Reincarnation of the Iron - Man

Copyright © 2014 by Ahnis Kosha.

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Rev. date: 03/10/2014

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Contents

I THE NEXT LIFE

Kamala’s Ailment

Amit Kumar’s Mission

Hypnosis

Bharat

Love Thy Neighbour

The Hypnosis Rite

Enter Vishwamitra, Again

Shakuntala Reborn

Vishwamitra—One, Two, Three…

States of Being

Vishwamitra’s Quest

Attack on Girgam

The Homecoming

Raajarshi: The Regal Seer

Vishwamitra and Trishanku

Vishwamitra and Harischandra

The Dreamer’s Dreams

On Air

The Analysis of Variance

Soma and Then Some

In Retrospect

The Scholar and the Psychiatrist

The Playback Singers

The Letter

Over the Table

In the Wake of the Tsunami

The Parts of Speech

The Trilogy

On the Periphery

In Letter and Spirit

Mr Chatterly’s Cover

Letter of Introduction

Pahlvan Hurt Patel

Shaadi Ki Baat

Rules of the Game

Instant Messaging

Vasistha’s Marriage

Saptpadi—Circling the Fire

A Lore of the Lure of the Chair

Terror Attack

Neta and Abhineta

Singularity

The Sanatorium Unbound

Shooting in Kashmir

Revelation

The Story

The Crippled Sirkar

The Spy Who Came from the Cold

How to Be a Delhi Detective, Coming from a Sicilian Household

Cracking the Code

The Magic of the Medium and the Media

The After-Effects of the Failed Salient Tsunami

At Home in Bose Lane, Pune, India

The Awakening

II THE CRYSTAL BALL

The Power of Media

A Tale of Two Twins

Is Delhi the Rape Capital of the World?

Menu for a Working Lunch

Just What’s Wrong with Varun Satpal?

The Sequel

Bose Lane, Again

Back to Work, in Goa

The Rise and Fall of Varun Satpal

Article 370

The Aam Aadami

The Question of Gender and Sex

Between the Twins

The Conspiracy of Consulates?

The Streaming Message

The Mouse that Squeaked

Nightmare

Three Months Later A New Beginning

The Five-Year Plan Revealed

The Final Atonement

BOOKS by ASHOK SINHA

In English

New Dimensions in Elementary Particle Physics and Cosmology

Theory of Digital Satellite and Mobile Telecommunications

Drops of Dew (Collection of poems)

Manifestations of Thoughts

(Verse translation of a Sufi poetical work)

Gazaliats (Verse translation of a Sufi poetical gazals)

The Battlefield of Kurukshetra

(Verse translation of the Hindi classic Kurukshetra of the Mahabharat War of India—by the great poet ‘Dinakar’)

Alexander and Chandragupta the Great (Play)

Shakuntala

(Translation of the Sanskrit classic play by the great poet Kalidas)

The Sublime Joy of the Geetanjalic Psalmody

(Translation of poems from the collection ‘Geetanjali’ by Nobel Laureate, Rabindra Nath Tagore)

The Next Life (Novel)

Reincarnation of the Iron-Man (Novel: Extended version of The Next Life)

A Bird’s Eye-View of the Sanatan Dharma

(Hinduism) (with Dr Shardanand)

Religions of Indian Origin: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism

A Collection of Excerpts from the Scriptures of Major World Religions

Yoga and Affiliated Practices and Science (to be published)

Beauties (Collection of email poems)

In Hindi

The Bhagvad Geeta (Verse translation of the Sanskrit scripture)

Punyadhanwa (Poetical work based on the life of Ekalavya)

Bulbulon Ke Darpan Me (Collection of poems)

Indradhanush (Collection of short stories and one-act plays)

Omar Khayyam Ki Rubaiyan

(Translation of the 75 well-known rubaya’ts of Omar Khayyam)

Omar Khayyam Ki Nai Rubaiyan

(Translation of the over 500 less-known rubaya’ts of Omar Khayyam)

I

THE NEXT LIFE

Kamala’s Ailment

T he New Delhi summer was at its peak. The air sizzled even in the shade.

It seemed that the sun was at war with some phantom enemy, spitting fire as endless rounds of hellish ammunition.

