandh karo phenkna bhagwan ko bhi jawab dena hai . After a long pause I said, "No." The last time I was remotely near the pager type of feat was when I gave a fancy mobile (infected with virus) to a source who claimed that his operator across the border wanted that brand. But the source gave the mobile to his son. As a result, his son came under police IT surveillance and I had to deny any involvement. The fiasco taught me to keep away from such things.  I felt bad to see signs of despair on the face of the boy. He said, "you have been hunting terrorists for years. Did it ever cross your mind to do a pager-like thing?" "No be...

"Cheers!" said the two kids, aged two and three years and lifted their glasses to drink, when their mother came and snatched those glasses.  She could assess that the children had poured acid from a bottle kept in the store.  As a child I also have secretly poured some liquor from whatever was leftover in a party.  I was fascinated with the way people did 'cheers', or sprinkled some drops of alcohol before partaking or tapping the bottom of the bottle before opening the cork or pouring beer in a slanting glass. Although I hated the bitter taste.   I have lost eight maternal cousins due to addiction . Unfortunately they were between 35 and 48 years of age. And recently I got the news of the death of a deceased cousin's widow.  The unfortunate part is that her son cannot be conveyed the message because he is untraceable in Europe being a heavy drug addict.  In the conversations with my cousins in their terminal days I could gather that they all ...