Dead Stick In An HT-2

Mickey, Vishal, and other Anonymous friends,

I suffered a myocardial infarction (Heart Attack), was hospitalised for angiography and angioplasty and hence was out of action for about 15 days without a phone or my laptop,. When I was let out of the ICU yesterday I saw several requests for another story. So I sat up all night last night and wrote the first story that came to my mind, something that went through the kaleidoscope of memories and flashbacks that resulted from sedation. There was another distinct romantic flashback, about how I did hot-pursuit of a girl from GCW Chandigarh when I was about  26-27. That flashback was a bit mushy, Mills & Boon type, stuff that may embarrass the lady if I write about it – so I shall stick to my core talent, the adventure of another kind, about aeroplanes and not chocolate and roses. Here it is, for you guys out there.  Dead Stick is a euphimism, pilot jargon, for a 'Crash Landing'.

I am back, as good as new.  Cheers.

'I say, can you take Ravish Kumar and teach him aerobatics?’, my Flight Commander asked me on manic Monday afternoon, I think on 12 Oct 1981. It was an awful, hot, cloudy and windy day in Elementary Flying School (EFS) at Bidar. I wonder why the IAF chose Bidar as a place to teach young people to fly. Bidar was famous for three things. Eternal salvation of the soul at ‘Papnash’ temple or the ‘Nanak Jhira’ Gurudwara.   If the soul was not appeased  in either of these abodes, Bidar had about nine hundred tombs to incarcerate them for postirity. 

‘Sure,’ I answered, grabbing my Bone Dome (flying helmet). ‘What is wrong with Ravish?’

‘Nothing wrong, just the usual things.’

‘Where is his instructor?’, I wanted to know. ‘Oh alright, I know where they are,’ I answered my own question. Those days the helicopter pilots were in great demand in EFS to teach aerobatics. The fighter jocks were all lining up to go to Iraq to get salaries in Dinar, and a Volkswagen Golf car on their return, that was the third salvation, of a materialistic kind.

‘Ravish’, I screamed in the corridor.

A tall dark handsome young gentleman came running from the ‘Ditch’ in front of the operations building, wearing a bone dome and the Oxygen mask clipped to his face. The parachute was bumping up and down behind his derriere. It was a very comical sight which reminded me of the first meeting between Hanuman and Ram in a Ramlila drama in the heartland of Bihar.

‘What is your name?’ I asked the apparition who looked liked Hanuman.

‘Rrrrrr kkkkkrrrrrrr,’ he said through his Oxygen mask.

‘Take off your f***ing mask,’ I commanded. He obeyed with great relief. He also took off his bone dome as well as parachute. I think he was dying to strip down to his underwear. It was almost 42⁰C in the ditch. The ‘Ditch’ was the war zone where pilot aspirants were sent to learn combat environment when they were not learning to fly. No one, including me, ever learnt to fly in EFS Bidar without spending time in the Ditch. The Tombs were the places where we went at night with a bottle of rum to appease the permanent tenants, and to convince them not to give us a place amongst them. We usually went to Papnash and the Gurudwara to ogle at the girls, another form of appeasement of the soul.

‘Are you alright,’ I asked Hanuman. ‘Do you need a drink?’

‘Yes Sir, a drink and a pee’, he said running off to the water cooler positioned near the toilet precisely for such contingencies in EFS Bidar. After a stint in the war zone, everybody had to have a drink and a pee, that is an Air Force tradition.

I went to the hangar to find myself an aircraft. The hangar was always full of HT-2 aircraft, the trouble was that very few could fly. The only one who knew whether an HT-2 could fly was God and the Chief Engineering Officer (C-Eng-O).  I couldn’t find God, it was rather too hot for him in Bidar. The C-Eng-O was under one of the HT-2s fitting an engine on Cowl No 840 bristling with silver paint, looking brand new. If you gave the C-Eng-O a gristly 140 year old pilot, he would retrofit him with brand new teeth, a new pair of shoes and give him a coat of silver paint to make him look like a teenager. He was a ‘make-over’ specialist.  Those years I did not trust him one bit, except my life. I kept it with him for safe custody like 'Davy Jone's locker'. He was an engineering gift from God, when God was absent from Bidar.

‘Do you want an aircraft to fly ?’, the C-Eng-O asked enthusiastically while tightening the bolts on an engine that did not have any oil smears. I never trust an aero-engine that has no oil smears. Usually that means that it has no lubricant oil in it’s tank. But here was God, dressed like the C-Eng-O whispering from below the engine, ‘Take this, take this, take 840’, he said.

‘All right, push it out, I will see whether it is a bird,’ I said with new found wit and wisdom.

‘Do you know how to take off?’, I asked Ravish.

‘Yes Sirrrrrrrrr’, he shouted at me like a drill 'usthad' in NDA. I think he had been told that one had to be very soldierly to be a pilot.

‘Do you know how to land?, I asked taking a few steps back, lest he decide to show military manoeuvring.

‘Yes Sirrrrrrrrrr’, he said. And very conspiratorially he confided, ‘Most of the time the HT-2 swings on landing.’

‘Happens to me too.’ I did not tell him that. Instead I asked, ‘What is wrong with your aerobatics?’

‘The HT-2 goes into a spin when I do the loop Sirrrrrrrrrrrr’, he was back to the parade ground tactics.

‘Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh’, I said probably sounding like a bugle. ‘I am the right chap to teach you aerobatics. I am a helicopter pilot. I neither know the loop nor the spin, let us go and learn it together.’

So Ravish, who knew how to take off, took off in 840 with me sitting in the rear cockpit with no idea where we were going.  The guy in the rear cockpit was not supposed to see where he was going, that is why we were taught astrology when we became Qualified Flying Instructors (QFIs). Ravish asked for ‘Tow Line South’, the road that goes to Zaheerabad, probably he felt homely there. Like a good QFI, I kept my mouth shut, and my hands in my pockets, enjoying the ride from the back. I was quite opinionated that a QFI’s job was to let the pupil learn to fly on his own. Ravish climbed to 8000 feet and started to do aerobatics, mostly loops which became hammer stalls half way and ended up in violent spins.

‘What shall we do?’, he would ask when we went into uncontrolled spins. It was quite scary.

I would pretend that I did not hear Ravish.

Ravish soon learnt to do perfect hammer stalls, and spin recoveries, but not loops.

‘Keep trying,’ I encouraged from the back. ‘That is how Robert Bruce won back Switzerland, could be Scotland or Holland’, the terrible experience of aerobatics was making my geography lucid and the earth was looking quit flat.

