Vishal Kamlani

Informed citizen

[Carl Wheless @carlwheless]

My father served in World War II.

Growing up, I spent decades studying that era across Europe, Asia, Russia, and the Pacific. Yet all I ever learned about India was that it served as a major base for the U.S. Army Air Force. B-29 Superfortress bombers would fly from India over "The Hump" (as bomber crews dubbed the dangerous Himalayan route) to forward bases in China, from where they launched devastating bombing raids on Japan.

The world has largely forgotten India’s much larger contribution to the Allied victory in WWII.

We owe it to them to remember and honor what our Indian allies did.

[Piyush Rai @Benarasiyaa]

Andaman and Nicobar Islands DGP Hargobinder Singh Dhaliwal felicitated two home guard volunteers - Raja and Jhag - from the vulnerable Onge tribe for recovering 6.9 kg methamphetamine from a remote jungle. Onge tribe belong to Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) and this is the first instance of PVGT members contributing to a massive drug bust.

[Shekhar Gupta @ShekharGupta]

As you look at the horrific pictures of the bombed Iranian school…

Pause for a minute and think..

Indian Air Force and the Army were given 2 and 7 terror targets respectively to hit on the night of May 6-7 in Op Sindoor…

Each was fully destroyed…

On the morning of May 8, the IAF carried out extensive air defence suppression using long-range kamikaze drones…

On May 9-10 the IAF targeted 14 PAF bases or radar stations/missile batteries…

Destructive evidence of almost all these strikes cane up in satellite pictures…

All strikes were carried out by precision munitions from long distances…

Not one missed aim or strayed to harm civilians… no school, no village or city, no hospitals. None…

This despite not having a fraction of the US military weapons, sensors or surveillance ability…

And in a furiously contested air space against near-peer PAF and its Chinese air defences…

Let’s give credit where due. To our armed forces in this case…

[Rishap Vats @VatsRishap]

One thing about the Indian foreign policy of this era which will go down as a badge of honour in the history books would be Delhi’s determination to withstand and forcefully respond to the moral hectoring that came from the European leadership over Ukraine.

[barkha dutt @BDUTT]

Good morning 🙏

Go to the stopwatch on your smart phone.

Press start.

Wait for 32 seconds.

Press stop.

Now ask yourself:

What could you do in that time?

Brush your teeth?

Have a shower?

Wear your clothes?

Have a cup of coffee?

None of the above?

Then ask yourself:

Would you be able to make a life or death decision in that time?

Would you WANT to make a life or death decision in that time?

Well, that is apparently the amount of time that the pilots on the Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, Flight AI 171, from Ahmedabad to Gatwick, had.

From take-off to crash.

32 seconds.

If one has ever peeked into the cockpit of a modern aircraft, then I guess one would comprehend the difficulty even more.

Because people have been talking about and analyzing the videos of that horrible crash.

Expert airmen and air women.

Flyers with thousands of hours of experience.

And they are still unable to definitively state what might have gone wrong.

After more than 30 hours.

They can’t figure it out.

Bird strike?

Dual engine failure?

Incorrect take-off configuration?

Flaps not correctly deployed?

Landing gear not retracted in time?

Hydraulics?

Nah, they just can’t say.

Not yet, not with certainty.

Not without the flight data recorder and the voice recorder, they can’t.

And yet, those poor pilots in that fated cockpit didn’t have 30 hours.

They had the luxury of a full 32 seconds.

To decide.

With certainty.

What in their modern, highly complex airplane, with millions of little knobs and gizmos and gadgets and dials, had actually gone wrong.

What should they do?

Not what should they speculate, but what should they actually do?

Because once they had figured out what had gone wrong, they still had to fix it.

All in a grand total of 32 seconds.

And not 32 seconds of peaceful thinking.

But 32 seconds of horrible frantic thinking, scrambling for ideas, running through mental checklists in the blur of seconds, racking through their brains for everything they had learnt in flight school and thousands of hours of flying, checking, scanning, altimeter, airspeed, stick shaker, what’s going on, why, why, why, with sirens and warnings likely blaring in the background, knowing that what they decide could impact their lives as well as the lives of another 240 souls on board, shit, 240 souls, why, what, how, will I see my baby.

I pick up my own smart phone.

Flick on the stopwatch.

Start.

Let it run to 32 seconds.

What must it be like, then, to know, with utmost certainty, possibly around the 15 second mark, that this was it?

That these would be the last few precious seconds of my life?

To know that things were hopeless, beyond fixing, to press that button on the radio and say those last words:

Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.

Hopefully some day we will know.

Some of the answers at least, I hope.

Of what went on in that cockpit.

What went wrong with that aircraft.

Why did it fall slowly out of the sky?

And hopefully once we know, airlines around the world will scramble to fix things.

