Another month starts and in couple of days the ‘visarjan’ shall take place for Ganpati. The ’shradh’ period shall commence, when nothing auspicious is conceptualized or performed, this I believe ends by the 19th of the month and then the celebrations of ‘navratri’ shall begin. The song and dance of the ‘garba’ shall reverberate throughout and an air of festivity shall prevail. Ramzan shall come to an end and Eid shall be celebrated. Next month ‘Dashehra’ and then ‘Diwali’ and in December, Christmas and the New Year. My prayers and my wishes for all the celebrations for all. May these festivities bring prosperity and good tidings, may they cure the ailing, bring a smile on those that despair and may we all look ahead to the coming of another year with immense anticipation of goodness. Amen.

In the middle of all this, may I just bring up a small favor. Young Shameera from Fatima’s Group and the ones that dressed up beard and all for the London Concert, struggles with a medical problem and has been hospitalized again. She is a brave girl and one that has always been full of humor and fun. We need to pray for her and for her to recover from her problem. She seems to be giving up, but I am certain that with our silent efforts we can bring her back to her loving self. Do remember her in your prayers. Come on Shams ! You can make it !!

A delightfully lazy day, but one that got initiated with some determination and resolve. I do not know why, but it did. For some reason it felt like that I needed to do to myself that which I had not done for a while. Like I suddenly saw that light at the end of the tunnel, or that the mist lifted and a strange path, not paved but still raw and broken appeared before me and I started to walk. I took in a bit of the sun in the early hours of the morning and whilst I did that sitting out in the open, I listened on my iPOd and the hi fidelity Bose head phones a song that I had composed and sung all by myself on my own little music contraption on the piano that plays by itself !! It had the strains of a folk song that I would often hear my Father sing to himself, when he would awake in the wintry mornings in Delhi. The words spoke of Sita among her friends describing her husband Ram to them and with such beautiful candor that can only be expressed in the sound of the soil. It took me back to Allahabad and the colloquial exuberance of ‘awadhi’, the language of Awadh, eastern Uttar Pradesh. Folk music has the ability of bringing you to a point when you can actually smell the soil of the earth where it originated from. And even though I am miles away from home and hearth, I could still feel the earth within my fingers, as it were.

A sudden downpour drove me indoors and as I sat ruminating, I came across the dvd sent by Abhishek on his visit to Kargil. On the 26th of July 1999, the Indian Army was able to successfully beat back, intruders that had come across on Indian territory up at the snow peaked mountains of the Himalayas, from neighboring land. At impossible heights of 15-16,000 ft in treacherous conditions, to fight an enemy is in itself a huge victory. But to fight him, when they were well entrenched at superior vantage points, and to beat him has been the great accomplishment of our ‘jawans’. On its 10th Anniversary of this Kargil War, Kargil being the name of the place where we fought, NDTV that has on occasion organized visits of celebrities to these far off and remote places where our boys guard the nation, in order to bring them some entertainment and joy, has thought of commemorating the event by bringing a celebrity to those remote and far off posts. They chose Abhishek for this mission.

It was a fascinating piece of programming. The entire journey from Srinagar in Kashmir up the rugged roads to the high ranges was so awe inspiring. On these paths where motor vehicles were having problems moving, the Army was able to bring in their tanks. That was a marvel. How they achieved that is beyond thought. But they did as also their big long distance guns. The stories of valor and bravery of the officers and men that fought there, were so inspiring. Abhishek as you know worked in a film called “L.O.C” - the line of control, which was made on the Kargil War and he had played the role of the young officer Vikram who gave his life for the nation. This was a true story and a true character. He was 24 years when he became a ’shaheed’. Abhishek had met his twin brother one night during the shoot in Chandigarh and recollected his shock on seeing the character he was portraying standing at his door, knowing that he was no more. It was then that he discovered that it was his twin brother that had come to see him. From post to post they moved and met the soldiers giving them cheer and moral strength. He had lunch with them at the main camp and shared with them home made ‘gajar ka halwa’ and ‘aam ras’ made lovingly by Jaya and Aishwarya, which he had carried from Mumbai up to the jawans. Later in the evening he joined them for an impromptu musical evening which the jawans had set up under their camouflage tents and nets. They danced and sang and asked questions and joked and laughed, ending the evening on a most poignant note. NDTV had very considerately filmed video messages from the families of the jawans at their homes and arranged a screen to show it to them live. It brought a lump in my throat as wives and Mother’s spoke to their men on duty. Of the little kids that talked of missing their Father. A sudden silence fell among the entire group. I could see a few wet eyes among the crew and in the eyes of one officer whose family had sent him the sweetest message ever. It moved me too. How close the men felt to their loved ones by this gesture. The men were from different parts of the country, they spoke different languages, their families conversed with them through live broadcast in their Mother tongue, but when Abhishek took the courage to ask them if they missed their family and home, they stood up and pointing to the group of soldiers, said -

“This is our family, our home.. nothing comes before this”.

I stood up silently within and saluted him. Miles away from home and hearth, I, upon listening to the folk music had felt the earth within my fingers almost, of my birth place. But for these brave and fearless soldiers, that guard our frontiers in the most difficult conditions, despite being brought so close to their home and loved ones, only felt the soil of the nation within their fingers !!

I feel so small and incomplete in the presence of our valiant men, so utterly humbled.

When the young officer Vikram was asked after returning from a successful foray at one of the outposts in the middle of the Kargil war, would he go there again he had cheer fully mouthed a famous cola add., by line -

“Yeh dil mange more !!”

He went back to fight the next day… and never came back !!

Amitabh Bachchan