Dont know why but the photo of that young man suddenly cropped in my mind today.. I remember seeing his pic in some book some time back.I had read the same story which I am going to narrate now on that day.. May be it was the story that kept the pic of this man in my mind intact for more than a year..
Disclaimer : Since many talks about plagiarisation of blogs has been running around in my group of frnds, I would like to mention that I have taken this from wikipedia..
Brigadier M.L. Khetarpal was receiving messages that a certain Brigadier from the Pakistani army was keen to meet him. However since he did not know this particular Brigadier, Brigadier M.L. Khetarpal did not do anything to encourage the meeting.
In 2001, Brigadier M.L. Khetarpal now 81 years old felt a strong desire to visit his birthplace, at Sargodha, now in Pakistan. It was a wish that he thought that would never materialize, but when he voiced it to some friends engaged in the Twin Track Diplomacy, they arranged all his papers, visas, travel and staying arrangements in Pakistan so that he could go for the visit.
At Lahore airport, Brigadier M.L. Khetarpal was met by Brigadier Khawja Mohammad Naser, who took it upon himself to be Brigadier M.L. Khetarpal host and guide. Brigadier Naser really went out of way to ensure that Brigadier M.L. Khetarpal had a satisfying and nostalgic visit to his old house in Sargodha. Upon his return to Lahore he was once again the guest of Brigadier Naser for three days.
Brigadier M.L. Khetarpal was overwhelmed by the extreme kindness, deference, courtesy and respect bestowed upon him by Brigadier Naser, all the members of his family and his many servants. As the countdown for the departure progressed, the bonds of friendship between the guests and the host grew stronger and stronger. However Brigadier Khetarpal felt that something was amiss but could not make out what it was. Was it the long silences that punctuated their animated conversation or was it the look of compassion in the eyes of the women in the family. He could not make out.
However what was certain was that he would always remember the hospitality, warmth and affection of this Pakistani family who treated him as someone very very special.
Finally at the last night before Brigadier M.L. Khetarpal's departure, Brigadier Naser said 'Sir there is something that I wanted to tell you for many years but I did not know how to get through to you. Finally fate has intervened and sent you to me as an honoured guest. The last few days we have become close to one another and that has made my task even more difficult. It is regarding your son who is of course a national hero in India. However on that fateful day, your son and I were soldiers, unknown to one another, fighting for the respect and safety of our respective countries. I regret to tell you that your son died in my hands. Arun's courage was exemplary and he moved his tank with fearless courage and daring, totally unconcerned about his safety. Tank casualties were very high till finally there were just two of us left facing one another. We both fired simultaneously. It was destined that I was to live and he was to die.
It is only later that I got to know how young he was and who he was. We are trained to fight and kill without mercy or remorse. We do in war what we have to without thinking too much about it. However we are humans too and sometimes war takes a personal turn and makes an impact on the inner self.
I had all along thought that I would ask your forgiveness, but in telling the story I realize that there is nothing to forgive. Instead I salute your son for what he did at such a young age and I salute you too, because I know how he grew into such a young man. In the end it is character and values that matter."
Brigadier M.L. Khetarpal was silent as he did not know how to react. To be faced with the person who killed his son, and also to be enjoying his hospitality and being his guest is a confusing feeling. However Brigadier M.L. Khetarpal immediately realized that Brigadier Naser was genuinely wanting, in some way to compensate for something that he did only in the line of duty. The soldier must do what he has been trained to do unhesitatingly, and with full resolve and determination.
Both the Brigadiers retired for the night deep in thought. There are never any victors in war, both sides lose and it is the families that have to pay the price and suffer the most. As someone once said ' Wars are created by politicians, compounded by bureaucrats and fought by soldiers.
