Just Saying | India’s Med Max moments in Ukraine feature a couple of big cats, and a couple of king-size nuts

Sainikesh Ravichandran. Image courtesy News18

Operation Ganga has slowed to a final trickle even as tears of joy flow unabated in thousands of families in the nation. Over 22,000 Indians have exited Ukraine. Most of them are students, almost all of whom have been brought back or are about to be.

But that’s not the point. The point is the double dose of desi tadka in this unfolding Eurasian epic, sideshows of which are so racist that even the West is making shocked noises.

Tadka No. 1 is Girikumar Patil, who has set two big cats among the assorted separatists of Severodonetsk in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. Patil, from Andhra Pradesh, is a practicing doctor who owns a jaguar and panther. He also owns three large dogs, mastiffs all.

And Patil won’t move. Not without his cats, a 20-month male jaguar, described as the hybrid offspring of a male leopard and a female jaguar, and a six-month panther.

Patil made the unfortunate choice of setting up in Luhansk before this; the fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists there destroyed his home and restaurant. Severodonetesk was, in Patil’s view, a fresh start.

Patil’s cats are in the basement, but a very large bee remains ensconced in his bonnet. Patil’s parents are frantic; he won’t budge without his beloved cats. Kaagaz bhi dikhayenge: the cats have the requisite papers; they were purchased right and proper from the Kyiv Zoo. That’s where the exotic mating of an Old World leopard and South American jaguar that yielded what Patil calls his male jaguar seems to have taken place. These Ukrainians have a thing for mix and match.

As of now Patil and his pussycats are sitting pretty with enough meat to go around and there’s probably room to swing both cats. Patil doesn’t want to venture out much, for curiosity is a killer.

But that could change. It could soon be raining bullets and bombs in Severodonetsk, and Patil and Co. could find themselves walking on some really hot bricks.

That brings us to Tadka No. 2. Meet Sainikesh Ravichandran, the newest addition to the Ukrainian forces battling the big, bad Russian army, the Coimbatore Grinder on the Western side of the conflict.

Sainikesh has turned this whole Ukraine technical education thing on its head. Way back, when Sainikesh was home, he was rejected by the Indian Army.  Now, years later, he is at the National Aerospace University in Kyiv, and was to graduate in July.

No more, for Sainikesh’s josh that the Indian Army missed by thousands of airmiles is now Ukraine’s gain. Sainikesh has signed up to fight, and has even told his parents about it. He’s in the fight now, probably the first soldier of fortune from India in many hundred years, or at least the first to fight for a totally unrelated cause.

Recruiters out there could be getting ideas, and if they decide to reap the rejected part of our demographic dividend, Sainikesh could become an icon for a generation.

Imagine Sainikesh and Patil meeting on a raging battlefield. They’re on opposite sides, and while Sainikesh has unguided josh, Patil has his adopted cats. They call a truce over some curd-rice, and Patil switches sides, in time for a great Ukrainian underdog- or undercat-  victory.

Someone call Hollywood. Black Hawk Down won’t have diddly-squat on Black Cat Up.

Don’t take this too seriously. You might get offended.

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