To fix airframes, or equipment, or crew, or ground staff or whatever went wrong.

So that these 32 seconds never happen again.

Tonight, before your head touches that soft comfortable pillow, close your eyes.

And say a little prayer.

For 32 seconds.

Better still, pick up that smartphone, yes, the one with the smartwatch, and call someone.

Someone you love.

And let them know.

You love them.

Because life is fragile.

And who knows.

One day, we may only have…

32 seconds.

-Written by a Pilot !

[Aviator Anil Chopra @Chopsyturvey]

Superbly articulated by Priyanka Joshi.

"The world doesn’t know what to do with India.
We don’t fit their neat little boxes. We’re not white.
We’re not monotheistic.
We’re not ex-colonizers or submissive ex-colonized.
We are something they can’t decode.

We are too many things at once—ancient and modern, spiritual and scientific, emotional and logical.
We believe in gods and particles, karma and quantum.
We’re chaos that somehow moves forward.
That bothers them.

Because we aren’t supposed to succeed.

We don’t speak with one voice. We speak in thousands.
Our system isn’t clean. It’s noisy. It debates. It screams. But it works—because we’ve lived through worse and survived.
When we rise, they frown.
When we achieve, they doubt.
Because they still see us the way they chose to see us long ago—untrained, uncouth, and scattered.

But we’ve always known how to turn our mess into movement.
They don’t get that a billion people don’t need a single script.
They fear our success because it didn’t come from their textbooks, their aid, or their approval.

We remember being ruled, but we were never truly conquered.
We adapted, absorbed, transformed—but never disappeared.
And that is unsettling for those who thought we would.

India rising doesn’t fit their world order.
Because we didn’t wait for permission.
We didn’t rise from imitation—we rose from memory, from contradiction, from sheer force of will.

And that’s why they don’t celebrate our rise.
They resist it.
Because it wasn’t supposed to happen.”

[ANI Digital @ani_digital]

Pakistan is a global threat, its nuclear weapons must be disarmed, destroyed: Owaisi

Read @ANI Story | https://t.co/eU1QqJVRIt
#India #Pakistan #AsaduddinOwaisi

[Anish Gawande @anishgawande]

Half an hour before the ceasefire was violated - not just on the LOC, but in civilian areas as far inside as Srinagar.

Either the Pakistani government does not know what the Pakistani army is doing or the army has truly become a rogue actor. Unacceptable.

[Press Trust of India @PTI_News]

"We salute the supreme sacrifice made by BSF #Braveheart Sub Inspector Md Imteyaz in service of the nation on 10 May 2025 during cross border firing along the International Boundary in R S Pura area, District Jammu. While leading a BSF border out post, he gallantly led from the front. DG BSF and all ranks offer their deepest condolences to his family. Wreath laying ceremony with full honours shall take place tomorrow at Frontier HQ Jammu, Paloura," posts official X handle of Jammu Frontier, Border Security Force (BSF) (@bsf_jammu).

[Atal Agarwal 💜🚐🌍 @atalovesyou]

Time to STOP anything that might be funding Pakistan or Turkey.

Directly or indirectly.

Track down every Rupee that you are spending to its source and whose mouth it’s feeding.

Ensure it’s not feeding your enemies.

[Shiv Aroor @ShivAroor]

How India-Pak Ceasefire Happened ⚠️

12 hours after Indian strikes on 8 Pak air bases, Pak DGMO called Indian DGMO at 3.35PM today, requesting an understanding to enter a full ceasefire from 5pm. India agreed after discussions. The two DGMOs will speak again on May 12 at 12pm.

[Sky News @SkyNews]

Sky News has found social media accounts that posted videos at the site of an Indian strike expressing support for a terror group linked to al Qaeda.

Sky's @Chesh reports.

https://t.co/gt9SHUNMNt

[NDTV @ndtv]

"We Don't Want Escalation, Provided Pak Reciprocates": India's Special Briefing
https://t.co/pGTPCqwupc

#OperationSindoor

[Shashank Shekhar Jha @shashank_ssj]

This is Pakistan

[Amrullah Saleh @AmrullahSaleh2]

India invented the Chess game. Be confident.

My "becauses" to your "whys".
Why it matters to support India.

In September 1996, President Mohammad Najibullah was brutally executed in Kabul. The prevailing narrative attributes this act to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), with the Taliban as the executors.

From 1992 to 1996, the Islamic Government of Afghanistan, led by President Burhanuddin Rabbani, accused Pakistan of sponsoring Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and later the Taliban to violently overthrow the Afghan government. The ISI was named the orchestrator of this brutal war, driven by Pakistan’s pursuit of “strategic depth.” Reports assert that the ISI supplied 10,000 missiles to target Kabul during this period.

