In the summer of 1999, while the rest of India was soaked in monsoon and Cricket World Cup, the country’s soldiers were clawing up frozen cliffs daring the bullets that came shooting from above. India’s incorrigible neighbour had sent its soldiers and militants to capture the snow-covered peaks of Kargil. It was an act of deception, a capture of India’s land stealthily. The terrain was harsh and hostile, testing the limits of human courage with every jagged step. The Kargil War was not just against a human enemy, but against peaks of stones and snow where the air itself was an adversary. Three months of bitter conflict and subhuman killing ended in India’s victory over the invading Pakistan. Victory! July 26 is celebrated ever after as Kargil Vijay Diwas by India. What is victory, however? Philosophically, I mean. We are supposed to be rational (philosophical) creatures, after all. “ W ar does not determine who is right,” Bertrand Russell said famously, “but who is left.” Every...
An old friend of mine was with me in my kitchen when Amazon’s delivery man rang to know the location of my residence. He was the same person who delivered all my cat food subscriptions regularly. “The location shown is confusing,” he explained. “I haven’t ordered anything,” I said having checked my profile on Amazon. He delivered the pack promptly enough and I was curious to see what it was. X, my friend, was in the kitchen cooking the prawns he had brought all the way from Kochi, his own city which reeks of seafoods naturally. “Dark Fantasy,” he mused when he saw the content of the package. Someone had sent me a box of Dark Fantasy cookies. I’m sure there isn’t any person on earth who keeps dark fantasies about me in their (her, as alleged by X) conscious/subconscious/unconscious mind. I wasn’t ever such a charming person at any time in my life. “Dark fantasy,” X said refusing to believe my deprecatory self-assessment though he knew it was quite true. “You never know where ...