 Friends, I'd like to welcome all of you here this evening. Sometime back, I mean, the atmosphere in India today, at least from my perspective, is colored with a lot of hatred, a lot of anger, frustration. And the politics, us politicians, myself included, members of the government, we tend to see the world as either them or us. And this is not my natural way. But as Advaniji will tell you, Oman Mohan Singhji will tell you that this is the design of our politics. It's confrontational and its winner takes all. But this is not how I'm designed in sight. And I'm sure this is not how many of you are designed in sight. In fact, I'm sure Mr. Advani would agree with the basic idea of what I'm saying. Sometime back, 10 years, 10 years or so back, I had gone to Vietnam, and I had a very interesting experience. I like to travel around. And I had heard a lot about the Vietnam War. And I had heard about the pain that the Vietnamese people felt, lots of Americans died in Vietnam. So I was curious to go and see what had been the impact of this war in Vietnam. And I decided that I would go for a boat ride down the Nekong River. And so one morning, I went there, found the boatman about five in the morning. And I said, can you take me down the Nekong? Three hours that way and three hours this way. And then we can be back by about noon. So broken English. But he said, yes, so off we went. It was dark in the morning. And I started chatting to him. He started showing me these floating rice fields. He started describing things to me. And then after about half an hour, I went to the point. And I said, you know, you're about 50 years old. What about the war? Were you dead during the war? I said, of course. So I said, so what did you do during the war? He said, I fought the war. So I said, oh. So I said, can you tell me about the war? So he said, yeah, I'll tell you about the war. So he said, I was a little boy. I was six, seven years old. I was in my village. And I was playing with my cousins in my hut. And suddenly there was a boom, noise like that. And when I looked up, I saw my mother standing like this. And her head rolled and fell in front of me. And I was a little boy. So I couldn't understand what had happened. And I just ran into the jungle near the village. And I just didn't stop. And I stayed there out of fear for an hour or so. And then slowly I came back to the village. And I came back to the village. There was a lot of dead people lying there, including my mother. And I asked my cousins what had happened. And my cousin said, an American bomb has killed your mother. And I asked him, what is a bomb? And he said, don't ask stupid questions. Go and talk to those people over there. And these were youngsters. So he went and spoke to those people. And they were basically the Vietcong. And they told him, listen, young man, you're too young. You can't fight right now. You go back. Five, seven years later, you can come back. And so he came back five, seven years later. And he joined the Vietcong. And I asked, listen, you fought the Americans. Did you get injured? And then he started. He pulled his leg up. He pulled his cloth up. And he showed me an injury. He showed me another one here. He started everywhere. And his whole body was full of injuries. His conversation was going on. It was quite a mess, because he was just, I had no idea that this man had gone through all this. It was all hidden to me. He just was, he looked to me like a regular person. But I started to, as I went down this boat ride, I started to unwrap the person I started to see. My God, this fellow, he's killed people. He's been injured. His friends have died. His mother has died. This is the whole story in my mind. And then he says to me, listen, can I take off my cap? And he had one of those Vietnamese caps. It was hot. So I said, of course. So he took off his cap. And when he took off his cap, he had a hole this big in his head. So I said, my God, what is that? He said, that's a fragment from a hand grenade. So I was taken aback. I was like, how did he get that? And he says, well, an American soldier threw a hand grenade at me. It hit me. And I'd be on it again. And I killed him. And then I was in hospital for six months. So by this time, I was just absolutely amazed. And then I said to him, tell me something. Do you hate the Americans? And he said, why? Why should I hate the Americans? So I said, why should you hate the Americans? Because they bombed your country. They killed your mother. They threw a hole in your head. Why shouldn't you hate the Americans? So he says, he looks up. And he said, well, they're not here now. So I was like, that's interesting. What about the past? And he said, well, the Americans will put you in my boat. You wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the Americans. So I went, oh. He said, yeah. So I said, OK, then. You can't possibly not hate the Americans because you fought the Americans. And you killed the Americans. And he said, no, no, no, no, no. I didn't hate the Americans. But I fought them. The point I'm making is you can fight someone with all your might. But hate is a choice. It's an active choice that you make. And I think that is something that is very important to understand. I might disagree with Mr. Advani. And I might have a completely different conception of the country than Mr. Advani does. And I can fight Mr. Advani on every single inch. But I don't need to hit him. I can actually hug him and fight him. Now, it's interesting. It's very interesting how this works. Because now, whenever I come across the APNPs, they sort of take two steps back. They're like, we better be careful he's going to hug us. But it's not such a bad thing. And I think the strength of this nation and Karan Singh Ji is sitting here. And I didn't mention his name, but I should have. He's sitting here because he's taught me a lot about our country, about our religion. And if there is one thing that our religion teaches us, is that you absolutely cannot get imprisoned by secret. And that is what is my endeavor. In my little way, let us take the politics of this country. And let's fight. I will take on Narendra Modi Ji, all the Congresspeople sitting here, my friend on the left there, Mr. Huchuri, we will all take on the BJP. And they will fight us. But we don't need to hit them. I don't know if I can expect the same from them. Thank you.