The Reluctant Terrorist The allure of a hard won seat in a premier Indian engineering college in the 1980s began to lose its sheen and appeal for me when my exalted expectations were shattered by its dismal environs and academic deficiencies. The dilapidated and run down hostel with a real `mess’ of a canteen was the final killjoy/dampener. What should have been the four most productive years of my youth were a rock bottom of disappointments and disillusionment. Cocooned in the confines of our college and hostel in the Capital city of India, Delhi, we were all coming of age to face our issues of identity, career, love etc. But that period led to discoveries and experiences of totally different dimensions and sowed their lessons for a lifetime. What happens when a terrorist who is planting booby-trapped bombs all over the city and killing hapless citizens, is sitting across from you in your hostel room? What do you do when he wants you to help him to get out of the terrorist network he is part of? And you are just 20 years old; just an idealist college student and not an intelligence operative? Our class of engineers with some of the smartest minds in India included two Sikh students, who were like chalk-and-cheese. Harinder Singh or `Harry’ was a serious athlete, working to bring the same discipline to his academics. Narinder Pal Singh or `Nari’ was the most fun-loving, happy-go-lucky guy in our class. This `Lifescape’ maps the events that entwined my fate to theirs through the evolution of their thoughts, beliefs and actions against this academic backdrop and in response to the political forces and motivations of this period. For in the world outside, the Sikhs separatist idea of making India’s most prosperous state of Punjab into a `Khalistan’ – the land of the pure (but only for the Sikhs), had divided the two communities and started a violent carnage of killing hapless citizens. The government response was late and harsh –Operation Bluestar was a military operation launched in June 1984 to flush out alleged master terrorist Bhindrawala and his band of followers from the most revered of Sikh shrines – the Golden Temple in Amritsar. While Bhindrawale and his rag tag group was killed, about 492 civilian pilgrims also got killed in the cross-fire, the army faced heavy casualties, the Akal Takht (Throne of the Timeless One – the highest seat of Sikh temporal power) was badly damaged and the historic library with many original manuscripts of Sikh faith was burnt down. The anger in the Sikh community across the country rose to a crescendo. This anger and hurt caused Nari to switch his warm joviality for cold revenge, and he became a terrorist. Nari returned to our class after a brief hiatus, a man totally changed; a transformation of which nobody had any inkling, for was now running a terror cell in our college! Circumstances brought me face to face with helpless `drone’ he had engineered. My intent was to extricate him from the shadowy world of intelligence and counter-intelligence, where humans are mere pawns and expendable assets for small uncelebrated victories in the underground undeclared war. And at the threshold of that doorway, I was able to put into perspective the rights and wrongs of everybody’s actions, including my own - which saved me from a possible death by execution that day. To know it all, it’s the story you have to read!
Posted on: Sat, 21 Sep 2013 03:02:53 +0000
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