So Ravish climbed again and again to 8000 feet, spun and came down to 2500 feet, climbed up all over again to spin and start again. We kept going further and further away from Bidar, I think I could see Zaheerabad not too far away. There were Khunders, deep crevices below me.

Ravish did a wingover and got the HT-2 into a steep dive. He closed throttle partially. The prop and the engine revved up to a screaming crescendo. He yanked the stick back and I got rammed into my seat with the increased G forces like a roller coaster. Ravish allowed the nose to keep going up and up and kept pulling back on the stick kicking the rudder for the heck of it. He looked left and right and corrected the wings tips to be equal on both horizons and in the bargain forgot to keep pulling back.  He threw his head back to look for the horizon that was now on our back. But the HT-2 was not going that way. It was going vertically up like a Saturn rocket destined for the moon. I could see and interpret all that, I was a QFI, I had a certificate which said that I was one of those.

Somewhere near space, where the clouds and the moon hangs around, the combined weight of the HT-2, Ravish, his parachute, and my bashed up QFI blubber in the rear cockpit became more than the inertia of the poor HT-2 which was trying to go to the moon. With a sigh it began to slide backwards, tail first. Now that is not an aerodynamically healthy state in the bibles written by ‘Wright Brothers’ or Naval Aviators. So the HT-2 flipped over, hammer stalled, heading for the earth.

Somewhere along the line Ravish probably said ‘enough is enough’ and let go the controls without telling me. I think he probably felt that I was just ballast. So the HT-2 began to spin like  a top, rapidly going round and round. Sometimes the sky was above us and sometimes the ground and sky exchanged places. The positive and negative G made me sick. I did nothing. I was a QFI wasn’t I ? I am not supposed to do anything so that my student can learn to fly. Well that was my ethical and moralistic opinion on such things.

As we went around, there was a loud tearing and metal shearing noise, a bit of violent shaking. I saw something flying past me, about couple of feet from my head and I heard something striking the tail about five feet behind where I was sitting.

‘Sir the Propeller has stopped’, Ravish called over the intercom.

‘No my friend, the prop has flown off’, I corrected him.

‘Sir, the engine has stopped, all temperature and pressure normal.’

‘No Ravish, the temperature and pressure has no meaning. Look ahead and see what is in front of you’, I suggested.

‘Sir we have no engine’, Ravish quipped.

“Yes my friend, we neither have a prop nor an engine, the f***ing things has also taken the rudder with it, what would you like to do?’

‘Sir you got the controls,’ he passed the buck to me. Well I didn’t complain, because that is why I was a QFI. A QFI was a scapegoat, he was always the fall guy who was stuck with the bath water after the baby jumped and ran away from the tub.

‘Would you like to bail out Ravish, just to see how it feels to come down in a parachute?’, I asked him without guile. I had done that sort of thing earlier, many times. I was a qualified paratrooper too. It was Ravish’s turn to go mum on me. I now had little or no choice.

‘May Day, May Day, May Day,’ I called Bidar Approach control on the radio. ‘We have lost our engine and the prop’, I announced with sadness. I just don’t  like losing Govt property.  ‘I think some of my tail is also gone,’ I confided to the ATC so that they could start writing the court of inquiry report immediately.

‘Request intentions?’, Bidar Air Traffic Controller asked me rather stupidly.

‘Well I would like to go up, but Newton is going to take me down. I am around 30 km from Bidar so I promise to force land in some Khunder near Zaheerabad’.

There was silence from Bidar Air Traffic Control (ATC). I could imaging that they were frantically trying to inform everyone from the Station Commander, Chief Instructor, C-Eng-O, CFI, Flt Cdr, all the way down to the Chaprasi. The Chaprasi was an important man on the ‘Inform During Accident’ list pasted in the ATC. He was required to sweep the guys off the floor after an accident.

‘Bidar, request winds’, I asked because I had to ask the ATC something.

‘Surface winds 130, gusting to 40 kts,’ he announced.

It was incredible. I had 30-40 kts tail winds. There was no prop wind milling and hence the HT-2 was gliding towards Bidar like a bull in heat. I smelled fire, but there was nothing I could do  about  it. Instead of a forced landing in some Khandar near Zaheerabad I decided to go towards Bidar. The HT-2 kept gliding like a high performance glider, it just wouldn’t come down. Before I said ‘Jack Robinson’, we were nearing Bidar Airfield. I could see other HT-2s being asked to go away to give me priority. I tried to recollect the practice force landing procedure. ‘High Key’ and ‘Low Key’, the places where I had to reach at a predetermined height so that my descent would be controlled and I could make an approach and landing. The trouble was that the bloody HT-2 had no drag, it was not descending, just running forward as fast as I could make it go.

‘Call High Key’, the ATC demanded.

‘I am at High Key’, I replied.

‘Call Low Key’, the ATC commanded like Emperor King George the 5^th after the Coronation in Delhi.

‘I am low Key’, I replied with some uncertainty.

‘You are too high, do a 360,’  our venerable Chief Instructor (CI) who  usually spoke only in Punjabi spoke to me in clipped Birmingham accent due to his consternation and anxiety. I think he was using a radio set fitted on his jeep.

I was nicely positioned, about five km from touchdown, only around a thousand feet higher. I had no rudder and hence quite difficult to turn the ruddy HT-2. This was no time to obey the CI, though I knew that he was going to castrate me if I disobeyed.

I did what came naturally to me, like a helicopter pilot. I shoved the stick fully to one side, shoved the nose down, kicked full opposite rudder though there was little control I side- slipped the HT-2 like auto-rotating a MI-4. I dumped full flaps, and dive bombed the HT-2 aiming right for the CI’s jeep parked right on the dumbbell. I could see the portly Sikh CI running for cover. I skimmed over the jeep, gradually flared the HT-2 which was facing Papnash and not the runway, controlled direction with a 45⁰ bank and kept floating. I think God was still around Papnash or Nanak Jhira or he may have been sitting on the top of one of the Tombs watching my antics. God may have decided that the C-Eng-O and the IAF needs 480 in one piece. Or maybe he kind of liked my nocturnal outings with the bottle of rum to the tombs.

You will have to tax your imagination and believe me when I say this that I touched down, a perfect three pointer,  with my wings level, rolled down the runway for around 150 feet and never swung the HT-2 even though I never had a rudder. I think some differential braking did the trick. I have never, ever, done a 3 pointer landing in an HT-2 with greater élan than that day. I usually swung on all other landing and got away only because I blamed the pupils.