The next day photographs were taken and Brigadier M.L. Khetarpal returned back to Delhi. Later the photos reached Delhi along with a note from Brigadier Naser that said:
With Warmest regards and utmost sincerity, To: Brigadier M.L. Khetarpal, father of Shaheed Second Lieutenant Arun Khetarpal, PVC, who stood like an unsurmountable rock, between the victory and failure, of the counter attack by the 'SPEARHEADS' 13 LANCERS on 16 December 1971 in the battle of "Bara Pind' as we call it and battle of "Basantar' as 17 Poona Horse remembers. --Khawja Mohammad Naser, 13 Lancers, 02 March 2001, Lahore, Pakistan.
For those who hadnt heard about Second lieutenant Arun Khetrapal , Arun became the youngest recepient of Param Vir Chakra (posth) - the highest gallantry award for the armed forces . He made the supreme sacrifice in the Battle of Basantar in the western sector in the Indo-pak war of 1971 .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arun_Khetarpal
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Just for Attendance
It has been a long time since I scribbled something here. Well,my life for the past 2 months which has been boring and mechanical is a good enough justification for that.So thought I should convey that I am still alive. Hence this post.
Last week's concert of M.D.Pallavi brought in some much needed change..Arun on drums, praveen rao on keyboard, achar on guitar and madhusudhan on tabla and the voice of pallavi and some of the nicest kannada poems - what more do you need to make a wonderful evening. These names wont ring a bell in many people's minds, but these are very well known names in kannada light music field. The fusion bits were superb. The ones that I liked the most were Praveen's compositions one in raag jog and the other inspired by latin music.I had only heard Praveen compositions in the title songs for some kannada serials. But to hear some of his compositions live was good.
I feel the best part of any performance is the smile on the face of the musician. Hows that for job satisfaction.
Just think of it , will we ever achieve such job satisfication in our work ???
Last week's concert of M.D.Pallavi brought in some much needed change..Arun on drums, praveen rao on keyboard, achar on guitar and madhusudhan on tabla and the voice of pallavi and some of the nicest kannada poems - what more do you need to make a wonderful evening. These names wont ring a bell in many people's minds, but these are very well known names in kannada light music field. The fusion bits were superb. The ones that I liked the most were Praveen's compositions one in raag jog and the other inspired by latin music.I had only heard Praveen compositions in the title songs for some kannada serials. But to hear some of his compositions live was good.
I feel the best part of any performance is the smile on the face of the musician. Hows that for job satisfaction.
Just think of it , will we ever achieve such job satisfication in our work ???
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Au Revoir Dr.Pausch
Well most of us have never heard of the name Dr. Randy Pausch and not have seen this man. I was no exception to that. Randy was another normal nerd professor at the canegie mellon before he was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. It was what he did after that, that differentiated every other mortal from Randy.
Canegie Mellon have a lecture series which they call "Last Lecture". Yes the name has a meaning.. The professors are asked to assume that they would die and give a lecture on whatever they would want to tell before they die. Well, in Randy's case he did not have to assume. May be that made his lecture more important or was it Randy himself with his charm? I dont know. But this lecture was an instant hit all over the net. Some of the most popular american television shows like "Good Morning America " and the "Oprah Winfrey show" featured him. The topic that Randy chose to talk on the Last Lecture was not a geeky technical stuff. It was "Enabling you childhood dreams". A man about to die teaching people how to live. Human nature ;thats what it is. We know the value of something only when we lose it . May be Randy was the best person to tell what not to miss in life. From then on Randy inspired people wherever he went. He went on to give a lecture on "Time Management " in the university of Virginia where he was a faculty for a long time. Randy had the honour of handing over charge to the graduates of cmu at their graduation ceremony.
Randy died on the 25th of this july. But the stirring lecture he gave on that day will live in the minds of the audience all over the world for a long long time. But the last sentence that Randy said was the one unsettled me. I quote " The talk’s not for you, it’s for my kids ". In one of the interviews he hopes someday his grown up kids would know their fathers legacy just by hearing this talk.