‘I would get late again,’ said Kamala Roy to herself as she hurried to find a pair of shoes to match with her blue chiffon sari. It was no easy task for her shoe-racks housed sixty pairs, many with various shades of blue. She cast a glance at her diamond wristwatch for the umpteenth time and managed to extricate herself out of the house barely twenty-five minutes before her appointment with her psychiatrist, at least thirty-five minutes away in good traffic.

‘I thought you were planning to play hooky for third straight week, Kamala,’ exclaimed Dr C. Ranjan Varma, jokingly. ‘I am happy you could make it in spite of the heat.’

‘I made a point of not missing my appointment today precisely because of the heat.’ Mrs Kamala Roy volunteered an explanation as she made herself home on the ancient leather couch designated for patients. ‘The heat blazing in my brain, making me despondent one minute and agitated the next. So hard to see the light of the day this way.’

‘Kamala, you know well this is to be expected in bipolar depression.

But I’m hoping the right dosage of Paxil should help you. It’ll take time, of course. I’m confident it’ll do good to you—I mean, to this state of this mind of yours, in due course.’ Dr Varma tried to console her. ‘Just be a good patient and a little patient as I adjust your dosage. Maybe I have to add a suitable elevator, like Amytriptelene.’

Kamala Roy was less than convinced. She complained, ‘But Dr Varma, I have been taking these pills for long. How long does it take for the chemical imbalance to balance out, exactly?’

‘I’m thinking of this too,’ concurred Dr Varma. ‘I may switch to another medication: Effexor XR, which is supposed to be more effective for bipolar condition. Usually, you’d also take to control your mood, heart, and soul.’

‘This pill or that pill,’ countered Kamala, ‘but a pill is a pill, after all. I’m getting a little impatient, Dr Varma!’

‘And impatient patient, huh!’ exclaimed Dr Varma.

‘There must be some better way!’ hypothesised the impatient patient, exasperated.

‘Yes, there may well be another way, too,’ said D. Varma, softly. ‘It’s called hypnosis.’

Kamala was not exactly ecstatic at this revelation. She said in a subdued voice, ‘I have heard of hypnosis. I am not quite sure what good it can do to me. What do you think?’

Dr Varma replied pensively, ‘Nobody knows for sure. It is not an approved method of treatment by the conventional medical science. Not much authentic data is available regarding its application and benefits. Still some instances have been reported that make it hard to throw this alternative out of the window altogether.’

For a minute, no one spoke. Then Kamala announced resolutely, ‘I am willing to undergo hypnosis-based treatment if you recommend a good hypnotist to me. Anything to calm down this constant upheaval and unrest in my brain and mind.’

‘OK,’ concurred Dr Varma once again. ‘I know a good practitioner of hypnosis. I’ll arrange for him to see you. I suggest you do not discontinue Paxil, not just yet. I’ll also see you periodically.’

Kamala Roy experienced a moment of relief and anticipation as she exhaled heavily and rose up from the couch to leave.

If she knew what was in store for her, her degree of anticipation would have been one-hundredfold greater.

Amit Kumar’s Mission

A mit Kumar hardly minded the oppressive summer heat. His daytime hours were mostly spent in fine, air-conditioned studios, rehearsing some new role he was going to play in his next movie in the making. He loved acting.

Even when he was barely five years old, he received high acclaim from the residents of his town whose ragtag youth group organised the staging of Kalidas’s classic Sanskrit play, Abhigyan Shakuntalam, translated into Hindi by a local budding scholar. In the play, Amit had performed the role of Bharat, the brave young son of King Dushyanta and Shakuntala.

Bharat was the first king to rule over ‘Aryavarta’: The Land of the Noble People, consolidating his empire throughout the land. At that tender age, Amit grasped only fragments of the storyline, but he immensely enjoyed the act of counting the teeth of the lion; his level of fun multiplied many-fold by virtue of the knowledge that his older friend covered himself with the skin of the animal as he walked onstage on all his fours to play the make-believe lion.

From the introduction of the play, Amit also remembered that ‘Bhaarat’, the classical name for the nation of the Greater India, originated from the name ‘Bharat’ of that very emperor whose early childhood he had impersonated onstage some fifty-five years ago. Much later, in high school, he learnt that Kalidas’s play was not just an imaginary tale but a historic event that took place in this land over some 8,000 years ago.

