Military institutions often appear distant to civilians. They never did to me. My father served in the Indian Air Force, and growing up, the Armed Forces were never just uniforms on Republic Day or headlines after a conflict—they were part of the conversations, values, and discipline that quietly shaped my childhood. I, too, dreamt of joining the Indian Army. Life took me elsewhere, but that curiosity never really left. Reading The Curious and the Classified: Unearthing Milit

There’s a moment in every Indian household connected to the armed forces when history stops being a chapter in a textbook and becomes deeply personal. Sometimes it arrives through an old photograph in uniform. Sometimes through a trunk filled with fading documents. Sometimes through the way a father falls silent when a war is mentioned on television. While reading From Reveille to Retreat by Lt. Gen. S. P. P. Thorat, I kept thinking about my father. Around the time the clou

There’s a quiet power in watching two lives unfold in parallel — ambitious, demanding, and yet beautifully intertwined. Growing Together...