RIFLE RANGE BOY

It is said that ancient Indians had certain ethics in war. Fighting can only be done between dawn and dusk. So, a pre-dawn surprise attack is technically wrong in their book. Their code of conduct also dictates that a warrior of a certain stature could only engage in combat with someone of the enemy of a similar calibre. That is a foot soldier duels with another foot soldier, a warrior on the elephant battalion with another one on an elephant and so on. The commander does not watch the battle on the sidelines but gets his hands dirty by being in the thick of things. By convention, come dusk, both warring factions would lay down their arms and continue in natural light the following sunrise. The Kurukshetra War (circa 3000 BCE, dates debated) is said to have ended all the codes of war. When cousins and uncles go for each other's carotids, niceties are expectedly put aside. As the cyclical nature of time was pushing to Kaliyuga, anarchy is what one just expects. With battles sometime...

Somebody's here! It is a piece of land right in the middle of the triangular subcontinent, a land so remote that King Dasavaratha thought it was apt for Ram, Sita and Laxman to spend 14 years in exile. A forest lush with various flora, deer, birds with psychedelic-hued feathers, the cursed stone of Ahalya, sages, tribes and demons used as their playground and workstations. It soon came to be non-existent with climate change and invading foreign invaders over the generations. Locally made pistols The  farangs  took a particular interest in this area when they were kings. The abundance of minerals in that area piqued their curiosity. Many mines sprung up, and the visitors thought it was an appropriate venue to host numerous factories specialising in gun manufacturing, ammunition and bombs. There it was, Jabalpur of the central state of Madhya Pradesh with its gun factories, military barracks and related military training posts.  What used to be a playing field for sages the...