I jumped out of 480, grabbed Ravish by the neck and told him to pee.

‘Get out and piss on the engine bay’, I commanded, hosing down 480 front section with my own built in fire hydrant.

The CI gave me a lift in his jeep from the dumbbell back to the dispersal, with Ravish at the back.

The CI didn’t say a word on the way back. He took me straight back to the dispersal, to another    HT-2.  ‘Teri Pen Di’, the CI told me forgetting his Birmingham accent. ‘Take another HT-2, go and finish your sortie,’ he commanded. ‘If you piss on my aircraft again, I will cut off your Gulli,’ he said with some mirth.

480 was back on the flight line next day with new engine, propeller, rudder; all with a new coat of silver paint. I told you that our then C-Eng-O was a gifted magician. I think he was given a very well deserving medal for his incredibly sincere and meritorious service. But despite his offer, I refused to get my Gully painted silver. Ravish was sent off to the Fighter Training Wing in Hakkimpet because he had learnt enough to become a 24 carat fighter pilot, all by himself. The venerable CI went on to very successfully command several operational stations in war and peace with same élan, sometimes using gully and sometimes a danda, because that was what my generation coveted, it was as good as a paternal hug and a pat.

Me ? Well, I was kicked out of Bidar and sent to sort out couple of more guys who required inspiration to fly and afterwards to EPNER in France to become an Experimental Test Pilot, without a silver Gully. I always held aircraft in high esteem, never peed on it, only behind it, when no one was looking. That was, in my opinion, a personal, respectful and affectionate gesture between aircraft and I.

  

Cyclic

Santa’s Poem

The last ode to a soldier that inspired me was “Tommy’ from Rudyard Kipling.

Someone sent me this Santa’s Poem (Santa Claus, not the crazy Santa Banta joke) – it is quite inspirational.

So I thought I will share it with you.

Santa’s Poem

 T was the night before Christmas,
he lived all alone,
in a one bedroom house, probably a bunker,
made of plaster and stone.

I 'd come down the chimney,
with presents to give,
and just to see who,
in this home, did live.

I looked all about,
a strange sight I did see,
no tinsel, no presents,
not even a tree.

No stocking by mantle,
just boots filled with sand,
on the wall hung pictures,
of far distant lands.

With medals and badges,
awards of all kinds,
a then sober thought,
came through my mind.

For this house was different,
it was dark and dreary,
I’d found the home of a soldier,
once I could see clearly.

The soldier lay sleeping,
silent, alone,
curled up on the floor,
in this bunker like home.

The face was so gentle,
the room in  disorder,
not how I had pictured,
a true fighting soldier.

Was this the hero,
of whom I’d just read?
Curled up on a poncho,
the floor for a bed?

I realised the families,
that I saw this night,
owed their lives to these soldiers,
who were willing to fight.

Soon round the world,
the children would play,
and grown-ups would celebrate,
a bright Christmas day.

They all enjoyed freedom,
each month of the year,
because of the soldiers,
like the one lying here.

I couldn't help wonder,
how many lay alone,
on a cold Christmas Eve,
in a land far from home.

The very thought brought,
a tear to my eye,
I dropped to my knees,
and started to cry.

The soldier awakened,
and I heard a rough voice,
"Santa don't cry,
this life is my choice;

I fight for freedom,
I don't ask for more,
my life is my god,
my country, my corps...."

The soldier rolled over,
and drifted to sleep,
I couldn't control it,
I continued to weep.

I kept watch for hours,
so silent and still,
and we both shivered,
from the cold night's chill.

I did not want to leave,
on that cold, dark, night,
this guardian of honour,
so willing to fight.

Then the soldier rolled over,
with a voice soft and pure,
whispered, "carry on Santa,
its Christmas day, all is secure."

One look at my watch,
and I knew he was right.
"Merry Christmas my friend,
and to all a good  night."

The Dragon’s Epitaph

My dear fans, followers, readers of my blog, especially Mickey, MK, Vishal, Gaurav, Bala, all the ‘Anonymous’, so many of you.

Thank you for your awesome and very hearty compliments. I loved it !!!!!!!!!!!

Please go ahead, circulate on FB and blogs, it is meant to entertain and ‘time pass’.

It was an incredibly joyful experience writing this ‘serial killer’ story simply because of the response it evoked. However, war (even in a story) is a mixed bag of emotions......., excitement, fear, adrenalin, suspense, camaraderie, sacrifice and in the end ............., the profound sadness no matter what the outcome is, victory or defeat. At the moment I am sad though I scripted the story myself. If you visit a war memorial, you will know what I mean.

Every night and every morning, while I was writing the Dragon story, I anxiously waited for your comments to see whether the story continued to interest you. Your comments as well as the rising number of hits on the blog - I cannot simply find words to describe the excitement it caused within me, the encouragement to continue late into night to complete the story before you lost interest. I confess that it was written in a slipshod manner, without a-priori thought, a plot or any constructive effort in creative writing. The story was buzzing around my head and I served it to you just as it came out of my head, without even proof reading, along with all grammatical, syntax and spelling mistakes. Next time I promise I will do a better job !!!!!! (:>

Gaurav, I am very sorry that in the interest of the story P&N had to die. You will not believe this, but I had a lengthy conversation with P&N in my mind during which I actually became very emotional. ‘Beep Beep’ Nim honked the horn, just the way it is in my story. P&N have been around in my mind for quite a while, since Nov 2010, when about 40 of us, including five serving Air Mshls, from the first batch had gone to Air Force Academy (Dindigul) for AFA’s 40^th anniversary. During our two day stay we met with the staff as well as students in AFA – a lengthy tea session followed by an even longer formal interactive one in the auditorium.

During tea, two women pilots, both Pilot Officers, cornered me.

‘I believe you are the father of Attack helicopters ?’, one of them (on whom I modelled Nim), asked me.

‘No no, I am not the father, that was venerable RV Singh, I am at best one of the Ravan type uncles’, I said to them.

‘How can we become AH pilots ?’, the one that looked liked Pink asked me.

‘’Forget it, you cannot become combat pilots’, I said to them rather prudishly and thoughtlessly. ‘Go do something else’.

Both P&N types pounced on me. I squirmed under the attack. They were two of the most dynamic, erudite and inspiring young persons that I had ever met in my life. I think I gave them some kind of an explanation, which they trounced and trumped extempore. One cannot argue against woman’s logic, so I ran off.

