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“Trees talk if you care to listen. I know that now but back then, I had only heard the old oak tree outside my window back home. I’d heard it breathe. Yes, breathe. On the cold nights when I sat up prepping for my exams, when the rest of the world fell into a deep slumber, I heard the Old Oak: a bit eerie, like an old man, its breathing, laboured and arrhythmic.
I wasn’t hallucinating; Picking up my stopwatch, I checked if there was a pattern and there was one. A clear and loud inhalation and exhalation, almost human-like. I wondered if the Old Oak was trying to communicate with me. Tell me its story?”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“The Jungle was alive. A throbbing entity with its own rules of engagement. And the rules were fairly simple. That you did not try to engage with it. That you had to let it own you. The Jungle had ears and eyes. It found your fears faster than you found your strength. And word travelled fast, really fast. Especially if raging waters criss-crossed through its hear. If you did not square off with your fears, the Jungle would square off with you.”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“I suppose the precise moment when death swoops in to snatch your soul isn't actually terrifying. The nanoseconds preceding it are like Final Destination 6 playing out at 120 frames per second. The Jeep hurtling down, me inside it, being tossed around violently, screaming, watching the freefall knowing that the gas tank has 60 gallons of petrol in it and seeing a protruding rock fifty metres ahead. Now that is cruel!”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“Army Brat: an acronym for Born, raised and transferred. Brats, irreverent, sometimes more reckless than courageous and unabashedly basking in the reflected glory and adoration our fathers deservedly received. But mostly we were gypsies--agile quick-witted and tough bunch of youngsters growing up in a world that barricaded the rest of the universe out and kept us cocooned within ours.
The brats moved every two years across the country, from one cantonment to another, inadvertently learning to adapt and engage faster than their 'civilian' counterparts changed their iphones.
Resilience was a byproduct of this lifestyle.
Our wings were our roots. And those wings had brought my father to Tawang, a sensitive military base near out border with China.”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“So Tawang it was for three summers. Three spectacular summers, new friendships and an accidental adventure that is still fresh in my mind.
Tawang was and is special in so many ways. Ten thousand feet above sea level, home to the oldest monastery in Asia, with clouds that floated right into the military barracks.”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“The journey back to civilisation was often a whole lot faster and just as dramatic. On an MI-17 helicopter no less! Sitting atop and around military cargo. The best way to describe the Tawang sojourn was to compare it to a VR game, where one went from 'Jack and the Beanstalk' to the land of Black Hawk Down, all within nine weeks”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“Until that fateful moment, I did not quite understand the anatomy of fear. Creeping up surreptitiously, it could permeate your skin and, before you knew it, course through your veins like a tidal wave. A thumping heart and a parched mouth were classic symptoms of surrender. With the rational side of the brain hijacked, fear could paralyse you at will or compel you to jump out of your skin when you most need to stay calm. Standing in those raging waters, I learnt that fear most certainly could kill”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“I’ve held on to those memories for the longest; never
letting them go because it takes time � sometimes years �
to truly understand how a childhood adventure can impact
you.
When I look back, I marvel at how surreal that day had
been. It was the kind of misadventure one had only seen
in the movies and in all those stories the protagonists were
adults, some of whom did not make it. But we were just
children, and this was happening to us. And this was as real
as it could get.
For years after, numerous existential questions raced
through my head: Was God testing us? Were we handpicked
for it? Was it preordained? Th en the fog started to lift and I
saw it for what it was: a day in the jungle. Also, a day when
everything went wrong. I’d read somewhere that adversity
does not build character, it reveals it. We were tested, we
were pushed to the limits of our physical and emotional
endurance. We made it out alive, and it is important that
this experience be shared.”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“Anyway, the MI-17 made for one hell of a ride. It
was a monstrous chopper, more like an armoured tank in
the sky. Th e insides had a few metal seats on either side.
First-come-fi rst-served, you sat wherever you found space.
The mothers took the seats and the brats sat on the cold metal floor, among camouflage-green nets, wooden boxes and miscellaneous military cargo.
As the chopper rose, I peered at my
father waving from the small helipad made by plateauing a
mountain top with the Army’s engineering expertise. Some
moments stay with you forever. Th is particular one has
stood the test of time.
