It must be my birth. I was crying like hell. I don't remember the day though.It doesn't matter also I guess. There was no one around and there were no relatives or any one to celebrate it. May be after one year when I will be one year old, my birthday will be celebrated. Let's not go into future. No one has seen it. But where was it? I don't remember the place also. I could smell something burning. But my olfactory organs were not developed enough to recognize it.
I hated these people who didn't have any other purpose in life then to kill people. Bastards. They act like as if they are innocent and don't have anything to do with the innumerable no of people they would have killed. They have ceased to be human, and so have I. I had to. I still remember the first time I shot a man. The bullet pierced his chest and blood came out. I could see the fear in his face and the mixed anger in his eyes. My fingers were numb. Holding an AK 47 was never so easy. At that moment I realized the power of this small weapon. It never felt the same while shooting at puppets during training. It was rather fun.For a moment I thought whether it was right or wrong. But when you are fighting for your country and against terrorists there is nothing right or wrong. There is only one thing. You are doing your duty. Somewhere down the line after killing five militants I also ceased to remember that they are also human beings, human beings of a different kind. If you don't kill them they will kill you and more. In a way you are saving thousands of lives by killing one person.
I didn't stop crying and that's when my mother started feeding me. The first element of food, food for sustenance. But the burning smell was still there. It was a dark room, but enough light to see things clearly.I don't know why but my mother was tense.
Even though I didn't think twice before killing these militants my hands freezed when I killed a young boy with a gun in his hand. It was just in a moment. It was more of saving myself then killing him. He wasn't alone. They were in a group. We had to gun them down. When he should have been in school with a school bag in his hand, he was carrying a gun. What are these people up to. I don't know. They are just militants. He didn't look innocent. There was a strange kind of anger in his eyes. Something which you won't see in a person his age. Again my mind could not decide if it was right or wrong. That day I could not sleep. It was much more painful then the first time I had killed the militant. For two days I was in a shocked state.
I had to move on. I had to keep alert to do my duty. Its not easy, specially when you are working in such drastic environments where anything can happen in anymoment. They have a life of their own and we have our own. When we meet , whether its militants or us, human beings die. Sometimes we are lucky sometimes they are lucky to survive, may be to die a death a little later or never. No one knows. Life is like that. It is said that when you die the whole life flashes infront of your eyes. I don't know what would have the militant thought while I killed him or the young boy. He was still a minor. How much of life had he seen to recap it while dying. We had got information about a group of terrorists hiding in a small house. Going through the hilly rough roads and walls made of stones we found them out. There were five of them, again one of them was a young one.It was just a fraction of a moment, he fired a bullet and it hit me. I collapsed there. It was like lightning. I wasn't feeling the pain anymore.My mind had taken over my neural system I guess. I wasn't fighting death there. Lying in a pool of blood I thought about the young boy I gunned down a few days back, the memory was still fresh in my mind. Whether it was wrong or right, I don't know. There was not enough time for the whole of my life to flash infront of my eyes. The thoughts were like a trip. They just came one by one in a random fashion. I could see the young boy who had shot me being shot by another soldier. At that time I could feel a strange kind of pain, a strange kind of sympathy for the boy. He didn't look like a terrorist at that moment. He just looked like an innocent boy being killed for nothing. I felt helpless. Two of the soldiers rushed towards me.I could barely see them. I breathed my last breath.
I was silent by this time. My stomach was full and I was no more hungry. My mother was still tense. A few holes on the roof made way for the sun rays, the only source of light in the room, diverging from the top. The surrounding was silent.By this time I had gone into a deep sound sleep. Suddenly a loud explosion broke the silence. It was so loud that it woke me up and I started crying. I could feel the grip of my mother's hand holding me tight and crying. A hand wet with blood reached for my hands and held it for a moment and then dropped. It was my fate to be reborn into a family of militant.