I wont write more.. Make your own opinions about Randy after you see these links
Last Lecture : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo
Randy on cmu grad day : www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcYv5x6gZTA
Randy on Oprah : video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8577255250907450469
Canegie Mellon have a lecture series which they call "Last Lecture". Yes the name has a meaning.. The professors are asked to assume that they would die and give a lecture on whatever they would want to tell before they die. Well, in Randy's case he did not have to assume. May be that made his lecture more important or was it Randy himself with his charm? I dont know. But this lecture was an instant hit all over the net. Some of the most popular american television shows like "Good Morning America " and the "Oprah Winfrey show" featured him. The topic that Randy chose to talk on the Last Lecture was not a geeky technical stuff. It was "Enabling you childhood dreams". A man about to die teaching people how to live. Human nature ;thats what it is. We know the value of something only when we lose it . May be Randy was the best person to tell what not to miss in life. From then on Randy inspired people wherever he went. He went on to give a lecture on "Time Management " in the university of Virginia where he was a faculty for a long time. Randy had the honour of handing over charge to the graduates of cmu at their graduation ceremony.
Randy died on the 25th of this july. But the stirring lecture he gave on that day will live in the minds of the audience all over the world for a long long time. But the last sentence that Randy said was the one unsettled me. I quote " The talk’s not for you, it’s for my kids ". In one of the interviews he hopes someday his grown up kids would know their fathers legacy just by hearing this talk.
I wont write more.. Make your own opinions about Randy after you see these links
Last Lecture : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo
Randy on cmu grad day : www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcYv5x6gZTA
Randy on Oprah : video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8577255250907450469
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Wayanad trip
After a lot of yes-no, yes-no from many friends we finally decided that we would be leaving for Wayanad on a Friday night. The group that finally went missed many of the people who form our group in office. Nevertheless we could not cancel this trip for anyone.So it was seven of us who embarked on that trip in a Qualis.Wayanad is just 320 Kms from Bangalore and we wanted to reach there not before 6 in the morning.So we chilled out for sometime in the CCD at Maddur.The drive along the Mysore road was superb and the road from Gundlupet was also good. The road in Kerala looked better inspite of Deepak's allegation that Communists had fared extremely bad when it came to governance. The superb roads however made us counter that.
We stayed at a resort "Harithagiri" in Kalpetta. Kalpetta is the district HQ of Wayanad disrict though it does not seem anything more than being fit for taluk Hq also.The early morning walk in the town was scintillating. It was drizzling and we had expected to be caught in the Kerela monsoon.The early morning splash into the pool was awesome. Do you believe we were in the pool so early in the morning, that too in a hill station. We must have lost our senses.Deepak had got his full swimming gear complete with a swimming cap and goggles but had forgot to get swimming trunks. With all this we thought he must be an expert swimmer only to find out that even he was walking along the pool with all his gear on.
