INA Veterans and Netaji

During my travels, I once met an old man, a Freedom Fighter and an INA Veteran.

He told me, he still dreamt of an India which is developed and where the elders of the society are respected. He didn’t want any undue favors, but wanted atleast some respect towards his age and his actions in his youth. He was disgusted by corruption all around him and he was always trying to take a stand against it. When I met him, he was yet to receive his pension for the past 7-8 yrs as he refused to pay bribes. There was no honest officer incharge of that office to help him out. And this old man was now making a living as a street vendor.

He is a Tamilian who joined the INA heeding the call of Rash Behari / Netaji and saw action in Burma mainly.

When they initially came back to India, the INA they were treated as heroes by the common populace. But this man I met, was hugely disgusted by the Congress leadership who in those days capitalized on the Red Fort Trail. It seems the Congress leadership collected donations from the public for the defense. These donations ran into millions of rupees in those days. The Congress leadership gained a lot of publicity from this whole action. But after the trial and soon after when India was given its freedom, none of these INA veterans were recognized as army veterans and for a very long time they were not even recognized as freedom fighters. These were the people who sacrificed the prime of their youth for the country, dreamt of a free India and of a glorious national future. They are heroes who should have been equally respected as other congress functionaries. But these veterans were humiliated and not even recognized as freedom fighters. Many had already sacrificed their all for their nation, but after 1947, were reduced to even more poverty and some of them died in hunger.

Just imagine, soldiers coming from traumatic battles and battlefields, already depressed by war, being subject to non recognition. They were dishonorably discharged from an army that refused to accept them even after Independence and no pension.

It was only in 1972, that the government found it fit to award a pension to the INA Veterans. I wonder why this discrimination happened at all. Why were these guys pushed to the gutters of society?

A lot many people claim that Netaji was alive and lived in India also for some time. If this was/is true, I lose my respect for him for he had forsaken the lives of those who believed in him. He would not be a true leader. Whatever be the compulsions of his isolated existence, if at all he was alive and did not lift a finger to help out the veterans, it was an extremely shameful act on his part.

Where The Mind is Without Fear

Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

Varun.

He is one my first cousins and his Dad is/was very close to me when I was growing up. I met him after a long time. May not be correct. But I truly saw him for the first time only in this trip to India. He has that true carefree attitude of youth.

He is one cool dude. Atleast that is what I think. :)

How I long for those days, when I was the rebel. :) That age, when you beieve that everything will just fall in place if you make a go for it. You feel you are the king and the world is before you just waiting to be conquered. When you dream that making billions is just a matter of time. When you believe that you know what is right and what is wrong. When you believe that the world is in general Black and white with a few shades of grey, but you know how to conquer that grey shade.

Aahh!! What I would give, just to have those days back. When you are the idealistic person and not drawn back by practical daily compulsions of life.

caritra irukulalO irukkunna irusulu.

prajA taamasamlO paDi lEvalEni pAmarulu.

చరిత్ర ఇరుకులలో ఇరుక్కున్న ఇరుసులు.

ప్రజా తామసమ్లో పడి లేవలేని పామరులు.

This is something I read a long time back and just remember it. Don’t even remember who said it or in what context.

Literally, I think it translates to:

Spokes stuck in the cracks of history

Peasants who can’t stand up against the huge wave of humanity.

Today morning I woke up thinking about my school days and people I knew from school. Why? When coming back from India, the person sitting next to me was Anup Veer, a classmate from the 2^nd class to the 10^th. After 10^th I never met him, but heard about him a few times from other friends. And there he was suddenly in the airplane coming towards me asking me if I was Srikant. It was a good moment I suppose. When you meet someone after 16 years and start recollecting old memories and catching up on each others life. That was one reason the flight was not tiring. So Anup, has been in the back of my mind for the past few days and he was the catalyst for me to think about others I knew from school.

School days are supposed to be the best in one’s life. But is it true for everyone? If they were so great, and if everyone has so much fun then, I suppose each and every person has a huge cache of friends from those days. I think when most of us go to reunions; we go to gloat or feel remorseful about ourselves when compared to others or just to meet up old acquaintances from those days, or for what ever reasons. Very few times do we meet to go back to catch a very old friend and maintain contact with that person from that point on. Moreover, the caustic relationship we shared with people those days still resides in some corner of our memories and we still hesitate to frankly interact with those we meet in the reunions. As we grow older we grow more cynic and more …..

