It is said that a rage could be brewing up under the calm waters, which is invisible at a given time. Till it explodes. This applies to emotions too. Love and hate could lead to a war. It was not that long back when in the peaceful surroundings and friendly Kashmiris I ate their delicious cooked lotus stem when I was there on a photo shoot. Me on the quiet waters of the Dal, seated fashionably on a boat, in the middle of a lotus-filled lake, is reminiscent of the beauty and the glory of Jammu and Kashmir. But then the worst attacks are unexpected and sudden. So was the cross-border terrorist attack in Pahalgam on April 22, killing 26 innocent civilians. It sparked nationwide outrage and prompted a strong and decisive response from India. The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) approved a series of stringent measures targeting Pakistan for encouraging cross-border terrorism. India launched Operation Sindoor, one of the interpretations of which was the loss of lives of their husbands, the sindoor of women.
“Why are most stars staying quiet about Operation Sindoor?” I was asked by the media. I was walking out of an interview. I remember the first article I wrote on you ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, Jiten, the podcast guy reminded me. When was it? Just after your cover page article claiming “India’s first supermodel” in a magazine. That was a couple of years before the blockbuster movie Aashiqui that made me a household name. At that time I was one of the first models to be followed by the media like I were a star. Stars in the galaxy haunt me, I had joked then. They are the only stars I know, I would smile. Now after the ‘Anu, what a long way you have come’, kind of interview, the media got wind that I was there. They awaited for me on the road outside a newspaper building. “I am proud of our nation,” I said, raising my collar of the steel gray dress I wore.
A disengagement from violent extremism is a positive way forward. But all the same, “Hatred never ceases by hatred, by love alone is it solved.” For millennia, across cultures and civilisations, sages and philosophers and Paramahamsa yogis, gurus, have sensed that the world we perceive through the senses is fake, a dream, the drama is not real. While the atman—the invisible one that is unmanifest—is the truth beyond the manifest and shallow perceived reality around us. The Chandogya Upanishad declares Sarvam khalvidam brahman. Pure, formless, unseen is eternal, Brahman is the ground of all reality. It is our core, which I am so grateful to have actually had a chance to be entangled with when my body gave up on me and had collapsed. So the point is that darkness exists because of the light. There is a positive message coming from the mishaps, the conflicts, that when our mindset is linked to the Brahman, happiness results, peace pervades.