For next ten minutes, while I walked into the auditorium and found a seat, the thoughts kept coming back, ‘Why did I say ‘no’ to them ?’.

In my mind I recalled the sane comments made by the Vice Chief (Barbra) some months earlier and how the press had got after him for purportedly sexist remarks. I believe that Barbra was right, the press was wrong, the women's lib types are making a storm in a tea cup.

The auditorium was full with trainees instructors, my old colleagues and their wives. The Air Mshls  and some of my other illustrious colleagues were seated on the stage. Individually they spoke about their sad, funny, exciting experiences in the air force and shared their collective wisdom with the audience. In the end, one of them (Air Mshl Don Mukul) threw open the house to interactive question and answers, ‘Do you want to ask us anything ?’

The two P&N types immediately shot up out of their seats.

It was amazing to see how the two of them thought alike, behaved alike, like two twins.

‘Sir, why can’t we become fighter pilots, and if not that, why can’t we at least become AH pilots ?’, they asked in unison.

The commander of strategic and nuclear forces on the stage was most embarrassed and over whelmed by this formidable and most determined set of women.

‘There is your Dad’, he said pointing to me, ‘Ask him’. I tried to shrink into my seat, I could not hide. My old colleagues and their wives jeered. So I got up. By then I had given it a thought.

‘I already spoke to the two of you during tea’, I said to the large gathering, but specifically addressing P&N types. ‘At that time you caught me off guard. Well, I have now had some time to think about it’, I explained my conviction with utter sincerity.

‘Basically I am not a sexist or against women, in fact I am most fond of them’, I said.

Every one jeered, whistled and hooted, the old ladies made cat calls. ‘Between us, the old bogies here, we have more than a hundred children, I think more daughters than sons. They are all well educated and most of them are professionals in some vocation or the other, even pilots and movie stars. So I think we are a generation who have encouraged our children, specially daughters to think big, even to emulate us as combatants in the armed forces’.

P&N stood in silence, but with a sullen attitude. I spoke loudly and emphatically.

‘We are part of the the generation that facilitated women to wear a uniform in India. What you are now asking is not about flying a combat plane, but the right to engage in war and to die for the country if the need arises. As a parent and as an old soldier, I have no issue with women in combat, but I am not happy about women in a situation that calls for ultimate sacrifice. You may want to deem it male chauvinist attitude, I don’t care, I think of it as parental affection.  I think the Air Mshls in front of you feel the same way. I think all old men feel the same way, the nation feels the same way. Take Kargil for instance, if Nachiketa had been Nachiketi, we may have been compelled by public opinion to stop the war unfinished, a woman POW in the hands of the enemy is bad for the morale of not only soldiers but the whole nation. The women amongst the hostages in Kandhar is a case in point, we had to give away the most dreaded terrorists in exchange. The terrorists who went on afterwards to kill a thousand times the lives we saved in Kandhar. Such things shackle the minds of the nation. When the nation is mentally prepared, when your parents are mentally prepared, when the media is more mature not to make this an issue........., the nation will then bless you and to send you off to war and be prepared not to see you again. I am quite sure that the military will not be an obstruction to your aspirations’, I commented.

‘You will have to wait for that time to come. In the meanwhile take whatever is available and try to excel in it’.

Afterwards, when we were leaving for a glass of beer in the officer’s mess, the two girls ambushed me again with the most disarming smile that I have ever seen. They just would not give up.

‘We will show you, we will one day come back and show you the combat colour’, they said in unison.

I smiled. My chest swelled with pride. I was so happy, there was nothing more that I wanted in my life than to see them as combat pilots and to send them off to a war. When I was writing this story, that incident in AFA was foremost in my mind. I wanted to send women into combat and let them make the ultimate sacrifice, even if it was only in a story. In retrospect, Gaurav’s comment (and others who felt sad) vindicates my argument that we cannot mentally accept women dying in war. I cannot even accept women dying old or of natural cause. When my mother passed away at 95, I was inconsolable. It makes me sad even in a story. Whether women can do and are prepared for such things is not the issue. The issue is the male mindset. ‘When we are there, why must you do such things’ – probably that kind of mindset.  My dearest Pink & Nim types, if the two of you are out there somewhere, and reading my blog, I want you to know that I love you very much and this story was my tribute to your spirit, and the spirit of the modern Indian womanhood. I salute you. I wish you long life and happy landings.

At the moment, like after strenuous sport, I am physically and mentally fatigued. So it will be quite some time before I take up another story. I am out of ideas. But don’t lose heart, I will be back soon, OK ? !!!!!!!!

There is a larger than life person who has been haunting my thoughts. A simple unsung soldier, very humorous man, incredibly ferocious, Sub Maj Kashi Ram, who converted me from a juvenile delinquent to a soldier when I was around 16 or 17. He did that with around 3500 odd cadets in NDA 1965-70, who went on to become the top rung of the military, around 150 of them of Lt Gen or equivalent rank, several serving and retired chiefs. Sub Maj K Ram joined 3 Dogras during WW around 1943-44. He retired in 1972 after the 71 War, went back to his village in Himachal and passed away quietly like all colossus. Kashi Ram was an incredible soldier. I am trying to piece his life together and breathe life into him again with the help of my best friend for over 50 yrs Brig Jasbir Singh who is a military historian of repute. If we can find enough material, we hope to make that into a book. I think that is going to take time, may be several years. But I promise I will not make you all wait too long for ‘time pass’ stories on this blog.

I wish all of you and your family a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year.

Keep smiling, be good.

Cyclic  

AN UNSUNG HERO OF NEFA

Sometimes history has unsung heroes whose valour and sacrifice go unnoticed because there was none to record it, publicise it or sing praise .  Sometimes, rarely, such valour and sacrifice are well known and documented, but it is embarrassing to sing praise, acknowledge or put the spot light of publicity on them. The story of Maj Bob Ranenglao Khathing MC, OBE, of the Indian army, is one such aberration. He was the man who surreptitiously went and annexed NEFA (Arunachal Pradesh) to India back in 1951 J  Like the Henderson Report, the real story of 62 war with China, the story of Maj Khathing remains buried in the Def Sec’s cupboard in spite of parliamentary intervention and RTI.  It remains hidden from public view even after 50 yrs, though Indian Official Secrets act has a lifespan of only 30 yrs. It is politically expedient for the Govt Of India to erase Maj Khathing from all records that show that such a man ever existed. The right person who can corroborate this story is probably the venerable ‘Dalai Lama’, but even he has too much at stake to say anything that embarrasses GOI.

