Arjuna, the great Pandava warrior was
married to Subhadra, the sister of Lord Vishnu’s eighth avatar, Krishna. When Subhadra
was pregnant with Abhimanyu, she often sat beside Arjuna & Krishna as they
discussed the strategy of warfare and combat. Whilst still in his mother’s
womb, overhearing the conversations of his father & uncle, Abhimanyu
mastered the art of archery & war.
On one such occasion, the to-be born
Abhimanyu learnt the technique of attacking & escaping from arrangements of
troops in battle arrays or vyuhas; Abhimanyu listened with great curiosity as
his uncle explained in detail the strategy of engaging with various offensive
and defensive formations right from the crocodile formation of Makaravyuha to
the tortoise formation of Kurmavyuha. After explaining all other vyuhas, Krishna
narrated the technique of cracking the virtually impenetrable & deadly whirlpool
formation of Chakravyuha, knowledge of which was privy to only a few chosen masters
of war strategies. Krishna talked about how to enter the Chakravyuha, but when
he had started explaining the exit from it, Subhadra had fallen asleep, seeing
which he had stopped explaining it any further – as such, baby Abhimanyu had
partially learnt the strategy of entering into it, but not the complete art of
how to come out of the Chakravyuha. Abhimanyu could not obtain the full technique
of breaking all circles in the Chakravyuha, but whatever he had heard his uncle
say, he had carefully preserved in his memory.
My
grand-mother had been pregnant with my father when the attack by the
Harkat-e-Jehad (HeJ) outfit had massacred their existence. Amongst widespread
atrocities & destruction, the women-folk especially the pregnant among the
lot were taken as captives for they were the seeds that would go on to bear the
fruits of the future of HeJ.
The past details are scratchy and only known from hearsay, but going by current arrangements, all pregnant women would have been kept as captives only until their delivery & early lactation, enabling their babies to have a healthy start, after which caretakers would have taken over with the actual progenitors put to rest, their role in the upbringing having been completed. The remnants of my grand-mother and details of my family ancestry are not known any further, but the fact that she had given birth to a son would have assured her of the survival of her child.
As a baby, my father would have hardly been aware of the change of guard in his early years, but he definitely remembers the chilly weather of the hills in which he was brought up, the azan calls of the muezzin from the mosque in the vicinity, the murmuring of the verses of the holy Quran in his ears, the musty smell of the moisture-laden woolen sheets he was rolled in & the high-handed nature of his maiden whose punishments were a form of instruction, hardening his identity from the very start for a rough & tough future ahead.
Abhimanyu had been only 2 years old when the
Pandavas had gambled away their kingdom to the Kauravas and had left for the
woods on their 13-year exile. The young Abhimanyu had spent his childhood in
Dwaraka, his mother’s city under the guidance of his maternal uncles, Krishna
& Balarama. He had been trained by Pradyumna, the son of Krishna and
Kritavarma, Dwaraka's commander in chief. The combination of genes of a warrior
family, inheritance of courage & valour from his father, Arjuna &
grand-father, Lord Indra and training from some of the most accomplished
warriors of the time, had made Abhimanyu a fearless & dashing warrior. Owing
to his early prodigious feats and the ability to hold great heroes at bay in
warfare, Abhimanyu was considered an equal to his father.
The adolescent Abhimanyu had fallen in love
with Balarama’s daughter, Vatsala, but Balarama was not in favour of their
marriage. On Krishna’s advice, Abhimanyu had sought the help of his cousin
Ghatotkacha to elope & secretly tie the knot in the forest.
After the 13th year of incognito
exile, when the Pandavas had emerged, Arjuna had come back with a gift for his
son – a second wife, the princess Uttari of Matsya, daughter of King Virata. Soon,
his second wife was pregnant with their son, Parikshit, who would eventually be
the only descendant of the Pandavas to survive the impending onslaught.
My father had
only been 2 when the leader of the HeJ, Mustafa had been assassinated by the Indian
forces on the border. The new leadership of Mustafa’s younger brother, Shezad,
was markedly different with an undertone of revenge for his elder brother’s
death & extreme hatred towards the non-Muslim’s, especially the Indians.
The tonality of internal communication & command had changed from being paternalistically
liberal under Mustafa to being dictatorially directive under Shezad.
It was in such
an atmosphere of hostility & extremism that my father was brought up amongst
a coterie of boys in the training camps of Nowshera in the north-west frontier of
Pakistan. The muscularly-built Iqbal & the stealthy-eyed Mullah Omar had
played a key role in his upbringing during his formative years.
The physical on-field
training from childhood had involved strenuous aspects introduced by Iqbal
which included rock climbing/mountaineering, jungle survival, finer aspects of
ambushes & raids, operation of walkie-talkie sets & mock exercises for
border crossing to start with and had progressed onto practical demonstrations
in concealment, camouflage, reconnaissance & intelligence gathering,
training in ambush, sabotage & subversive operations.
As the boys had
advanced in age, a select set were chosen for the next level of training that had
involved introduction to AK-47 rifles, Chinese pistols, training on sniper
rifles, mortars, remote control & wireless communication devices, tank
mines, rocket launchers & explosives as well as first aid &
para-medical training.
On the other
hand, Mullah Omar’s audio-visual training in the madrasa had a profound effect
on the psyche of the boys, wherein he had indoctrinated them into the
fundamentals of Islam based on the holy Quran through lectures & video
films. His teachings had revolved around non-Muslim’s across the globe being
born only to be slaves of the Muslim’s under a single rule or khilafat with no sanction to individual
rules. He had stressed the importance of the HeJ as an entitled Islamic executioner
of those who undertook any unforgivable crime (shirk) or denial of truth (kufr)
or apostasy (irtidad).
Whilst they continued
to receive formal academic education in a technical background of their choice,
the boys were also guided on qualitative skills development to impart
leadership traits in team-building.
With an
athletic 6-foot personality, an early start into the ways of the Harkat-e-Jehad
as a new born, an in-pursuit correspondence diploma in electronics engineering and
advanced developmental training during adolescence from the likes of Iqbal &
Mullah Omar, my father had gone on to take authoritative responsibilities
within the group from his juvenile years. His early wins in the game had given
him an adrenaline rush every time a project was successful and had made him
popular within the group. He had soon become one of the right-hand men of
Shezad in-charge of key assignments.
It was during
his teenage years that father had fallen in love with his first wife, Sakina
from the adjoining area of Jehangira. With no understanding of my father’s family
background, Sakina’s father had not been in favour of their marriage. Father
had sought the help of his close aides from HeJ to elope into the adjacent
forest to tie the knot.
It was after
the successful completion of the Operation Taj wherein HeJ had been able to
strike at a few landmark sites on the Indian border that satisfied with his
supervision of the entire project, Shezad had come back with a gift for my
father – a second wife, my mother, Farida from the Sialkot district. Unable to produce
offspring from his first wife, father had readily accepted his gift and soon mother
was carrying me, before the imminent rough patch in our lives was about to
start.
x---------- End of Part 1 ----------x
Part 2 & 3 shall be uploaded over alternate days
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