First day we went to Banasurasagar dam and Soochipura Falls. Banasurasagar wasnt a big dam but the view all around it was awesome.Actually the light drizzle made it look better. We had a speed boat ride in the dam for about 20 mins or may be more . More because one of the boat had some engine problem and had stopped 3 or 4 times in the middle and the engine refused to come to life.The only consolation was that we had life saving jackets on.From there we went to Soochipura Falls. People had written in their travel diaries that they had gone under the waterfall. But what we saw there was a furious monsoon falls and no one could ever imagine people going anywhere near that.We had to climb down a hill to go the falls from the nearest motorable place.That walk was good.We went back to our resort and thought of taking a nap before venturing into their Bar. Vedu woke us all to tell that it was 11:30 and we found the bar and the kitchen closed and we could not have our dinner. Somehow after requesting the reosrt staff, we were served with the dinner but with a limited menu.Next morning we checked out of our room and went ahead for the trek to Chembara peak. Resort had arranged a guide for us. It comes under the purview of Forest Dept and permission is necesary to trek. We had a heavy breakfast at Meppadi and when we were almost halfway I cursed myself for having eaten so much.The trek was tiring and was superb. We had planned to go only till the heart shaped lake which is almost halfway to the peak.Our guide told us that last year he had taken along an IBMer from Mumbai on this trek. And he was blind. Wow we with all senses working perfectly found it so difficult I wondered what guts that man had to climb up till here.Hats off man.Our guide was fluent in English and talked all the way up. He told about all the recent leopard sightings in the area and what not.The weather was superb till we reached there.After sometime we planned to go a bit higher to take the pictures of the heart shaped lake. Vedu cudnt have gone back without this.He had to send that photo to many girls with a caption which I dont want to mention here.But it started to pour heavily and the whole area was covered by thick mist. So it became difficult for us to sight the lake and Vedu's plans shattered. But he has promised to go back there again to get that photo.The descent was a horrible experience as the path which we had taken to climb up had become like a small stream because such heavy downpour. AD himslef lost count of how many times he slipped and fell. We climbed down four legged animals.Luckily we were not bothered by leaches. That came as a surprise to us. We had expected a lot of them.Fully tired and drenched in rain,we had a heavy meal in Kalpetta and were on our way to Matunga National Park. We went inside the Forest on a jeep.Well that was the worst part of our trip.We didnt sight anything other than some deers.We were told by our guide that most animals prefer to cross over to the Karnataka Tamil Nadu forests during Monsoons. Then cursing the animals, forest Dept and AD( For occupying the front seat in the jeep.People thought thats the reason we couldnt see any animal.And to make matters worse he was singing) we were on our way back to Bangalore.On the way we saw some elephants inside the Karnataka border. One Elephant was with 2 calves and very close to the road. There was one car already parked near the elephant and as soon as we stopped our car, it attacked us. SJ was still taking out his cam and planning to get down from the car. Thanks to our driver's instinct he hadnt switched off the car.We had to leave without a pic of that huge elephant.Then all ou us were all ears as Vedu preached his gyan on how to woo girls. When that is the topic everyone is interested.We stopped at the CCD in Maddur and I got down at Channapatna trying to avoid going home late night fearing the dogs in our area.
Finally it was a nice trip and deserved break for all of us. For me life had become so mechanical.I needed this very badly.
Some of wayanad pics here http://www.orkut.co.in/AlbumZoom.aspx?uid=16702818083314523209&pid=1215066288703&aid=1214864915
We stayed at a resort "Harithagiri" in Kalpetta. Kalpetta is the district HQ of Wayanad disrict though it does not seem anything more than being fit for taluk Hq also.The early morning walk in the town was scintillating. It was drizzling and we had expected to be caught in the Kerela monsoon.The early morning splash into the pool was awesome. Do you believe we were in the pool so early in the morning, that too in a hill station. We must have lost our senses.Deepak had got his full swimming gear complete with a swimming cap and goggles but had forgot to get swimming trunks. With all this we thought he must be an expert swimmer only to find out that even he was walking along the pool with all his gear on.