As we fl ew off to the safest military base, I stuck my nose
against the tiny window and kept waving back till my father became an olive-hued speck on the concrete helipad.”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“With my popped ears, I could only hear the muffled humming of the MI-17’s powerful blades, so I focused my attention on what I could see. As the chopper followed
its regular flight path towards Tezpur, I saw snow-capped mountain peaks nestling azure water bodies between them. And since the water was just a few metres below us, there
was no mistaking it for something else. Water for the gods� some might’ve said � and while the peaks were covered in snow, the small lakes had dazzling blue water. That sight, the
kind which often appears in heavily photoshopped pictures on Instagram these days, was indescribable. Breathtaking
would be an absolute understatement.

I had never witnessed anything like that before or after, and from that summer on, I learnt to accept the mystifying miracles of nature and its inherent fury, in equal parts. And
by the time the summer ended, I finally understood what a paradox truly meant.”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“Sometimes the universe gives signs, it foreshadows.
It warns. Sometimes coming events cast their shadows before.Momentously happy ones too. But sometimes those signs are just our hearts wanting something so desperately that we project them. All things said, this whole reading-the-signs business can be tricky as hell.”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“In love with Tawang. I still am.
I’ve clung on to every bit of its wonder within the snow globe of my memory, whilst an instrumental piece of music plays in the background. It was a CD that my father played often in his room at the barracks. I had read somewhere that every memory has a soundtrack of its own. ’Tis true! Th at
piece of instrumental music and Tawang are inextricably entwined in my head.”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“I’ve often wondered that if I could go back in time, would I make the same decisions? I think I would. After all, we all make bad decisions and some of them snowball into cataclysms far bigger than we could have imagined and beyond our control.
We still make them because they are meant to be made; they are meant to reveal who we are, to aid us in our journeys â€�”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“The other gem was Tawang’s gift to us: A tiny purebred
Apso, whom we called Mickey. A beautiful ball of white fur, a hopping rabbit, with heart-melting puppy eyes hidden behind shaggy Apso hair, perfect in all ways, well almost. Except Mickey farted. Farts so potent and loud, it was hard to believe a pintsized
dog was capable of generating such toxic fumes. Strangely, he saved his best ones for the weekly ladies� get-together at home. ‘Your dog is dangerous,� one of the ladies said laughingly to my mother. ‘This fellow will break wind and run off and we’ll be left wondering which one of us did it.� The modus operandi
was simple. He would come hopping into the living room for tasty treats and while the ladies were fawning over him, Mickey broke wind. There was a hushed silence as the fumes spread quickly, and the ladies silently wondered which one of them was the uncouth culprit. It took them a few visits to figure this
out, by which time Mickey the Fartonator had been confined to the veranda.
My poor mother was always at the receiving end courtesy our dogs and, well, me!”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“As we continued walking, the pebbles by the bank made a pleasant crunching sound under our feet. Their edges were polished to perfection by the continual friction of the water â€� revealing their innermost colours like polished diamonds.
A particular stone caught my attention. It was shining
among a sea of smooth grey ones. Picking it up, I gaped at it. This one was grey in colour like all the others except it had bands of iridescent blue running across its width. The
bands were the same magnifi cent hue of blue as the skies above. Did it break and fall from the skies and soak up the grey from its common companions? Was this some kind of fall from grace, because it really didn’t seem to belong where I found it.
I smiled at the treasure I had chanced upon and popped it in the bag on my shoulder. This was going back with me.
A forever memory of this day.”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“Neha’s walk across the river felt excruciatingly long. Like a rubber band stretched to its limits.
It is peculiar how moments of happiness and euphoria seem to pass over like greased lightning when compared to the ones filled with pain or anxiety. I often ask myself if happiness is genuinely fleeting or if we are hardwired to believe that human beings are born to suffer, and for that very reason tend to sadistically amplify and stretch our anxieties? Could our age old conditioning be in cahoots with Loki? Maybe, maybe not. I am still debating this, internally...”
― Nidhie Sharma, INVICTUS

“For five long minutes, the skies rumbled and poured,
carpet-bombing the Jungle with spear-like drops. Puncturing the surface of the water with ferocity and purpose, those dark clouds were unrelenting. Unleashing their little warrior drops with the express purpose of drowning us. Cooking up a storm, relishing the deluge. Or perhaps the clouds were not at fault; maybe their delicate frame could no longer
hold the water. Maybe the Jungle had conspired with Zeus and Indra.”
― nidhie sharma, INVICTUS