Before I call myself a journalist, a writer or a broadcaster, I call myself a military man’s daughter, a military man’s granddaughter and today, a military man’s sister.

As far back as my ancestry goes, the military has not just been a way of life but the only life. The war makes a huge part of who I am today. It has given me moments of pride and has inflicted on me equal moments of loss and pain. I am gripped by gratitude as much as I have conjured up anger for the life the military gave me.

It robbed me of a normal childhood.

It pulls a family apart, snatches the emotional attachment you might have shared with your father and suspends your life in the lurch. You can never be too sure if and when the next call you get tells you – your father is dead. You can never be too sure of anything in the military.

A crucible of contradictory emotions run through my blood when I trace the dots that thread my relationship to the military. In short, I declare my relationship as difficult.

Over the years, like many other things in life, I’ve made peace with my disillusionment with war but I’m impelled by an inner urge to seek a deeper understanding of conflict; of bloody wars; their miserable aftermaths; the violent civilian strife and the peacekeeping measures that ostensibly hope to change the bitter realities of war.

Driven by a gripping desire to study movements of conflict and resolution, I use reportage and writing to get closer to the subject and trace the ongoing global conflicts.