SALIM MUST DIE Read Online Free PDF

you don't need to study for that.’
    ‘Right! Tell that to Amma.’ They all laughed as they raced off towards the nearby park.
    ‘Why do you want to join the army?’ another voice piped up. ‘Wouldn't you rather be an engineer like your dad?’
    ‘No!’
    ‘My mother says wars are bad. She says it's wrong to kill.’
    ‘So does mine,’ the boy named Anbu replied. ‘She also says that India will only be as peaceful and prosperous as the strength of the army defending her.’
    Then the innocent excitement of childhood reclaimed their attention and they ran off to the waiting basketball game.
    RAJAN ANBU HAD ALWAYS WANTED TO JOIN THE ARMY. HE had known this ever since he first set eyes on an army man. The olive-green uniform drew him like a magnet. His fascination did not wane with the passage of years. So it surprised no one when his name appeared right on top of the merit list for the entrance examination to the National Defence Academy and, three tumultuous and eventful years later, at the top of the Academy's merit list.
    Then came the final year at the Indian Military Academy. This was when the young man really came into his own; unleashed by the rigorous military training, his innate leadership skills threw off the yoke of conditioning that burdens lesser men.
    Whether it was during the years of initial training or the years that followed, the one thing that made Anbu stand ahead and apart from the pack was the sheer calm and confidence that he radiated. It surrounded him like a perennial halo that did not even desert him on the icy, head-spinning heights of the Siachen Glacier and Kargil, during the gut-wrenching close combat in the jungles of Sri Lanka or on the bullet-ridden roads of the Kashmir valley.
    No one can ever say for sure why Anbu was one of the few who found himself moving from the turmoil of one battlefield to another in quick, nerve-wracking succession. Perhaps it was just bad karma in some past life or simply the fact that the gods had in mind for him a higher destiny, one that needed him to be better prepared than most. And, as those who have felt the heart-stopping rush of a bullet whistling past will tell you, there is no better conditioning than the battlefield….
    It was this Buddha-like calm that helped him withstand the relentless roar of the Pakistani artillery guns that pounded his position on the Siachen Glacier. It did not desert him when he was confronted by the bodies of friends and foes, dismembered and disfigured by the savagery of artillery shells. It stood by him when he collected pieces of his comrades torn to bits by the LTTE landmines in the steaming jungles of Sri Lanka. It held him together safely and then delivered him to the Kashmir valley, once a vision of ethereal beauty, now a land torn apart by the conflict between India and Pakistan.
    The memories that hurtled him back down those dark, narrow lanes, which he seldom allowed himself to consciously traverse, were neither calm nor forgiving.
    DELHI WAS AGAIN REELING UNDER A MASSIVE, RELENTLESS power-cut, which made the already intolerable heat maddening. In fact, life seemed to be a perpetual power-cut these days. Anbu was struggling to go through the motions of another high-stress day, when the call came. It was Sanjeev Kanal. Anbu and Kanal went back a long way, to their Defence Academy days. There were two things they had always had in common – both loved reading and basketball. The minute Anbu heard the tone of Kanal's voice he knew that something was seriously wrong.
    ‘Anbu, have you heard?’
    ‘Heard what?’ A sudden sense of foreboding flailed Anbu.
    ‘Arjun is… is….’ Kanal's voice faltered. ‘He's no more.’
    ‘ Arjun ? No!’ Numbness overcame Anbu. ‘What happened?’ he said, struggling to stay calm. ‘How?’ As Kanal told him, the scene played out in Anbu's mind like some horrifying movie.
    Arjun's battalion had been ordered to clear a mosque which had been taken over by the so-called