Amit’s deep interest in history, drama, scriptural literature, and writing had grown progressively deeper with age. Today, he is a celebrated actor in the Indian cinema world, Bollywood, as some called it. His fans and admirers spanned every corner of the country. Actually, his fame has permeated Indian communities all over the world. He has rendered scintillating performances in more than one hundred movies. Now, at age sixty, he has shifted his attention to history and literature more than he was able to in the heyday of his hectic heroship, just fit for a young man with great bundle of energy and charisma that he truly was. Those were the days!

Even now his fame and appeal as the greatest actor of Bollywood remains undiminished, without parallel. But the focus of his attention these days, especially during free moments, is the ancient Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, Puranas, Itihaasas—prominently the epic classics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata in the last category, written by two great sage poets: Valmiki and Vedavyas, respectively, perhaps in sixth and third millennium BCE, respectively. Amit wants to find out first-hand exactly who Emperor Bharat was, how long ago he ruled this nation, who his ancestors and descendants were, how the scriptures mention and describe them, what were some of the great events during various spans of history.

There are many stories in various forms available here and there, but Amit’s passion is to go back to the original sources and dig out ‘elements of raw truth’ buried therein. He can present his findings in some clear, interesting way for the layman and scholar alike.

Acting has been rewarding, no doubt. No complaints. But writing about the scriptural stories in the new light of his personal research, without depending on the fuzzy accounts by many of his predecessors over the centuries, would surely be a blissful adventure, Amit thought. He could still take some roles to appear on the celluloid screen occasionally, but his role as a researcher-writer and his reappearance in printed words would be something different, something superb. Judging from the standard of the Vedas, the Word, spoken or written, lasted beyond history, beyond time.

People will fondly remember his images on the screen for years and decades to come, but his words, if they are meaningful and powerful enough, will last forever. That’s a way to become immortal, to top over death lurking in the corner in everyone’s plot.

As an actor, Amit Kumar has a screen-lifespan of at most three hours—the usual length of an Indian feature film. The character he plays appears on the screen and then says goodbye to the audience within three hours, whatever drama of life and death he might present through his act.

In his next movie, he reincarnates again as another character in another drama, another life-story, doing another set of songs and dances.

Each time Amit Kumar takes up a new role, he absolutely becomes that character. Perhaps that’s the secret of his towering success. It’s like Amit Kumar passes away from the stage and reincarnates in the form—body, heart, and soul—of this new character, for the time being. And, then, didn’t Shakespeare say: ‘All the world is a stage!’? Who knows if the original Amit Kumar himself is not a reincarnation of some other character that was… that passed away to give birth to this Amit Kumar, for the time being… for this lifespan of his, that is!

Whoever said that reincarnation happens not!

Hypnosis

K amala hated to have to rush, but invariably she ended up doing so. Yet she always got late for her appointments. The quirks of the clock constantly eluded her like a regular system that frequently turned chaotic, without the slightest warning.

But today she was extraordinarily cautious. She didn’t want to tarnish her image at the very first meeting. In fact, she was full seven minutes early with respect to her time of appointment when she rang the bell at a door bearing the sign, in ornate calligraphy, the letters: Prof. Vishwanath Singh.

Kamala looked for some fine print to spell out the professional designation, but there was none. She removed her sunglasses to deposit them in her small purse, pulled the end of her sari over her right shoulder, and patiently waited.

The stout man who opened the door was in his late fifties, dressed in plain a white shirt and somewhat crumpled black trousers in stark contrast with Kamala’s decorative faint turquoise-coloured sari. ‘Dr Chittaranjan Varma sent me… ,’ Kamala started to introduce herself.

The stout man interrupted her, ‘Yes, yes, Mrs Roy, Dr Varma had called me to help set up this meeting. I was just expecting you. I am Professor Vishwanath Singh. Please come in.’

After brief preliminaries, Prof. Vishwanath Singh directly came to the point. ‘So, what makes you come here? How can I help you?’

Kamala expected the question, even though she knew he must have been briefed by Dr Chitta Ranjan Varma about her. ‘I want to try hypnosis. Dr Varma said you are the greatest master of hypnosis in all of Delhi, if not in all of India.’

‘Well, well!’ Prof. Singh was quick to comment. ‘Take what Dr Varma says with a grain of salt, especially in matters other than psychiatry. I also know your intention, generally. What I wanted to hear from you is your reasoning for wanting to try hypnosis. Tell me what appeals to you about hypnosis.’

