iioal malik
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see the video and i m sorry if i m posting it on the wrong place..
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well professionals always respect each other despite all the enmity
well professionals always respect each other despite all the enmity
"Col VN Thapar is a remarkable man, a soldier of the old school, very pucca, very composed. Every year, he climbs up to the exact spot where his son died, that's all eight years since the war ended and has made a small shrine to his son, at 15000 ft!! In 2006, I met him at an army function and promised that the next time he went up I would accompany him - that was that. So here we were, climbing up, crossing high alpine meadows and negotiating icy cold streams.
I said Col Thapar is a remarkable man, it just isn't the resilience he has, I am a reasonably fit man but at these heights it isn't easy. At 65, the Colonel isn't a young man, but he never complains, never once asked for a break, he just goes on stolidly.
No, the real reason for my respect is something that I realized as I shot the story. Here was a man who had lost his young son, Capt Thapar was but 22, when he fell, but even as he recounted Vijayant's last moments, his father, the Colonel, never lost his poise, calm, dignified, he found place in his heart to feel for the Pakistani soldiers his son fought, complimenting their bravery, recounting how tough it must have been for them as they were pounded for days on end by ceaseless arty fire, without water.
He even showed me the cave where they used to take shelter from the shelling and it was never 'as the enemy' that he referred to them, they were the 'Pakistani Boys', just as his son and his mates were the 'RajRif Boys', he was just a soldier talking about fellow soldiers!
For me it was an experience I will always cherish, Kargil was the first war extensively covered by the media, for the first time we saw the Indian army in action, we shared their agony, saw young soldiers on TV hours after a successful attack, alive, happy, recounting their adventures and then some days later saw obits read out on, saw their lifeless bodies, blackened, torn to pieces, being cremated in their hometowns"