Although journalists are supposed to keep an objective view, often, inadvertently, they too get involved in matters of life and death. Often, soldiers, with no phoneline at their disposal, ask journalists to deliver messages to their homes. Tell our wives, our parents, our sisters, that we are well, they say. Sometimes though, as Chief Photographer Dilip Banerjee tragically recounted, a bullet travels faster than a phone call.

Last fortnight Banerjee spent time with some of the men who had taken Tololing, among them Major P. Acharya and Lieutenant Vijayant Thapar of 2 Rajputana Rifles. Weary but content they sat and shared a drink . Acharya told Banerjee about the bet he had with his pregnant wife Charulata, expecting in August: "She said it would be a boy, I said a girl, but the ultrasound showed a boy and so I owe her a gold necklace." He and Thapar then asked Banerjee to carry messages to their families.

Banerjee called the Acharya family in Hyderabad and then Thapar's mother in Delhi, telling her, "Your son is fine, he says he'll be back soon". Then he added, "He's also very brave." Two days later, at 6.30 a.m., Thapar's mother called, "My son was brave. He is also no more." Later that day Banerjee learnt that Acharya too had been killed. Says Banerjee: "I hardly knew them yet I felt really sad. I can only imagine the suffering of their families."

War for all its glorification is an ugly business. Ultimately it is a business of death. The sooner it ends the better for all of us.

(Aroon Purie)