I AND MY WORDS

 A man once boarded the wrong train and ended up in Tamil Nadu near Arunachala in Tamil Nadu, a holy pilgrim site that has moved many a seer and saint. He was told by a lot of people to go visit the site and meet a man named Ramana Maharshi.  The man, an avowed communist and atheist, had always baulked at the idea of religion. However, since he had heard so much by then, he decided to go and meet him.  The minute he stepped into the ashram of Bhagavan, he could not control his emotions. Something took over him. Meeting Maharshi he did not know what happened to him. Bhagavan said nothing, and yet he was impacted heavily by the meet. His whole outlook to spirituality and religion changed in a minute.  He took Bahgavan's blessing and returned home to Kerala. Took up Sannyas and started to work for society. That man later became famous as Swami Chinmayananda, the founder of the Chinmaya Mission.

Indian Border troops and Chinese troops at Nathu La (Image Courtesy: Brookings ) For two days now, the news cycles have been abuzz about the happenings of the midnight of 31 Aug 2020, when unlike the pre-emptive move of two days back earlier to the chagrin of the Communist China’s People’s LIberation Army (PLA), Indian military pushed in battalions of Special Forces to take over strategic points on the southern bank of the Pangong Tso. This extremely erudite move has literally defanged the PLA’s capabilities to throw a surprise or even use their traditional swarming tactics which need an element of surprise to succeed. While this is not the first time that India has dared to stare back the PLA behemoth in its eye, there are reasons to be cautiously jubilant. Lessons Learnt from Operation Falcon Applied Truly Well While experts like Nitin Gokhale will certainly contribute much more to the discourse with their enriched and accurate ground reporting, it would be very important to point o...