“Can you get a TV for me?” my 77-year-old father requested when he came to live with me. In the age of laptops and smartphones, I had never needed a TV, but my father wanted one to keep track of the news. So a few days ago, I got one installed.
As I was leaving the room one day, I heard the television anchor parroting dialogues suited more for soaps than a news show. Initially, I thought I had selected the wrong channel, but on checking found that this indeed was a news show. With the anchor’s shrill extortions for war and each panelist competing for the title of ‘Most Jingoistic Person’, I was sickened.
Neither the anchor nor anyone on the show seemed to have any concern for the soldier who would fight this war they all wanted. And right in front of my eyes was one such soldier who had fought three of India’s wars and I wondered what he made of this nonsense.
My father, a farmer from Uttar Pradesh, left his village in search of livelihood. For my grandfather, having witnessed the heydays of the zamindari system, the sheer idea of working for a living was ridiculous. So my father rebelled. His journeys took him to Bombay and Nashik, where seeing an army recruitment drive, he enlisted.
As a fresh recruit, he first landed in Goa to fight the Portuguese or as he passionately recounts, to unfurl the Indian tricolour in place of the Portuguese flag. His next transfer saw his posted to Nagaland, which is where he was when the Indo-China war began. Soon his division was also called into war.
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During a mortar battle with the Chinese, my father was hit and became unconscious. When he regained senses, he found himself in foreign surroundings, which he quickly understood to be China. He was first held at Peking and then at Lhasa. He was to remain a prisoner of war (POW) in China for the next 15 months.
Meanwhile, my grandfather in UP was informed that his son was MIA (missing in action). The shock of having no credible information about his son was too much for him to bear. He slowly started losing his mental faculties and never fully recovered. He became known in the village for his unpredictable behaviour.
The rest of my family believed that my father had died and deeply mourned his loss. My grandmother was inconsolable for days. Being the only army personnel in our family and a beloved son and brother, the entire village mourned his loss. It was only after about 7-8 months that the family received a postcard from my father informing that he was a POW. Apparently, seeing the familiar scrawl of my father, his entire family rejoiced and all the ceremonies conducted during the birth of a son were performed in the village.
Meanwhile, my father missed his homeland. Though was not ill-treated, the forced separation from India was in itself torturous. Thus, he decided that he had to somehow reach India and with few of the other POWs hatched a plan to escape. After doing a thorough reconnaissance of the area, one night seizing the opportunity, he and the others took off. They killed the sentry and took his compass, map and weapon and started the herculean trek to reach India by foot from Lhasa.
They would hide from the Chinese patrols during the day and march in the nights. Some of his fellow soldiers died in the blistering Himalayan cold and even he had a few narrow escapes. Finally, after weeks of marching, he finally entered Indian soil through Tawang. He then made his way to Tezpur, where ministry dignitaries were present to greet him and the others. From here he was flown first to Barrackpore and then to Ramgarh, Ranchi for a detailed court of inquiry – which lasted about a year.
It was only after two years that he returned to his village.
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As a child, I have heard this story several times and typical of a child would just brush it off as ordinary. It was only recently that I revisited the tale. While getting an MRI done for him, the technician kept complaining that the image wasn’t clear. Frustrated, he sent my father for an X-ray and it was then that we discovered that a tiny mortar piece was still lodged deep in his skull.
Then, as he started narrating the origins of the mortar shell, I began understanding a bit of the horror of his experience. The trauma of being caught and separated from not only your family but also your motherland. I still cannot fathom the depths of his determination and sheer will to continue marching towards India when there was no certainty of survival.
I can now feel the pain and shock of his family, who for months believed they had lost their son. My poor grandfather, even after my father’s return was unable to interact with him due to his poor mental health. He died within a short time of my father’s return. I find it difficult to imagine the constant anxiety and fear which must have engulfed them all. My father’s brother had a lifelong fear of travelling or leaving the village.
My father was fortunate to have survived but for some of his comrades, that was not the case. War destroys the lives of all those who are part of it, be it soldier fighting or the families who lose their loved ones. When media channels clamour for war, it is this destruction and more that they enthusiastically and sadistically invite. For them, the soldier is nothing but a TRP boost.
As the show ended, I turned to my father and asked why he was still seeing this distorted and sickening coverage? To which he replied, “What other source do I now have for news?” And that is the tragedy of our times.
Sandeep Singh is a political activist and writer based out of Delhi. He was formerly JNU student’s union president. His father, Subedar Shiv Kumar Singh served in the Artillery Regiment of the Indian army from 1961 to 1984. He served in the 5 Field Regiment during the Indo-China war.
