Espionage

Well well 2007 will dawn in a few hours …. And in about 60 days from now dad retires……after more than 35 years of service in the ministry of home affairs GOI……………

Well what work did dad do.. He was a spy………..his forte was espionage… spying on politicians, commies, trade unionists, all public servants and what not.. also the separatists……….hmm one helluva job……I never got the air of what he was up to until I personally started my spying on him… and in the end I discovered the web of the complex structure and responsibilities of the SIB Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau of the ministry of home affairs Government of India….The premier police organisation of the country responsible for internal security …the SIB spies on any Goddamn thing.. needless to say that the foreign nationals were the most frequent targets…..well the better part of his job was in the last 5 years of his career where he moved on to a predominantly desk job in the Bureau Of Immigration, 90% of whose staff are drawn from the ranks of the SIB..

I shudn’t be saying that my dad worked for SIB or what he did but I chose to say after a Joint Director of IB called MK Dhar wrote a book on IB and its role in operation black thunder..(the one after Blue Star cmon don’t say u dunno Operation Blue Star I will write abt it later )

So dad was so passionate abt IB that he still feels that theres no alternative to HUMINT ( Human Intelligence )
The same sentiment is reflected in a book See No Evil by a CIA Case officer Bob Baer.
Dad still is angry about the fact that VP Malik had blamed the IB squarely for Kargil. As he says though it was IB s mistake there have been cases where Army ignored valuable advises by IB.

What good did IB do to me. Well well dad was mostly into counter terrorism and counter separatism braches also he extensively covered elections so my political knowledge grew..i was following elections from 1994 
He never spoke all this at home but I used to catch bits and pieces of it when he spoke to colleagues
Later when some one called on the phine they used t say that his voice and my voice was similar and used to tell something’s to me 

For a while he did boring desk jobs and spying on ppl doing bckgrnd checks.. like verifying judges and stuff..
Then I realised that no matter how trivial is the job u gotta have the same passion.. same as the one echoed by the character playin priety’s dad in lakshya.. ek ghass kaatnewala bhi bano toh acha gaas kaatnewaala bano
(Even if u bcom a grasscutter make sure that ure the best… )
The same sentiment is echoed by Bernard Focker in meet the Fockers (Dustin Hoffman) when he says to Jack Byrnes (De Niro) We just taught him to be passionate and love anything he does..

Dad showed the way to me a long time before….he cudnt stand people predominantly doing desk jobs manages high up the IB ladder.. same sentiment by Bob Baer too..

As I read the book I just compared an Indian and an American who had the same job profile..

And mentioned here is an Ode to not only my dad, but ,to all those IB people who work hard and take the same risk as the army guys… but noone notices em as noone is supposed to notice bcos their duty is to remain under cover......


Salutes to the unknown dads and bros in the IB and the RAW