First day we went to Banasurasagar dam and Soochipura Falls. Banasurasagar wasnt a big dam but the view all around it was awesome.Actually the light drizzle made it look better. We had a speed boat ride in the dam for about 20 mins or may be more . More because one of the boat had some engine problem and had stopped 3 or 4 times in the middle and the engine refused to come to life.The only consolation was that we had life saving jackets on.From there we went to Soochipura Falls. People had written in their travel diaries that they had gone under the waterfall. But what we saw there was a furious monsoon falls and no one could ever imagine people going anywhere near that.We had to climb down a hill to go the falls from the nearest motorable place.That walk was good.We went back to our resort and thought of taking a nap before venturing into their Bar. Vedu woke us all to tell that it was 11:30 and we found the bar and the kitchen closed and we could not have our dinner. Somehow after requesting the reosrt staff, we were served with the dinner but with a limited menu.Next morning we checked out of our room and went ahead for the trek to Chembara peak. Resort had arranged a guide for us. It comes under the purview of Forest Dept and permission is necesary to trek. We had a heavy breakfast at Meppadi and when we were almost halfway I cursed myself for having eaten so much.The trek was tiring and was superb. We had planned to go only till the heart shaped lake which is almost halfway to the peak.Our guide told us that last year he had taken along an IBMer from Mumbai on this trek. And he was blind. Wow we with all senses working perfectly found it so difficult I wondered what guts that man had to climb up till here.Hats off man.Our guide was fluent in English and talked all the way up. He told about all the recent leopard sightings in the area and what not.The weather was superb till we reached there.After sometime we planned to go a bit higher to take the pictures of the heart shaped lake. Vedu cudnt have gone back without this.He had to send that photo to many girls with a caption which I dont want to mention here.But it started to pour heavily and the whole area was covered by thick mist. So it became difficult for us to sight the lake and Vedu's plans shattered. But he has promised to go back there again to get that photo.The descent was a horrible experience as the path which we had taken to climb up had become like a small stream because such heavy downpour. AD himslef lost count of how many times he slipped and fell. We climbed down four legged animals.Luckily we were not bothered by leaches. That came as a surprise to us. We had expected a lot of them.Fully tired and drenched in rain,we had a heavy meal in Kalpetta and were on our way to Matunga National Park. We went inside the Forest on a jeep.Well that was the worst part of our trip.We didnt sight anything other than some deers.We were told by our guide that most animals prefer to cross over to the Karnataka Tamil Nadu forests during Monsoons. Then cursing the animals, forest Dept and AD( For occupying the front seat in the jeep.People thought thats the reason we couldnt see any animal.And to make matters worse he was singing) we were on our way back to Bangalore.On the way we saw some elephants inside the Karnataka border. One Elephant was with 2 calves and very close to the road. There was one car already parked near the elephant and as soon as we stopped our car, it attacked us. SJ was still taking out his cam and planning to get down from the car. Thanks to our driver's instinct he hadnt switched off the car.We had to leave without a pic of that huge elephant.Then all ou us were all ears as Vedu preached his gyan on how to woo girls. When that is the topic everyone is interested.We stopped at the CCD in Maddur and I got down at Channapatna trying to avoid going home late night fearing the dogs in our area.
Finally it was a nice trip and deserved break for all of us. For me life had become so mechanical.I needed this very badly.
Some of wayanad pics here http://www.orkut.co.in/AlbumZoom.aspx?uid=16702818083314523209&pid=1215066288703&aid=1214864915
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Off the Blocks
I always thought Blogging is not for people like me who do not fancy sharing everything that props up in their mind. But here I am doing what I thought was not for me. This came to my mind while on the trek to Chembara peak. What better time to start than after being back from a much needed trip and that too to "God's own country".Its already 2 weeks since that trip, but I am still fresh with it. It was well deserved break for all of us.I was thinking about the name for my blog for the past 2 days. Suddenly this name came to my mind. The words that featured in one of the most famous speeches by Mr.Nehru. I like Nehru only for this, his ultimate oratoric skills in English. What I dont like in Nehru? Well thats a long list. Will keep a seperate post for that.
I am one of those not so rare species who attribute failures to destiny . Yes, I know its not a quality to be proud of. But its the most easiest way out. So everything then has got to be "date with Destiny" for me. That explains my blog name.I had this habit of jotting out some things in diary and even this was stopped after that became a sort of entertainment to my room mates.I wanted to put down my thoughts somewhere and this space it would be.
I am one of those not so rare species who attribute failures to destiny . Yes, I know its not a quality to be proud of. But its the most easiest way out. So everything then has got to be "date with Destiny" for me. That explains my blog name.I had this habit of jotting out some things in diary and even this was stopped after that became a sort of entertainment to my room mates.I wanted to put down my thoughts somewhere and this space it would be.
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