‘Actually,’ confessed Kamala, ‘I know next to nothing about hypnosis, except for one or two magazine articles that I chanced to read over the years. But that’s its appeal. I want to know more about it, including subjecting myself to it. And who knows, it might do me some good. I have suffered from depression for years. Dr Varma is continuing his medication to treat the chemical imbalance he says is causing it. I wish to augment this course of treatment with hypnotherapy to see where it takes me. That’s basically it—if that could be construed as my reasoning.’

‘Fair enough, that’s fine,’ Prof. Singh replied. ‘We will talk more as we go along. But I must warn you, you might find yourself going places you haven’t dreamt of in a hundred lifetimes. Literally. You would have to stomach both good and bad in the same stride. Do you think you are brave enough for this? Really?’

‘Yes, sir, I am,’ Kamala fired back, with a deliberate tone of bravery, though not without a tinge of apprehension. ‘But what do you really mean… a hundred lifetimes?’

‘Just one of those facets of hypnosis people have a world of misgivings about,’ said Prof. Singh, confidently. ‘I mean regression—by which you could traverse back to your childhood and from there continue backwards through your previous lives. Many people remember not only their past lives under regression, but actually remember very specific details of past events as if they were experiencing it in the present moment. At least that’s what’s generally believed.’

‘And what do you believe, Dr Singh, if I may ask?’

‘I… . I’ve mixed feelings about it,’ frankly admitted Prof. Vishwanath Singh, supposedly the greatest authority on hypnosis in all of Delhi, if not in all of India. He then added half-humorously, ‘For now, let me reserve my right to answer you more fully only later. I’ll know better after I’ve talked to you in one of your past reincarnations.’

‘Are you kidding? . . . Is this really possible?’ stammered Kamala, not sure whether to feel excited or frightened at the news. ‘I came across the term, regression, but didn’t quite understand it… or believe it, for that matter.’

‘We will see, Mrs Roy,’ said Professor Singh simply. ‘We’ll see!’

Bharat

S age Vishwamitra sat still, in the forest, eyes closed, performing tapasya , a supreme level of meditation and severe penance, thoroughly detached from the world: a common practice among the great Indian sages to gain special mental powers and divine bliss. Years passed by. The king of the lesser gods, Indra, feared the sage would attain Godhood and might even challenge him for the kingship of gods in heaven. Though an immortal god, he suffered from such fears like mortals on the earth. He also knew what to do to derail the sage’s tapasya . He sent for Menaka, the most beautiful and gifted celestial nymph. ‘There is a mission for you, Menaka,’ Indra instructed her. ‘I wish for you to go down to the earth and make Sage Vishwamitra break his great tapasya .’

‘Your wish is my command, my lord.’ Menaka knew exactly what Indra meant. ‘It would be carried out to its logical end, my lord!’ The celestial nymph alighted from heaven on to the earth, appearing with her utmost charm in front of Vishwamitra, who sat motionless, meditating deeply… very, very deeply… . Amit Kumar paused. What was he writing? This is no history. Heaven! Indra! Celestial nymph! Do these words have meanings that a common rational terrestrial reader can relate to and accept? Or are these purely mythological figures, figments of imagination of the seer who authored this tale? Likely, because some part of the relevant history was amiss and an elegant substitution was judged as an attractive option. Not an easy question to decide, thought Amit, unless one were transported into a gone-by era, some 8,000 years ago in the past, to watch it all develop with one’s own eyes, in real time! ‘But Bharat is history,’ Amit told himself. After all, the name of the country is a living testimony to Emperor Bharat’s historical reality, even though this reality existed some 8,000 years ago. Amit made a note to himself that he had to resolve this dilemma eventually. For the time being, he decided to proceed with summarising Bharat’s story. He had to uncover for himself so many mysteries of Bharat’s history spanning many millennia. It would be painfully frustrating to get stuck at the very start. Menaka brought to bear on Vishwamitra her arsenal of heavenly charms, with song and dance only one from the paradise could possess.

She was finally successful in distracting the sage from his tapasya. He opened his eyes and saw the heavenly beauty, ready to offer herself.

Overpowered with desire, the sage fell victim to Menaka’s scheme.

Menaka had fulfilled Indra’s wish—Vishwamitra, however involuntarily, strayed from the path of penance. The famed sage—King Vishwamitra—once poised to serve the highest throne in the world and heaven, would no longer be a threat to Indra.

