Digressed Nestlings!!!

“Get up Ravi,” answering machine announced.

“Why? Let me sleep Rexy. This is Sunday today,” I requested.
Requested because this is all you can do when you are talking to a girl. These girls are so egoistic and egotistic, they understand only please, can, and may words!!!

“No Ravi, we need to go. I have to submit my thesis and in the wake of Mumbai terror, I have got the theme of my thesis. So get up and pick me up at 7,” voice asserted, advised, ordered and then shut up.

Rexy is doing her PhD and her thesis topic is South Asian terrorism. So we have to go to meet one family whose sole son is a martyr and died in combating terrorists, and the other family whose sole son was a terrorist and died in combating Indian armed forces.

“You are late. I asked you to come at 7 and it’s 8:30,” Rexy shouted, apparently angry waiting outside her home for quite long.

“Let’s have some coffee first,” I hit her raw nerve. You see, girls have a unique chemistry between coffee at coffee café day and choleric. The more you take them to café day, the less choleric they get and vice versa.

“So, where are we starting from,” I asked.

“We will go to meet the family of great martyr first,” Rexy said and we reached the home of the martyr.

Scene 1

“Namaste,” Rexy gestured along with her broad Canadian accent.

“We have come to know about Major Khan,” Rexy requested. It gives lot of satisfaction seeing girls requesting!!

“Imran was an outstanding student, a brilliant sportsperson, a great Indian, and the best son of India,” Imran’s mother told, her eyes welled up with tears, but tone exuding pride in being the mother of a martyr.

Her voice had determination, hands becoming fists every time she remembering her son.

The same pride I and Rexy could feel in every person we met in Meerut.

“I am amazed at the way everyone here remembers a martyr,” Rexy said getting emotional along with some dew drops in her eyes.

“Do you miss your son,” Rexy asked his dad.

I felt furious at this question. What kind of question this was after all!!!

“Yes, I wish he were alive. If he were alive, he could kill many more terrorists, and could be a part of operation cyclone to kill terrorists in Mumbai,” Imran’s Dad wished.

This was the first family we met. The pride parents feel when their children do something extra-ordinary, something which we ordinary human beings can’t even imagine, is something which can only be felt. No dictionary has such words which can define that pride.
And if at all there’s any such word, then that word is Salute!!!

Scene 2

“Excuse me, can you tell us about Bashir’s house,” Rexy asked someone at azamgarh’s bus stop.

“No, we don’t know anything about that,” the voice vehemently responded.

Rather than responding with ‘I don’t know’, his response ‘we don’t know’ was something we felt abstruse.

“Excuse me Madam, can you suggest us Bashir’s house,” Rexy asked one burqua-clad woman.

“That terrorist,” voice answered with a question.

Rexy nodded, both stunned and shocked.

After all, why would a muslim woman address Bashir as a terrorist.

After all, Bashir was a muslim who fought for zihaad and died for a purpose. Isn’t it?

“Terrorist??” Rexy wondered

“What else. He attacked our nation. He killed innocent children, women and people. How else would you define him?” her voice had rage.

This is something Rexy and I weren’t very acquainted and comfortable with. An illetrate-looking woman had clear convictions about who Bashir was.

“And not once did he think how would his parents live their old ages with this stigma that their son was a terrorist, a traitor, a betrayer” she spelt curse for Bashir and left.

Somehow we reached Bashir’s house and on request, his father started:

“Bashir was our only son. We are a poor family, still decided for his best education. After his +2, I took loan from a lender for his Engineering. He finished his Engineering and joined a high-tech company. Then I thought he would pay his loan. But one day read in news that he was behind many bomb blasts in India. He died but left us in living hell, we are made to live with stigma of being parents of a terrorist, a traitor. I am working as a watchman at night to earn money at this age to pay for his loan I took from local people,” old man told and then broke up.

“I am so sorry we gave birth to such a son,” Bashir’s mother regretted.

Our two scenes ended and we returned to Bangalore.

It’s 9 at night, and I am sitting in balcony working on this post. Rexy is busy preparing coffee (how lucky you feel when your girlfriend prepares coffee for you at home, that too for free).

I am pondering about the state of 2 families, of the parents of a martyr and a terrorist.

One mother wants to give birth to Imran in her every birth, other mother is so sorry to give birth to Bashir in this birth.

I feel sorry for Bashir’s parents for the stigma they experience everyday for the evil deeds of their sole son.

I wish I could show these 2 scenes to all terrorists to convince them get back into mainstream, rather than playing into hands of foreign terrorist organizations. I wish that many more Bashir’s take examples of Major Khan rather than of bastard Osama.

May God give these digressed nestlings the illumination that they can experience and feel these 2 scenes, and get back to mainstream leaving their heinous and lethal activities far behind. May these digressed nestlings help make India the best place on the planet.

The Zion!! The Utopia!! The Shangri-La!!!