For me August 15 has always been about doffing my cap to the men in olive greens, men who lead very unsafe lives to keep my country safe.
It was the summer of 1969 -- I must have been five years old -- when I decided to join the Indian armed forces. Indian Navy, to be precise.
I was born and brought up in Port Blair in the picturesque Andaman and Nicobar islands, off the eastern coast of India. Port Blair was an important naval base, where INS Vikrant, for many years India's only aircraft carrier, would often berth. My father was posted there as a bureaucrat and a lot of his close friends were in the Navy.
Traveling on a ship from Port Blair to Calcutta, I remember INS Vikrant for the first time from the porthole of my cabin. I rushed to the deck as my father called me to catch a glimpse of what was at that point of time in my life the most magnificent sight I had ever seen.
As Vikrant swept past us regally, and I watched smartly dressed Navy men go about their tasks, I was absolutely sure that I wanted to join the Indian Navy.
I don't know if it was the sight of those big guns (more cannons than guns really) on the deck of INS Vikrant, or the starched white uniforms of the naval officers or simply the snap with which the men in the Indian Navy carried themselves or if it was a combination of all those reasons, that made me want to join the Navy.
Ironically, it was a man from the Indian Navy, a family friend who unwittingly turned me into an Army man. He plied me with issues of Commando comics, which carried stories of World War Two battles. Soon, I turned into a Commando addict. In my mind's eye I saw myself as a crack Infantry man, deftly dodging enemy bullets even as I inflicted heavy casualties upon the enemy.
In 1971, as war clouds loomed over the Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) crisis, I ditched the Army in favour of the Air Force. When I visited Calcutta for Durga Puja holidays in September 1971, every day I could time when the IAF fighters would exactly take off from the nearby Dundum airport. You could hear the screaming sound of the jets before you saw them overhead, sometimes coming out of the clouds against the backdrop of an azure blue sky, passing by altogether too quickly.
The idea of becoming an Air Force pilot took hold of me like something fierce. I could close my eyes and picture myself in the cockpit of a Gnat, the pride of the IAF in the India-Pakistan war in 1971. It was a vision that would enthrall me well into my adolescence.
However, when I was in my early teens, And already a veteran of many air battles in my mind, reality kicked in with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. A serious discussion among fellow adolescents about career choices resulted in a friend pointing out rather gleefully that since I had a squint in my left eye and also had flatfoot, there was absolutely no chance, not even the slimmest of chances, of my joining the armed forces.
The news made me feel physically sick. The life I had envisioned for myself was now being cruelly denied to me. I felt depressed, saw myself as a victim of a grand conspiracy, and the deliverer of bad news, that boy with the gleeful smile, as an enemy agent. Even though I tried to put up a brave face (after all, a war veteran, an ace pilot, couldn't cry in front of others, could he?), deep inside me I knew there was little point in leading a life where I couldn't be part of the armed forces.
I can't quite remember exactly how long I remained depressed like that. My school friends insist it was after my first visit to the imposing Eden Gardens clubhouse, where I had gone to watch India play England, that I rather reluctantly agreed to swap my military fatigues for the starched whites of a cricketer. Suddenly a weight seemed to have been lifted from my young shoulders. Of course it had been replaced by another weight of expectations -- after all, representing India in cricket was going to be no easy task!
Now at the ripe old age of 46, pot-bellied and bald-headed, when I look back upon all those years, I can't help but wonder how different life would have been had it not been for the squint or the darned flatfoot.
I wonder if the armed forces have the same appeal among today's youth that it had for me and for my generation. I read somewhere that currently there are 11,000 vacancies at the officer level in the Indian army. I am told the Army is not only struggling to find young men who are ready to serve as officers, but is also finding it difficult to keep those officers in its fold who have done their short service commission and are now keen to move on to the private sector for better career options.
A retired army colonel, a friend of my Dad's, puts the whole issue in perspective. "You can't look at the army, or for that matter the navy or air force, as simply a career option as banking or teaching or a job at a call centre," says Colonel Kapoor. "For, no other job profile requires you may have to lay down your life as part of the job."
I ask him why he joined the Army. "I came from a farming family in Punjab. It was 1963. The whole country was smarting from the defeat against China in 1962. When I told my folks that I wanted to join the army, my father was so happy that he invited all his friends and family for dinner. Practically the whole village came to see me off at the railway station when I went off for my training."
"Those days, we had a certain jasba, a certain josh. Now a days things have changed. People don't even rise from their seats when the national anthem is played. These days the national anthem isn't played at all, " laments Colonel Kapoor.
Surely the country has changed, and over the years, with it its army too has changed. A journalist friend of mine, who is married to an army officer, says the Army has become more inclusive over the years. "Earlier you had certain pockets in the country where almost every family had at least one member in the army. Now they are coming from all over, making the Army more representative of the entire nation."
After two decades in journalism (oh yes, cricket's loss proved to be journalism's gain!) after watching more than my share of violence and gore, after watching man kill man for the flimsiest of reasons, and more often than not for no reason at all, I am an unequivocal pacifist today.
Yet, I am completely convinced every country needs a strong armed force to protect itself from the threat of external aggression. There are only a handful of countries in the world which have fought three wars, and came perilously close to a fourth one, over the past sixty years. India happens to be one of them.
Not far from where I live, a retired Colonel, Colonel VN Thapar, runs a gas station. The colonel is a man of few words, always has a smile for his customers, and stays mainly inside his office, Often you can catch him looking out of the glass window of his office at the picture of his son, Captain Vijayant Thapar, whose large poster adorns one side of the gas station.
Young Vijayant Thapar, all of twenty two years old, laid down his life at Kargil in June 1999 after leading his platoon to victory at the critical battle of Tololing.
Shortly before embarking on what proved to be his last mission, Captain Thapar had written a letter to his family."By the time you get this letter I will be observing you all from the skies enjoying the hospitality of the apsaras. I have no regret; in fact if I am reborn as a human again, I will join the Army and fight for the nation," he wrote.
As I read the letter, I felt so moved, and yes rather re-assured. I wanted to call Colonel Kapoor and tell him that there are still men in this country who have that jasba, that josh, that junoon.
Fact is, we sleep at night peacefully, because some young men, unafraid to die and put their life on the line for us every single day, men like Captain Vijayant Thapar, choose to keep a vigil at our borders, and choose to join the army, instead of joining a call centre!