I did not invent this story and I do not know it’s veracity personally because I was only 3 yrs old when it happened. I have simply, and rather shamelessly, reinvented and plagiarised it (albeit with deep research) from a story filed by Yambem Laba , a news paper man from the northeast, because I believe it is true.  It has some relevance to another story that I am writing for you, about a fictional futuristic Sino Indian war, rather long story compared to my other stories on this blog. My ever increasing brood of fans are demanding stories faster than I can write them. Hence this story is being putout to buy myself time to finish my other fictional war story, about the same kind of ‘Dogs Of War’ J

To tell the story of Maj Khathing, and highlight his relevance in Indian history in the immediate aftermath of independence, it is necessary for me to first highlight the circumstances that led to the military defeat of Indian army in the Sino Indian war of 1962. Let me start this story from the British colonial India at the turn of the 20^th C.  Here we go.

In 1903, alarmed by the Chinese and Russian influence in Tibet, Col Francis Younghusband of the British army led a military expedition to subdue Thubten Gyatso, the 13^th Dalai Lama (predecessor of the current one Tenzin Gyatso ). Thubten ran off to China and took asylum there. It took quite a while, and a lot of manoeuvring, for the British to tame Thubten. In 1914 Henry McMahon, the then British foreign secretary, finally managed to get Thubten’s envoy into Shimla to sign a free trade agreement between Tibet and British India. As part of the agreement, they also signed a treaty demarcating the southern boundary of Tibet. Since the Himalayas were unchartered, unmapped and rather unhappy territory, McMahon did the only thing that was practical and pragmatic. He took a pencil and drew simple line on a map, connecting all the highest peaks, the water shed, the northern slopes of which were to be in Tibet and the southern ones in British India. Even at that time, this line, the watershed, was neither acceptable to man, Yaks, Yeti, 13^th Dalai Lama, nor Col Younghusband as a practical, defensible, geopolitical border. However, at that time, this was not considered strategically or militarily important, or an issue, considering the greater cause and benefits to one sided, parochial, British interest in trade and commerce.

The border between British India and Tibet at that time (Shimla agreement in 1914) had three buffer Kingdoms, all of them simple monarchies propped up by treaties with British India. Nepal was ruled by the Ranas, Sikkim by the Chogyals and Bhutan by the Wangchuks. Eastwards from Bhutan lay the large 61,000 sq km stretch of sparsely populated and utterly inhospitable never never land, the barren mountains and jungles beyond any man’s ambition and aspiration. In those days it did not even have a name, at best it was referred to by the British as the ‘Dirang Dzong of Towang’ (it became North East Frontier Agency or NEFA, only in 1954 and Arunachal Pradesh recently in 1986).  

I am told that ‘Dzong’ in Tibetan means a fort. I am also told that in those days such forts had a small military or police contingent of sorts to up keep law and order as also collect taxes in kind, and favours from local women.  The master of such a Dzong was a ‘Dzongpen’, or a magistrate, with selected Lamas who helped administer the territory under the Dzong, called ‘Dirang Dzong’. The Dzongpen of Tawang  owed allegiance to the quasi political and religious leader, the Dalai Lama at Lhasa. Prior to 1951, Aksai Chin, Leh, NEFA (Arunachal) were all Dirang Dzong that were administered by their respective Dzongpen as Tibetan territory with absolutely no allegiance or recognition of Delhi, either British or Indian.  So the relevance of the McMahon line was mostly to do with the border along the northern Aksai Chin and Leh area, and the north eastern NEFA, all of which, tactically speaking, was a non contentious no man’s land during the colonial past. It was the land of the Lamas, Yaks and Yetis, all of them of little interest to the men of the early 20^th C.

It became contentious half a century later, around 1950-51, when China occupied Tibet and the 14^th (Current) Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso ran off from Lhasa and took political asylum in a newly independent India. A pro Chinese interim govt was installed in Lhasa.

 It became necessary for the politically naive, rather new Govt Of India to have a militarily defensible border with the Chinese occupied Tibet, especially keeping in mind India’s then foreign policy of abetment of Tibetan aspirations. The border became a bone of contention around 1958 – 60 period as a result of several clashes between Chinese and Indian army patrols to jockey and occupy mountain passes in the Himlayas that controlled thriving trade route between Tibet and India at several places. To give the Chinese due credit, the then Chinese Premier, Chow En Lai, wrote many letters to Nehru to try and resolve the problems amicably. However, Nehru, though wise and sagacious in so many ways, was besotted by his own rising unpopularity in parliament as well as the political  brinkmanship strategies of the  inflexible and highly autocratic Def Min, VK  Krishna Menon,  who was probably perceived by Nehru as his mentor and saviour. India refused to give any importance to the Chow En Lai letters. Chow En Lai then came to India in 1962 with an unusually large 135 member trade and military delegation, armed with trade concessions, historical  maps  as well as records to prove rightful borders of Tibet (specially Aksai Chin and NEFA). The trade concessions were olive branches sticking out of the barrel of a gun. The GOI  did not notice this. The delegation returned to China empty handed. Krishna Menon ordered the Indian army to do forward posturing. The 1962 war was triggered by Indian army incursion at Namka Chu, an east-west stream which separates the Thag La and the Hathung La ridge, and at Se La pass, north of Tawang. But I am jumping the gun, this is a success story, not one of defeat and humiliation. It is the story of Maj Khathing who captured Tawang in 1951, around the time that the Chinese were occupying Tibet. 

Ranenglao Khathing was born on 28 Feb 1912 in Manipur’s Ukhrul district. He was a Tangkhul Naga. The Christian missionaries had a profound influence on his psyche and one of them adopted him as their son. He studied at Sir Johnstone High School in Imphal, did his matriculation (10^th)  from Shillong and joined Cotton College in Guwahati. When he failed to clear his BA examinations in 1936, he was determined not to return home until he had obtained a degree. So he went to Harasingha in Assam’s Darrang district and founded a school where he also taught.  A year later, after he had managed to graduate, a family friend SJ Duncan, who was then the British sub divisional magistrate of Ukhrul, convinced him to leave the Harasingha school and return to Ukhrul High School as it’s Head Master. In 1939 when WW-II precipitated worldwide mobilisation, 27 yr old Khathing immediately enrolled in the British army and was sent to the Officer’s Training School in Dehra Dun.