In time, Vishwamitra and Menaka had a daughter. As soon as the baby girl was born, Menaka decided to return to her permanent abode, heaven.

Vishwamitra also recognised his weakness of falling prey to Menaka’s charms and went back to resume his tapasya.

Sage Kanva found the abandoned baby girl, protected under the wings of the shakun bird. He brought her to his ashram, named her Shakuntala—the one found from under the wings of the shakun bird—and raised her as his own daughter.

Shakuntala grew up to become a most beautiful young lady. One day, King Dushyanta came to the ashram after his hunting expedition in the nearby forest. Sage Kanva happened to be away. The good king saw Shakuntala, and the two fell in love. It was love at the first sight on both sides. They secretly decided to get married privately, postponing a formal marriage ceremony after the sage’s return to the ashram to bless the couple’s union.

After a few days, King Dushyanta had to leave the ashram to attend to some urgent business at his capital. Sage Kanva was still away, so they had to still postpone their formal marriage ceremony. The king gave his royal ring to Shakuntala. He said he would send for her soon, so they could get married in the capital in a fitting manner, with Sage Kanva’s blessings.

Shakuntala continued to be constantly lost in thoughts of Dushyanta.

Once, Sage Durvasa came to the ashram and asked for alms. Shakuntala in her usual preoccupation of being completely immersed in Dushyanta’s memory, did not hear the sage. Durvasa, well known for his short temper, became enraged and cursed Shakuntala that the person she was thinking about would totally forget her. Just then Shakuntala’s companions arrived at the ashram from outside and, realising what had just transpired, implored Sage Durvasa to have mercy on Shakuntala. The sage made a concession: if Shakuntala produced the ring given to her by King Dushyanta, his memory of her would be restored. Shakuntala, however, remained totally oblivious of the whole episode, unaware of Sage Durvasa’s coming, his curse, then his merciful concession upon her lady friends’ apologies and entreaties, and, most significantly, of the special attribute King Dushyanta was empowered with under Durvasa’s great mental powers.

Such powers! Amit felt a sense of profound awe. Sage Durvasa pronounces his curse and King Dushyanta, in his capital, miles away, loses all memory of Shakuntala. Amit’s thought instantly went to the disk drive of a personal computer—PC—where it is possible to erase the memory of selected files or data sets with a click of the mouse. What was the secret of Sage Durvasa’s power to curse and act on another human’s brain physically hundreds of miles away? He could not quite explain it. Should he regard it in the category of mythology too? Or, maybe an electromagnetic wireless transmitter or some similar device capable of erasing memory cells in someone else’s brain was used. The trouble is that ancient Indian authors often masked the reality in symbolic constructs and mythological stories.

In spite of these unsettling thoughts, Amit knew well that he had a myriad of such puzzles ahead of him in store to solve. This prospect filled him with a mild despair and a vigorous excitement at the same time. He returned from his thoughts to pick up the thread of Shakuntala’s story.

King Dushyanta never sent for Shakuntala; his memory of her had completely evaporated from his mind due to Durvasa’s curse. Shakuntala, on her part, never ceased carrying her beloved’s memory for an instant. She was also carrying Dushyanta’s child. Finally, Sage Kanva, having learnt the whole story and pleased at Shakuntala’s choice of such an illustrious man for her spouse, decided that she should be with her husband, as a married woman and would-be mother should.

Shakuntala started the journey to the capital, accompanied with a couple of disciples of Sage Kanva. On the way, while drinking water from a river making cup out of her palms joined together, she unfortunately lost the ring with the royal seal that King Dushyanta had given to her to symbolise their love and union. When Shakuntala came in the presence of King Dushyanta in his court, he did not recognise her, of course. Shakuntala tried to remind him in every way, but to no avail. She wanted to show the royal ring to him as a reminder, but the ring was nowhere to be found.

Humiliated and losing hope, she went away to the forest to live by herself.

There, in time, she gave birth to a son, whom she called Bharat. Bharat grew up to be a brave and strong young boy—so strong and brave indeed that he used to tame the lioness and make her open her mouth in order to count her teeth, and he would amuse himself with her cubs as his fond playmates.