In 1997, a scorched-earth policy devastated the Shamali Plains. The destruction was attributed to a trio coalition of Al-Qaeda, the ISI, and the Taliban. Numerous interviews with national hero Ahmad Shah Massoud, available online, corroborate these assertions.

From 1998 to 2001, Pakistan’s Special Services Group (SSG) deployed units to Kunduz to support the besieged Taliban. Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, these units were airlifted out in what became known as the “evil flights,” enabled by a secret agreement between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and U.S. President George W. Bush.

On September 9, 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated by two Al-Qaeda operatives whose passports recorded twelve trips to Pakistan. General Musharraf warned British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Scotland Yard that pursuing the investigation would jeopardize Pakistan’s role in the anti-terror coalition. The investigation was halted, and the official narrative holds the ISI, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban responsible for the death of our leader Shaheed Ahmad Shah Massoud.

From 2004 onward, Pakistan’s military provided financial, military, and logistical support to the Taliban, enabling them to regroup and wage a bloody terror campaign against the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. The ISI was repeatedly condemned by Afghan leaders, including Presidents Hamid Karzai, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, and Ashraf Ghani, as well as international figures. The U.S. designated the Haqqani network as a “veritable arm” of the ISI.

In 2008, the Indian Embassy in Kabul was bombed. In 2023, the bombers’ families publicly revealed their ties to the Taliban and disclosed the terrorists’ identities online while seeking recognition and financial support from the Taliban system.

On September 20, 2011, Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the High Peace Council, was assassinated by a Taliban operative using a sophisticated bomb concealed in a turban. The operative had traveled from Pakistan, and the ISI was accused of supplying the device.

On May 31, 2017, the German Embassy in Kabul, located on a crowded street, was bombed by the Haqqani network, killing or injuring over 700 Afghans. The Haqqani network, a close ally of the ISI, was based in Peshawar and Miram Shah.

Pakistan facilitated the Taliban’s diplomatic outreach to legitimize their cause. When Kabul fell in August 2021, ISI chief General Faiz Hameed visited to assist the Taliban in forming a cabinet, famously photographed holding a teacup - celebrating the humiliation of Afghans. Pakistani leaders particularly the relgio-terrorists celebrated the fall of the Afghan Republic as a religious victory, rubbing salt on the wounds of millions of Afghans.

Emboldened by their success in Afghanistan, the ISI and its proxies launched the Pahalgam attack in Kashmir, India, on April 22, 2025, killing 26 cilivilan Indian citizens. in a brutal assault claimed by The Resistance Front (TRF), a Lashkar-e-Taiba offshoot - our common enemy. In response, India, the world’s fifth-largest economy, launched Operation Sindoor to dismantle the ISI’s terror networks.

Why should we not thank India for confronting our common enemy? Why act with cowardice? Some assert that this type of statement conflicts with the interests of our bloc, constituency, or ethnic group.
But let’s not forget Pakistan’s official stance: without the Taliban and the complete removal of ethnic diversity, particularly the Tajiks, from power in Kabul, Rawalpindi would continue to support the Taliban. This policy is recent and well-documented.

We, the good Afghans, couldn’t dismantle the ISI’s terror networks ourselves, though I wish we had. India has now taken bold action. The least we can do is offer moral and political support for India’s large-scale counter-terrorism efforts targeting the culprits behind our leaders’ assassinations.

We live in a multipolar world. The outcome of this conflict will shape South Asia’s strategic landscape. Let’s have the courage to call a spade a spade. And remember: chess was invented in India. They know the game.

[Sonam Mahajan @AsYouNotWish]

🚨 Three dead in Rajouri in Pakistani air strikes on civilians.

1. Sh. Rajkumar Thapa (Additional DC Rajouri)
2. Asha Noor (Age about 02 years)
3. Mohd Shohib (Age about 35 years)

[Kapil Komireddi @kapskom]

Pakistan started this conflict by sending terrorists to slaughter Indians. India, while responding with restraint, made sure to offer Pakistan an honourable way out. Pakistan rejected it and escalated a crisis of its making into war. It deserves everything it gets now.

[Omar Abdullah @OmarAbdullah]

Devastating news from Rajouri. We have lost a dedicated officer of the J&K Administration Services. Just yesterday he was accompanying the Deputy CM around the district & attended the online meeting I chaired. Today the residence of the officer was hit by Pak shelling as they targeted Rajouri town killing our Additional District Development Commissioner Sh Raj Kumar Thappa. I’ve no words to express my shock & sadness at this terrible loss of life. May his soul rest in peace.

[Trendulkar @Trendulkar]

DGISPR Ahmed Shareef Chaudhry is the son of a UN and US designated global terrorist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood. His father provided Osama Bin Laden information about chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

[Kamlesh Singh / Tau @kkstau]

If Masood Azhar madarsas are officially your second line of defence, you are a terrorist nation. Period.