I personally feel that my school years were a really bad phase of my life. It was because of a combination of many things. No proper guidance was the main thing, I suppose. But overall, all I remember from school was that I was a failure in studies and did a lot of idiotic things and so on. I was a huge sympathizer of the left those days and was also politically very opinionated. But there was no proper guidance for my thoughts nor my actions. In school, all it resulted in was some warnings from the principal, or teachers. At home, my Dad who was a very strict disciplinarian those days (he still is in some ways), would just scold or worst case slap me once or twice. But no one knew what I was going through or (I am not sure) if they even understood the gravity of things.

I knew after my 10^th that I was not in the bottom percentile in studies when compared to my peers and was actually on the higher end. But, till my 10^th, my marks were real bad. Once I scored half a mark out of 100 in Physics. :) And in college Physics was one of my best subjects. I failed Telugu in my 9^th finals and later in college and afterwards, I was writing poetry, drama and songs in Telugu. So sad.

Ok, back to the first sentence and its correlation to school. There are people who just stick in some corner of your mind / memories. Just like in my essay “Vaise bhi itnaa gham .........” You do not know what they are doing, where they are now, and so on. But you still are a little bit curious. I was thinking about some of the people I knew in School and was wondering how life was treating them.

:)

Sri Krishna Jewellers: One of the older and more respected Jewellery shops in Hyderabad, based in Abids. Ofcourse, the shop next to theirs is Srikant Jewellers. :) Not my shop though!!! :(
This was the main shop for Hollywood footwear. People at one time used to swear by the variety and quality you could get here. Abids again.
Karachi bakery opposite the Mozamzahi Market

The clock tower in Mozamzahi Market.

Hyderabad's own Famous Ice Cream in Mozamzahi Market. Ask any true Hyderabadi, and they will swear by the yummy icecream you get here and at Shah ice cream a couple of shops down.

Nowadays, Rasranjani is popular. Supposedly we get only Vegetarian Ice Cream there. :)

The streets of Hyderabad on a Sunday. This is in Abids, where you can buy books at a huge discount. Lot of 2nd hand books and also new ones. If you are patient, you can own some rare ones. See those signs, any book for 10 or 20 bucks.
This is Abids GPO. You see Nehru stading there with the bird in his hand. Just in front of the bus. Ramakrishna Theatres are behind the GPO. Go left from here, you go to Koti, a sharp right takes you to Nampally Railway Station. I am not sure if we can go to Mozamzahi market from the right, as I believe it is a one way.
Abids Roads. Yeah they sell clothes also on the streets on sundays. I think they are either factory seconds or something. But you can get good branded clothes for under 100 Indian Bucks.
Books, Books, Books

Books, Books, Books. See those signs, any book 5 bucks.

Careers and growth!

Why does everyone want you to become a Manager or a C level person in an Organization? Is that the only path one can take in Life?

Every time someone asks me about my career I find myself defending the job I am doing. Indians and Chiefs are both required to get a job done. Some people remain foot soldiers, some become the Chiefs, some choose to be what they like to be. I believe that, a manager in general has way too many responsibilities and has way too many headaches. Being a regular foot soldier, (in my case specifically, a Contractor) does not make me lose out on the pay scale when compared to a Manager. It also affords me far fewer headaches than what a Manager faces, lesser responsibilities and more time to pursue what interests me more. :) Like right now, writing this….

Being in a routine job is tiresome. You always report to one person or more, stay in one town, and it slowly becomes a bore. Freelancing, on the other hand, makes you learn your subject, affords you to travel more easily, helps you escape office politics, and you are free to choose your own job. The day I start hating my client or my manager, I can just say good bye. The day I want a vacation, I can go for a vacation without thinking about the vacation time and all such things. The day I want to work more or less, I know I can do the work as needed and will be compensated as such.

So which is better? If you don’t mind the traveling, let’s free lance. :)