Combat, Kashmir & Discipline: Special Forces Survival Mindset ft. Col Shivender Kanwar (Retd.)

In this raw and unfiltered episode of Something Bigger With Rodrigo Canelas, Rodrigo sits down with Col. Shivender Pratap Singh Kanwar (Retd.), an Army officer who spent over seven years commanding troops in the Parachute Regiment (Special Forces) inside some of the most dangerous counter-terrorism zones in Jammu and Kashmir. This is not a sanitized war story; it's an unflinching account of what it actually takes to hunt, survive, and eventually walk away from a life built entirely around combat.Most people who romanticize special forces life imagine helicopter extractions and clean, cinematic missions. What Col. Kanwar reveals is the opposite: real operations are built on months of quiet, grinding intelligence work, recruiting a terrified informant, teaching an uneducated grandmother in her sixties to operate a hidden radio, waiting weeks for a single call that might never come. The actual firefight, when it finally happens, is often over in four or five seconds. Everything else the six months of sleepless nights, the canceled leave, the fear that a source's cover is blown is the part nobody tells you about. And when the target finally surrenders, starving and down to his last bullet, the moral clarity of "good versus evil" collapses into something far more human and far more complicated.The episode moves through territory rarely discussed this openly: the psychological toll of constant threat-readiness, the strange intimacy of chasing the same man for a year and a half only to sit across from him afterward and ask "where were you all this time," and the uncomfortable truth that many recruited terrorists are driven less by ideology than by money and family pressure. There's a story about a district commander who had aimed his rifle at point-blank range and chose not to fire and lived to explain why, years later, as a prisoner. There's the account of three brothers from the same house split across the army, the police, and the militancy. And there's a candid look at what happens to a soldier's body and mind after nearly a decade with barely a break from the field: the cigarettes, the drinking, the identity built entirely around the next mission and what it took to walk away from all of it in 2022 and rebuild a life on the other side.This conversation isn't just about combat or counter-terrorism; it's about identity, purpose, and what happens when the structure that gave your life meaning disappears overnight. It's about how people carry extreme experience forward, what "brotherhood" and "responsibility" actually cost, and why some of the most disciplined, driven people struggle hardest with an ordinary civilian life once the mission is gone. Underneath the war stories is a much bigger question about how humans find purpose, endure hardship, and redefine themselves when their old world no longer exists.Before you scroll past this one, ask yourself what you'd actually be willing to endure for something bigger than your own comfort. Hit play and find out what that really looks like.Time Stamps:(0:00) – Introduction(0:24) – What Col. Kanwar Misses Most About Life in Uniform(2:03) – The Addiction Nobody Warns You About: Life After Combat(6:06) – Why Hunting Terrorists Felt Like a "Game" He Couldn't Quit(9:03) – The One Thing That Kept Him Going Through It All(11:00) – What Movies Get Completely Wrong About Special Forces(14:20) – The Real Story: Recruiting a Grandmother as an Informant(21:00) – Six Months, One Phone Call: Inside a Real Manhunt(24:00) – The Bullets No One Talks About(28:00) – The Enemy Who Had Already Aimed at Him and Didn't Shoot(33:30) – Three Brothers, Three Sides: Army, Police, Militant(38:40) – What Actually Drives a Person to Become a Terrorist(43:00) – The Toughest Stretch: When Motivation Runs Out(46:00) – How He Helped Soldiers Overcome Fear(48:00) – Leaving the Uniform Behind and Starting Over