Ravi Shankar EttethFirst Published : 03 May 2011 10:55:00 PM ISTLast Updated : 03 May 2011 11:13:56 PM IST
Every soldier has a funny story. Have you heard the one about how an army patrol in Kashmir, seeking shelter in a snowstorm, found a cave full of sleeping militants, all drunk on Indian army rum? In conflict zones, horror begets a Falstaffian cross breed, black battle humour. Like the Kargill war hero Captain Vikram Batra who laughed at death, shouting “Dil Maange More!” as the Pakistanis kept shelling his bunker.
Combat stories across the world are full of dark humour. In 2001, when the Israelis were cleaning up the West Bank of Palestinian terrorists, a colonel was briefing the visiting General Shaul Mofaz on an encounter with a Hamas gunman: “The terrorist came out of this house to say hello. Well, hello, hello, we got him!” Shiv Sahai, who is currently the IG Police, Kashmir has a story of his own.
One day, when he was the SP, Baramullah, Sahai was informed over the police wireless that the airport road was blocked by a large group of women. They had staged a sit-down in the middle of the road that led to Srinagar airport, wailing and shouting anti-India slogans, protesting the death of a woman supposedly killed in police firing. Reaching the spot, Sahai saw that the women were sitting around a corpse swathed in a white burial shroud; they were tearing their hair, beating their breasts and screaming for “Indian dogs” to go home. The policemen asked them over the megaphone to disperse.
The wailing only got louder. Sahai turned to his men and ordered them to fire in the air. The first one in the group to jump up and flee the scene was the corpse.
All war zones are full of irony, something battle hardened warriors bear like medals of honour. Many I’ve spoken to, made drunken toasts to in cheap glasses inside dusty barracks and rickety police stations, find defending democracy has a funny side, too. A cop who had served in Punjab in the 1980s once told me about a colleague of his “decorated for wiping out 6 terrorists in a firefight” who was sent to jail for a custodial death, sharing a cell with captured militants; the very men he was fighting.
No wonder, war turns ordinary soldiers into philosophers. Paul Mehlos, an American soldier who fought in Afghanistan writes in his book “The Poor Bastard’s Club,” “War, by its very nature, sometimes allows too much time in between the missions for deep thinking. If you dive too deeply into the pool of your own emotion you may never reach the surface again and find yourself descending into the darkness. And it is madness you see. This wafer thin veneer of societal normalcy we carry like a child’s cardboard shield will not ward off the ugliness and savagery of those to wish to destroy you.”
Little is known about the nameless Navy Seals who went into the Abbotabad mansion to put an end to a monster’s life. Wonder what they must have been laughing about.
--- ravi.shankar@newindianexpress.com
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