On the other side, Dushyanta was one day presented with a ring bearing the royal insignia by a fisherman. He told the king that he found the ring in the belly of a fish he had caught in the river. At the very sight of the ring, the effect of Durvasa’s curse disappeared and Dushyanta automatically remembered all the details of his visit to Kanva’s ashram and marrying Shakuntala. He, to his great sorrow, came to realise that he had disowned his pregnant wife when she came to live with him, humiliating her in the full court… . Everything came back to him in a flash! Dushyanta was full of remorse and repentance. He tried to search for Shakuntala in every corner of his kingdom and beyond, without success. One day, he happened to be in the forest where he saw a young boy playing with lion’s cubs.

The boy bore signs of becoming a great king, nay a chakravarti samrat—the all-powerful emperor. As his mother came out looking for her little son, King Dushyanta immediately knew that he had found his beloved wife, Shakuntala, and his son, Bharat. They all came back to the capital with pomp and glory and to everyone’s unbound joy.

After Dushyanta, Bharat ascended the throne. He consolidated his rule over his father’s kingdom and expanded his rule over great distances in all four directions, fulfilling the promise of a chakravarti samrat. And even kings of all remote lands paid homage and tribute to him. He ruled the entire country, proving to be the greatest and most just emperor. The country took its name after him, coming to be called Bhaaratvarsa, or simply Bhaarat.

Amit thought it was a good place to stop his writing for the day. So much to ponder upon, to dig deep into. But he was glad that, with the world undergoing horrifying changes every moment, the name of the country had remained unsmeared all these thousands of years. The name ‘Bhaarat’ was still used in literary, social, and official circles, except that the name ‘India’ had become more prevalent—a legacy of the British imperialism. Then, again, the word ‘India’ was derived from the word ‘Indus’, the anglicised name for the ‘Sindhu’ River that flows in the north-western segment of the country. The ancient Persians called people living on the east of the celebrated river ‘Hindu’ since in the Persian language, the sound of ‘S’ is pronounced as that of ‘H’. Now the majority of Indian population—over 85 per cent, to be more precise—is identified as Hindus, followers of the religion aptly called Hinduism, the rest of the population being Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Christian, Parsi (originally, the Persian), or Buddhist, in decreasing order in terms of population. The word ‘Hindustan’ was also used as synonym to India or ‘Bhaarat’. ‘Hindustan’ literally means ‘the place or country of Hindus’. Indeed, the word ‘stan’ is a simplified version of the Sanskrit ‘sthan’, meaning ‘place’. Thus all such names as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, etc. are apparently derivatives of the ‘sthan’.

Perhaps that is the reason Pakistani Government and even the Pakistani press preferred to use the name ‘Bhaarat’ rather than ‘Hindustan’. Maybe many in Pakistan still were not comfortable in officially recognising India as a country of Hindus; although Indians—government or public at large—affirmed India to be a secular country, with no special privileges based on religion alone.

Love Thy Neighbour

S trictly speaking, that was not quite true, though, since the Muslims, a minority with some 13 per cent population, did get special privileges—subsidy for the hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia’s Mecca, social concessions in keeping with the Muslim socio-religious laws, usurpation by the Congress Government of management of many leading Hindu mandirs (temples) (management including their assets from devotees’ donations in hundreds of millions of dollars for the benefit of Muslim and Christian communities and church), and so on. Indeed, the Hindus were treated often as second-rate citizens, in comparison to such privileges to Muslims and Christians granted by the Congress Party and the Government, obviously more in the spirit of making gains in pursuance of a ‘vote-bank politics’ than that of benevolent charity.

Didn’t hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits have to flee from their ancestral homeland due to the unbearable atrocities and terroristic attacks by fanatic Islamists—looting, forced conversion, and abduction and rape of young girls and women? Did the Central Congress Government do anything for the poor Kashmiri Pandits, living in tents like refugees in their own country? Virtually, nothing at all.