Commissioned into the 9/11 Hyderabad Regiment (now Kumaon Rgt), he had Thimaya (later General) as his company commander and TN Raina (later COAS) as fellow subaltern. In 1942 Khathing was transferred to the Assam Regiment in Shillong and became a captain. He was soon attached to the USAAF contingent at Jorhat for the ‘Hump Lift’ as a logistic liaison officer. ‘I am Capt Ranenglao Khathing’, he would introduce himself. It was too much for the Americans to mouth. ‘Yes Bob’, they would respond. Soon Capt Ranenglao Khathing morphed into ‘Capt Simply Bob’.

After the Japanese blocked the Burma road, the British army formed a  guerrilla outfit called Victor Force (an earlier version and subsequent role model for Col Wingate’s Chindits) using the missionary educated tribals of Nagaland and Manipur.  Their task was to use topography and the jungles as their cover, live off the land and operate 100 to 150 miles deep inside the enemy territory to interdict the Japanese supply and communication lines, to inflict heavy causalities on the enemy and to act as a screen for then retreating British army from Burma. Capt ‘Simply Bob’ was sent to command this V-Force group in the Ukhrul area. He shed his army tunic, shaved his head like a typical Tangkhul tribesman with a thick mane running down the middle of his scalp, Mohawk style. On his back he carried a basket with dried salted meat and concealed his gun in his Tangkhul shawl. It is believed that while in command of Victor Force in 1942-44 period, he personally killed some 120 Japanese soldiers and played shindig with the Japanese, hit and run kind of guerrila war, living off the land and never surfacing anywhere, totally cut off from friend and foe. After the war was over, for his exemplary sacrifice and valour, he was awarded the Military Cross and made a Member of the British Empire.

After the World War, around 1945-46, Maj Bob was demobilised along with a large number of short-service emergency commissioned officers.  Immediately afterwards, on request of then Maharaja ‘Kumar Priyabrata Singh’, he went to Manipur and joined the then interim government as minister in charge of the hill areas. In 1949, when Manipur merged with India, the interim government was dissolved and Bob found himself at loose ends. Soon Sir Akbar Hydari, then Assam governor, asked him to rejoin the Assam Rifles as a stopgap measure. He then served with the 2nd Assam Rifles Battalion for two years in Sadiya. In 1951 he was inducted into the IFAS (Indian Frontier Administrative Service) as an assistant political officer.

One day he was summoned by the new Assam Governor, Jairamdas Daulatram.

‘Bob, do you know where is Towang ?, Jairamdas asked him.

‘No Sir’, Bob answered truthfully.

The Governor took him to a ‘Globe’ on his desk and pointed out Towang. ‘This is the kingdom of the Dzongpen of Towang’, he traced his finger over the incredible 61,000 sq km waste land that lay north of Tezpur stretching eastwards from Bhutan, all the way to Mon tribal area of Nagaland that Bob was familiar with. ‘He who controls Towang shall control the far east’, Jairamdas predicted. ‘Do you think the Chinese should control it ?’.    

‘No Sir’, Bob repeated.

‘What would take you to mount an expedition to Towang and bring the Dzongpen under Indian political control, and to annex the region to the Union of India ?, the governor came straight to the point.

‘Sir, I am no longer in the army, I am now simply an assistant political officer, an Iff-Ass’, he said with visible sadness. ‘I do not have the authority to do this’.

‘I am all the authority that you need, though neither the centre nor I have the ability to get the C-in-C Roy Boucher to agree to a military expedition for this task. At least not quickly enough to do it before the Chinese react’, Jairamdas mulled, running his hands over his bald head. ‘We need someone to do it quietly. Keeping in mind your war record, I cannot think of a better man to do it than you’.

‘I will do it’, Bob answered simply. ‘But I need an expeditionary force, about 200 hundred fully armed troops, mountaineering equipment as well as mules and porters to carry the equipment, a doctor and medical stores.

‘Sure’, answered Jairamdas. ‘Go, think it over. Send me the list of what you need and when you can start, the sooner the better’.

Bob did not think or procrastinate. He simply walked out of the Governer’s office, went to his PA’s office next door and dictated two simple letters to be typed on the letter head of the Govt Of India with the prominent Sarnath Lions in the top left corner. The letters were addressed ‘To Whomsoever It May Concern’.  The first letter, with a heading ‘SECRET’, said that the Governor of Assam, on behalf of the newly formed ‘Republic Of India’,  has ordered Maj Ranenglao Khathing (Rtd) to rejoin the Indian army, raise an armed expeditionary force, make war if necessary, and annex the Kingdom of the Dzongpen of Towang with the Union Of India, as soon as possible. In the second letter, with the heading ‘UN CLASSIFIED’, the Governor authorised  Maj Ranenglao Khathing, a serving officer of 2^nd Assam Rifles, to collect Rs 25,000 from the treasury and requisition any stores or personnel he felt necessary for a mountaineering expedition in eastern India. He concluded the second letter making himself accountable, that he was subject to expenditure accounting at the end of the expedition. He took both the letters to the Governor for his signature and the then ubiquitous red wax seal of authority (now in the basement of National archives).

 He asked the Governor for two months to conclude the operation. The Governor gave him 45 days to do it. Once again Bob walked into the PA’s office and dictated several telegrams, using Jairamdas’s name.

 The  first telegram was to his old unit, the 2^nd Battalion of the Assam Rifles Regiment, still at Sadiya, near Barrackpore, near Calcutta. The message simply said, ‘Mobilise forthwith two companies with light weapons, ammo and stores to Tezpur. Requisition train resource and complete move with urgency. Capt Hem Bahadur Limbu from 5 AR to be in-charge of the move. Capt Modiero (doctor) and five physically fit medical orderlies to accompany troops with adequate medical and surgical stores. The troops to report to, and be under command of, Maj Khathing, reinstated forthwith to AR as Major’.

The second telegram was to Bata Company in Calcutta, requesting a special order for 1000 pair of fleece lined leather mountaineering shoes, to be shipped to Tezpur by chartered aircraft  urgently, payment to be made in advance from treasury against an invoice’.

The third telegram was to the cartographers at the ‘Geographical Society Of India’ also at Calcutta, to urgently forward to the Governor’s office, ten sets of large scale relief maps of area north of Tezpur, whatever was available.

The fourth telegram was to Benny & Sons, Canned Food Suppliers, once again at Calcutta to immediately accept an urgent delivery order for canned Luncheon Meat, Sausages and Mackerel, each ten thousand tins, to be handed over to Captain Hem Bahadur Limbu at Sadiya.  Payment to be made in advance from treasury against an invoice’.  Bob chuckled when the PA looked up from the type writer with a perplexed look. ‘Look my good man’, he said amicably. ‘If we have to march up the mountains  all day, we may as well sleep on a full stomach. Moreover, I have had more than enough of living off the land in Victor Force’.

