Facing the Enemy Within!

     

As somebody who has never known any life other than the life in the Defense Forces, The Indian Air Force, as a daughter first and then as a wife, the news of the Mirage 2000 crash where we lost two of our best pilots hit me hard as it has done many-a-times before.

They were young test pilots, the finest of the fine, looking forward to a rewarding career and life. Snatched away too soon, it is only their families who can wholly understand and comprehend the loss of these young men doing for the country what most others are afraid to.

Every time my husband doesn't call or text after he has supposed to have landed, listening to my thumping heart, I call him to check if he has touched down.

As the wife of a fighter pilot, a test pilot and now a corporate pilot, I have trained myself not to worry about what could happen each time he soars off into the skies, his life in the hands of a machine, I have never really understood.

The hue and cry after a fatal crash dies down very soon, life goes on, but the whys and whats behind it all are also quickly forgotten and hushed up. No one ever, especially the families ever know what really happened. I don't know what the government officials, the politicians, and the others involved do to ensure incidents where the machinery fails don't occur again, but I know this, they need to wake up before more lives and families are destroyed.

And for those who believe soldiers and officers are paid to die for the country(and there are many who speak about it brashly), I say only one thing, would you do it? Would you die for your country if you are paid a gazillion rupees especially when you know you could be killed before you ever engage in war and face the enemy.

We need to take responsibility and say "we know what happened and we will make sure this does not happen again."

It's time to hold those who blanch at the mere mention of facing the enemy, holding a gun, flying in a fighter plane, comfortably ensconced in their plush offices and homes, accountable, because they have blood on their hands, the blood of the young soldier, pilot or sailor whose only dream as a young boy or girl was to protect their country from the enemy.

But when there is a enemy within, we have already lost the battle that never even began.