Kashmiri Pandits, the original inhabitants of Kashmir, of course, were outnumbered by Talibani-type Muslims, who settled in the Kashmir region only recently—within the last 200 to 300 years, a period of little significance in contrast to many, many thousands of years of glorious history and accomplishments beforehand, during which Kashmiri Hindus, with their Hindu rulers, excelled in literature, arts, and sciences. The original population of the region definitely deserved a better lot, thought Amit Kumar. But what could he do, after all. He had acted in a number of movies depicting the Islamists’ terror and the Congress Government’s apathy, or partiality, or indecision, or, cowardice, or, maybe all of the above. Yet, no solution acceptable to all parties had been brought forth, except for the initial resolution within the Indian Constitution, based on the decision of the king ruling the state of Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh, in concert with the-then Nehru Government, that Kashmir is an integral part of India. Amit thought there was still the need of making more movies, of bringing a greater awareness among common masses—and perhaps better laws—to resolve this issue, a great point of conflict with the neighbouring country—Pakistan. This neighbouring country has been constantly instigating terror plots against India under the pretext of staking claims that India is undermining human rights of Kashmiri Muslims; in fact, they are feeding insurgency by small extremist groups, encouraging and scheming covert and overt entry of terror groups into Indian territory via Nepal and Bangladesh, and even printing billions of fake Indian currency—rupees—in an effort to subvert the Indian economy. Leaders of terrorist organisations, such as, Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, etc. openly vowed to destroy India, inciting and brainwashing and recruiting ignorant youth to join their organisations. Hundreds of madarsas (religious schools) forced young children to recite Koranic verses and taught violence and extermination of kafirs (non-believers of Islam) as part of their holy duty—jihad—to ensure a guarantee for passage into the paradise with a great many hoors (beautiful maidens) to entertain them for eternity—a blind creed of hatred as the central theme of fanatic Islamism.

Pakistan has gone to war with India three times already. The first war was inflicted upon Kashmir with the help of Baluchistani rogue elements and mercenaries, and it prompted the-then Maharaja of Kashmir, Hari Singh, to decide to become a part of the Indian nation. Thereafter, he was helped by India to repel the barbaric assault, which finally led to the establishment of an uneasy truce based on a temporary Line of Control (LOC), the northern part of Kashmir still remaining as what India called Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK).

Pakistan went to war twice again, apart from frequent violation of the LOC by terrorist outfits aided by the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The fact that each time they initiated the war and still lost it didn’t deter Pakistan Government, particularly its ISI, from planning continually terror attacks on the New Delhi Parliament House, and in various parts of India including Jaipur, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai (new name for Bombay), and on many temples, marketplaces, etc. The last war, in 1971, saw Pakistan lose its eastern segment that became a new independent country, Bangladesh, and over 200,000 Pakistani army personnel were taken prisoners by the Indian Army—they were finally repatriated, of course. The last large terror attack was on Mumbai, on 26 November 2008 (‘26/11’); it was as barbaric as the ‘9/11’—the attack by Islamist terrorists on the World Trade Centre in New York, on the Pentagon, and one failed attack apparently planned to demolish the White House in Washington, DC, United States. It was such a dastardly act—suicide bombers hijacking American passenger planes, flying those into their chosen targets using the flight-training provided by US institutions. But that is hardly surprising once one contemplates how many billions of dollars America has given in aid to Pakistan to combat internal terrorism, only to find that Pakistan turned from a make-believe friend into a hateful foe, especially after the notorious Al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, obviously sheltered by Pakistani regime and ISI, was killed in his own hiding place, Attobabad, close to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

Amit’s mind involuntarily swept over the entire history of the nation of Pakistan, created by dividing the original India into two parts—India and Pakistan—by the devious British, known for their notorious ‘divide and rule’ policy. Now, despite a high level of Government and administrative corruption, democratic India was making steady progress in various spheres, while Pakistan seemed to be gradually slipping into authoritarianism, militarism, anarchy, and chaos once again. Like everyone in India, Amit also wished Pakistan to be a stable and friendly neighbour, but Pakistani authorities seemed to be oblivious of their deteriorating economy and world-image as the epicentre of terrorism all over the world, particularly against India and the United States. Hundreds of terrorist training camps, supported by the ISI, existed in Pakistan, well nurtured by Saudi Arabian Wahabi Islamist regime. Yet, it had taken the United States so many decades to recognise the true face, or the double face, of Pakistan.

Amit Kumar recalled that even as high-school students, he and his friends used to wonder, even make jokes, about Americans being so naive—freely opening their coffers to Pakistan, thinking of them as friends, while Pakistan relentlessly pursued a policy of stabbing them in the back—an open secret to all Indians. The huge funds provided by the United States were mostly used by Pakistan in building military arsenals, including development of nuclear bombs, with assistance by China, itself a devious Communist regime, gradually making the United States its