His last telegram was to the Army Supply Park at Dhimapur. ‘Requisition thousand sets of Parkha or Irwing jackets, socks and other articles of warm clothing. Await instructions from Maj Khathing of 2 AR, scheduled to arrive your location in two days’. 

When he finally arrived there at Dhimapur, all he could find was brown US Army issue Angola shirts, which he accepted though they were all of awkward sizes.  On a spur of the moment brainwave, he travelled to Chabua and Dinjan where the USAAF had left behind large metal containers of stores when they withdrew their operations of the ‘Hump Lift’ from Chabua and Ledo six years earlier. There were hundreds of containers kept in safe custody of the Army and Air Force. When he broke open these containers, he found camping gear, tents, Irwing Jackets, woollen gloves and socks, inners, just about everything that he wanted for equipping his expeditionary force into the cold wasteland of the Himalayas. He got them repacked into four of the same containers and had them transported to Tinsukhia railway station, from where he sent them to Tezpur via Guwahati since that was the only road and rail crossing across the wide Brahmaputra river. Afterwards he caught a routine ferry from Dibrugarh to  Majauli island and crossed over to the north bank of the river on elephant back. Once across the river, he requisitioned an old war surplus jeep from a British tea planter and drove down tea plantation tracks and back roads to Tezpur, arriving several days before the men and material arrived there from all quarters. At Tezpur he made arrangements for around two hundred mules and donkeys, 400 odd porters from the plains, and another two hundred from the hills. He also requisitioned ten odd tailors and cobblers to go with them on the expedition with their tools of the trade. A mountain of food supplies, mostly rice, flour and condiments, kerosene jerry cans, he procured locally.  As the men and material arrived, he moved his base camp to a large clearing at Lokra, about twenty km north of Tezpur town.

For three weeks he drilled his men and took them on long endurance runs, carried out rifle shooting practice and formed them into a tough bunch with high morale and camaraderie. He formed small teams of porters, each hundred men, in change of a Naik of the AR, and sent them with the men and animal ported packed stores in relays to establish forward camps. He also sent scouts towards Tawang to not only reconnoitre easy mountain trails to Tawang, but also gather intelligence.

Due to the sudden nature of Bob’s activities and flashing of the unusual authorisation letter, the expedition came to the notice of Major TC Allen, the last British political and intelligence officer of the east, based in Dibrugarh. He followed Bob to Tezpur to enquire into whatever that was happening and met up with him at Lokra. Though Bob received him cordially, he gave Allen a Hobsons’s choice. Either come with him to Tawang or be quarantined at close arrest under guard at Lokra till the expedition was over. Allen, a keen mountaineer, chose the former and applied himself with zest as Bob’s second in command, thereby making it a strange indirect ‘Anglo Indian’ expedition J

The expedition started out from Lokra on 17 Jan 1951, with 200 soldiers under full pack with arms and ammunition. There were no regular roads or bridges over the rivers and streams, one had to just walk cross country. Because of physical toughening of troops and staging of camps twenty to twenty five km apart over inhospitable terrain with just goat tracks,  Bob was able to move his expeditionary force at great speed. However, he allowed the men from the plains to acclimatise to altitude by stopping a day every three days of march. Within nine days they were able to reach the Dzong at Bomdila, the first frontier post of Tibet then commanded by Katuk Lama, an assistant political agent. Bob camped right at the closed gates of the Dzong. The next day, on 26^th Jan he hoisted the Indian flag in front of the Dzong and invited all the inhabitants to a feast. The Governor sent a Dakota from Guwahati to reconnoitre Bob’s progress. The aeroplane flew low over the monastery and while the soldiers waved, it did several rounds of the monastery. The show of force was enough to convince Katuk Lama that an invasion was in progress. He urgently despatched runners to warn all Dzongs towards Towang.

After three days rest and recuperation, as also time for the hill porters of his retinue to catch up, Bob moved out once again on 1^st Feb 51 to Chakpurpu and Senge Dzong at the base of the Sela Pass. The five mile climb to Sela Pass sapped their energy and wits. Undaunted, they moved further up the mountain to Nauranang. On 4 February, they camped at Jang village. Two locals and some troopers were sent out by Bob to collect information and to gauge the feelings of the local people towards their expedition and to invite them for another feast. The next day, the headmen and elders of Rho Changda and the surrounding villages of Jang visited Bob. Through an interpreter Bob explained the purpose of his visit and advised them not to pay obeisance to the Tsona Dzongpens, that they were now free citizens of the Union Of India.  To the exceptionally primitive tribals in such isolated and far flung land, the concept of freedom and democracy were as alien as the back side of the moon.   However they understood that a new conqueror ‘Bob’ had come to rule them.  Bob then detached Capt Limbu, Sub Bir Bahadur and Jam Udaibir Gurung, tasking them to scout around the Sela Tract to find a militarily defensible site  and to construct a permanent check post and barracks to establish an Indian frontier post. He left behind some of his troops as well as porters and advised Limbu to take the help of the local  tribals to carry out his task.

Bob moved his task force further forward. On 6 February they camped at Gyankar and Tibetan representatives of the Dzongpen of Lhau came down hill to meet them. They brought presents and offered Bob incentives in gold and women if he would go back. Bob simply smiled and welcomed them as fellow citizens of a new country to enjoy a new found freedom. Next day was the Tibetan New Year or Lhosar, the first day of the Year of the Iron Horse. In the evening it snowed heavily and the weather turned extremely cold. However, the entire expeditionary force including the porters were snug and warm in American war surplus clothing due to Bob’s foresight and good sense .

Bob and the expeditionary force reached Tawang on 7 Feb 51. They spent two days scouting the area for a permanent site where both civil and military lines could be laid out with sufficient area for a playground. A place was chosen north-east of Tawang Monastery and he camped his force at this location. He put his soldiers and porters to work building a semi permanent military camp with wooden logs and stones. He then sent emissaries to the Dzongpen for cordial meetings and to arrange an instrument of accession to the Union Of India.  For two days there was no reciprocity or goodwill. The small population remained indoors.

