Keyboard Commandos

Mahendra Pardesi called me on the eve of our MA examination and told “Dost, I will not be able to complete the course this year’. “What happened? I know your preparations were intact” I could not figure out the reason. “Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s niece is writing the same examination and I have to guard her”. Mahendra was a commando posted in Pune and was pursuing his studies as well. I vividly remember Mahendra, wielding an automatic gun with a dead stern face, standing beside the girl like an impenetrable shield. He did not even smile at me or any other classmates. His eyes were scanning each and every movement in the classroom. I could not see any consternation in his eyes for not being able to write the exam. I saluted him when we met that evening at the café. Even after 16 years, my memory of that visual is not smudged. Not even a bit.

Fast forward. This Sunday morning, here I am, sitting and reading the comments from readers about the commando operation in Mumbai in a news website. “The helicopter should have dropped the commandos through the chimney of the hotel”. “We should have brought Mossad from Israel and they would have finished it in 3 hours; useless Indian commandos”. Some of the comments were funny. Comical rather. They were providing expert advice to the commandos. Suddenly there was a comment and it was like a gunshot. “You all are keyboard commandos and keyboard commandos can do anything”. The comment pierced through the idiocy of armchair commentary that some of the readers were engaging in. A tight slap on the face. I liked it.

Decades of popcorn munching, sitting in front of the TV watching cricket, and ruminating over Sachin’s square cuts and swing of Lee’s balls have given us that ludicrous habit. We think that we are all living legends and the commandos who were caught in the labyrinth were fools. Human folly has no limits.

Yesterday, when the Commandos were emerging from the building after the final assault, a reporter asked whether they caught anyone alive. The commando said, “That’s not our policy; leaving the enemy alive is not our policy”. And he told this without any heroic fuss. The simplicity and unpretentiousness gave me goose bumps. The relaxed answers to the news reporters did not have a trace of haughtiness of achievement. “Mushkil tha ye mission?” asked one reporter. “Nahi, nahi, zyada kuch mushkil nahin tha,” was the simple answer.

When the entire commotion was over, they sat in a bus, chatted and laughed as if they were going back home after the office hours. They were not sleepy, not tired, but alert and agile even after the marathon meeting with death.

Because these men were the real commandos, not the keyboard ones.

Saludo brave men.