After three days, Bob got impatient. That night he ordered his men to fire 20 rounds of two inch mortar at the hill sides and fire off 1000 rounds of 303 ammo in the air. In the closed confines of the mountain, on a dark and silent night, the fireworks sounded like frightening thunder claps, echoing and reverberating, one placating message after another. The voice of God. In the morning he lined up his troops, fixed bayonets and marched his troops up and down Twang for four hours. He also planted the Indian Flag in front of the Monastery. This had the desired effect and the next morning the Dzongpen sent emissaries. Bob put Maj Allen of the British army on the job to negotiate armistice and to draw up a parchment for the formal accession.

There were endless long winded negotiations.  The emissaries were told that the Tsona Dzongpens or any representatives of the Tibetan government could no longer exercise any power over the people living south of the Bum La range. Obviously the emissaries had many objections to such a preposterous proposition.

On 11 Feb Bob made a courtesy call on the Abbot of the Tawang monastery. He gifted the Abbot with a hand wound gramophone and two Beethoven 33 rpm records. The Abbot had never seen such an invention and after the initial fear he instantly took a shine to ‘Music of Budha’. Bob then presented other monks with knickknacks from his camp, American warm clothing, several Tiffin carriers, back pack, tinned food, a bugle. He requested them for their assistance to advise and to influence the local people to acknowledge and accept the accession to the Union Of India. No taxes were to be imposed, women were to be treated with respect.  He told them of the withdrawal of the British from India. He sold them the concept of freedom and the new found aspirations of the people of India.  The rural rustic monks found Bob a more pleasant and sagacious King to have than the autocratic Dzongpens.

After two days, on 13^th Feb, because Allen was making no headway, he sent out patrols to round up the Chhgergans (officials) of the 11 Tsos or Tibetan Administrative Units and to bring them into the camp. If they did not come voluntarily, he ordered that they were to be brought by force. For several days afterwards they were wined and dined with great hospitality and respect, Bob issued a general order that they were henceforth not to accept the suzerainty of the Dzongpens or Drekhong, or pay tax or tribute to them.

Finally around the 19^th or 20^th of Feb, Bob ran out of patience. He was also running out of the time that the Governor had given to him. Along with Allen, the Chhgergans and a hundred troops,  he marched directly to the palace of Nyertsang, the Dzongpen of Tawang. He did not meet with any resistance and there was no violence of any kind. All proceedings were done with traditional cordiality and respect.

Nyertsang laboured and stalled for time, to seek advice and guidance from Tibetan government in Lhasa.

‘What Govt ?’, Bob interjected. ‘The Chinese army has invaded Tibet’.

‘You ever heard of Col Younghusband ?’, Allen asked Nyertsang. ‘There is a treaty with the Govt of Tibet, and as per that treaty the area south of the watershed, south of the McMahon line,  it is in India, not Tibet.  Tawang is part of India. You really have no business here’, he said.

Because of his awkwardness in sitting on the cushions placed on the ground, and because his pistol butt was poking his hip, Allen suddenly took out his Smith Wesson pistol and placed it on the ground in front of him. 

Nyertsang’s visage fell, he deflated like an air pillow.

Allen took out the parchment from his map case and the treaty of accession to the Union Of India was signed by Nyertsang without much ado. Under the powers vested on him by the Governor of Assam, Maj Bob Ranenglao Khathing  MC, OBE, signed the treaty on behalf of the Republic Of India. As a token of appreciation, a ‘Nazrana’, of 1000 Rupees was paid to Nyertsang.  Allen named the Kingdom of the Dzongpen of Tawang, as the ‘North East Frontier Agency’ (NEFA). Bob appointed Allen as a Lieutenant Governor, accountable to the Governor of Assam,  to administer the kingdom till GOI could send their representatives. A quarter-guard was established at the Dzongpen’s treasury using AR troops and Allen set out to document all cash and treasure, besides other administrative tasks of governance. Allen was the first ‘Nawab of Nefa’, albeit white.

After the accession ceremony, Bob had a final task to do, to go back to the Governor and inform him that he had carried out his duty, to every one’s satisfaction, without firing a shot (except for the fire works for entertainment). So he set out downhill to Tezpur with a small retinue leaving the expeditionary force in charge of Allen. The Governor sent a Dakota to pick him up from Tezpur and they flew to Delhi and went to see the Prime Minister, Nehru.

Nehru was livid, ‘Who asked you to do this ?’, he vented his anger at the Governor. ‘I wish you had the good sense to consult me before you commissioned this colossal stupidity. Do you have any idea how much trouble I am having with Chow En Lai over Tibet ?’, he mourned. ‘I want a complete black out on this incident’, he ordered the PMO. ‘I want the PTI to put the lid over this, and not blabber about it’.  

‘And you’, he pointed an accusing finger at Bob. ‘Please get lost, don’t ever talk about it’.

Bob and Jairamdas walked out of the PMO dejected. 

It took Nehru another four years of tough negotiations with Chow En Lai to come to terms and sign an eight year agreement over Tibet and form the first ‘Sino Indian Pact’. Only in Apr 1954, after the pact, did GOI publically announce suzerainty over NEFA and appoint an Indian overseer team in NEFA to replace Allen and his merry men from 2 AR. The new Indian team was from the Special Intelligence Bureau, none from the prestigious newly formed IAS ever wanted to go and live in this god forsaken land . NEFA finally became an Indian state, renamed ‘Arunachal’, the land of the rising sun,  only in 1986. It was to have a brand new capital, to be built out of the blue at Itanagar, a pasture in the foot hills. Towang was too much of a bother for both the new found politicals, as well as IAS in NEFA.

Afterwards Bob went on to do manny things. First in Nangaland as the 'Chief Secretary', curb Phizo of his aspirations to gain  independence through insurgeeency and revolution. After NDC he was posted to Sikkim where he helped subdue the Chigyal aandd annex Sikkim to Indian Union. Afterwards, his last post was Ambassador to  Burma, where he helped lower the 'bamboo curtain' and better India-Burmese relations. He was to go back to Tawang only in 1986, for the statehood celebrations. His visit was private and unrecognised. A 74 yr old man’s personal trip down memory lane. None recognised or remembered Bob.  Like all old and bold soldiers, he did not die, he simply passed away at Imphal on 12 Jan 1990, having done his duty well.

In 1966, when I joined NDA, my Divisional Officer in Foxtrot Sqn was a nephew of Bob, the same kind of man, with the same genes, simply an incredible, resilient, unstoppable, hard core soldier. The first ten years of my own soldiering was in that area, the god forsaken country in the far-east. One soldier to another, three cheers,  ‘Long live Maj Bob Ranenglao Khathing MC, OBE, hip hip ................’.

CYCLIC