IN THE ARMY NOW

Anything is possible. We don’t believe in miracles anymore. If you ask me, a miracle is having an unemployed young man, from a small village in an enslaved nation, achieve glory, despite the prejudices against his privileged ancestors, whose name he bore. What makes this tale even more astonishing is that everything I’m about to describe to you happened during the Second World War, a terrible era in human history, a time when one would never believe anyone could get ahead in life. This is the true story of this miracle, which changed the course of my grand-father’s life – and the lives of all of his descendents- forever.
In the 40s, India was still under British colonial rule. My grandfather, Kavaseri Krishnaiah Venkateswaran, was a young man who had just finished his Bachelors’ degree in Arts. In the year 1941, it was pretty unusual for a native Indian to be so well-qualified. Unfortunately, because of belonging to the ‘Brahmin’ caste, the former elite caste which was generally hated (and not without good reason) by the emancipated folks of the new age, this exceptionally well-educated young man couldn’t get a job anywhere.His father (my great grandfather) still wanted his son to live with his family and wanted him to follow in his father’s professional footsteps. “I will get you a job as a Collector,” he boasted to his son, with the rider, “Stay at home, my son.” In those times, nearly every Indian family was a joint family. Unthinkable to let a son of the house go far from the bosom of the family home.
But my grandfather had a better handle on reality, bitter experience having opened his eyes to the truth. The Brahmins had abused their privileged position in society for far too long, and nobody, but nobody wanted to give a Brahmin a chance to regain a position of power once again. So young Venkateswaran decided to hide his caste from prospective employers. He applied for a position as a train conductor at Trichy, the place where he lived, now part of modern-day Kerala, in the very southernmost region of India. He soon received a call for a job interview. At first, it seemed like everything would work out. But at the end, the person conducting the interview casually asked, “So, what is your caste?” Venkateshwaran was obliged to reveal the truth. “Brahmin? Get out!” shouted the interviewer rudely.
Most people would have been discouraged by the tough situation in which this unemployed young graduate found himself. My grandfather, the world’s biggest optimist, went to see the famous Christmas celebrations in the city of Bangalore. His best friend, Krishna Nayar, also wanted to go there, but to enlist in the British Indian Army. Young Mr Nayar, who had never travelled by train before, was afraid to go alone. “I don’t want to go alone! Come with me, please,” he begged his best friend.
At that time, the British were looking to recruit people from the colonies in Asia to fight against the fascists. The British Army had announced that it would send free return tickets for the train journey to people who came to enlist. My grandfather decided to take advantage of this opportunity. That was how fickle chance tossed young Venkateshwaran on a train journey with his best friend K. Nayar, who was on his way to enlist as a recruit in the great war that had engulfed the entire world.

The two friends gave the exam, and they both passed. When he was invited to join the army, young Venkateshwaran hesitated. Krishna Nayar pressed his friend to enlist. Peer pressure seems like a modern phenomenon. But 75 years ago, my grandfather went to Bangalore to give a friend moral support, and ended up being a recruit in the British Indian Army – that too, in the dangerous time of the Second World War! Like any teenager today, he lied to his father to do so, too. The adventure which led my grandfather all across the Asian sub-continent had begun. In those days, it wasn’t unusual to spend one’s entire lifetime in one place. But destiny led my grandfather to the ends of Asia, across seas and deserts. It was perhaps the force of his optimism that led him to realize his dreams of grand adventure, and to give him what he had been looking for all along – a job. 

 

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RISING THROUGH THE RANKS

Having enlisted in the British Indian Army during the peak of the Second World War, my grandfather went home and broke the news to his appalled father. It had been just one year since he'd got married. After the failure of all the blandishments, inducements and entreaties to persuade my grandfather to stay home like a good boy rather than go off to war, his dad reluctantly bid him adieu, knowing perhaps, that there was no chaining his free spirit.

Armed with a kit with the standard-issue khaki uniform, hat and boots, my grandfather got ready for life in the army. The first two months in the army were spent loading and unloading supplies and digging trenches, in addition to the small arms training that was mandatory for all recruits. The new recruits prepared for the rigours ahead by digging, lifting, hauling and shooting; all on a monthly salary of Rs 10 per month - a sum that was not considered all that bad, back in those days.

My grandfather was recruited as a Sepoy Storekeeper. He spent two months training how to shoot weapons like sten guns (widely used in the Second World War), pistols and rifles, after which the third month was dedicated to learning the trade of the storekeeper, the position he'd been chosen to fill.

That wasn't all, either. My grandfather and his best friend Krishna Nayar were both Kerala born-and-bred, and had been brought up on rice meals all their lives. In the army though, a nasty shock to their culinary sensibilities awaited them, in the form of the unfamiliar north Indian fare of yellow lentils and unleavened flatbreads (dal and rotis) which the army had decided would serve as native 'Indian' fare for all Indian army personnel.

But you just can’t keep a good man down. The Army began to pick out recruits for promotion based on an examination. Out of the 600 people who took the examination, my grandfather stood first. He had his reward in a triple promotion. He skipped from the rank of Sepoy Storekeeper straight to the rank of Havildar Storekeeper, a prestigious position which made his salary jump to the then princely sum of Rs 70 per month. Three months into his first job, he sent his entire salary to his overjoyed and proud father.

That was how he got his first promotion.

 After his promotion, though, he was posted at Allahabad Arsenal, where he got his first taste of discrimination. The facility had British officers, sergeants and men, working along with the Indians. White men of the same rank, whose uniform bore the same three stripes as his, were paid seven times as much as my grandfather. The British ruled the country at the time, and the British officials would bark insults at the Indians with impunity, and the Indians had no choice but to tolerate the slights that came their way. "Bloody Indians!" they'd say as they passed (this must've really stung, because my grandfather remembered it and repeated it with great bitterness, though 75 years had passed). There was a separate mess for British personnel and a separate mess for the Indian personnel, all nicely segregated, apartheid-style.

Getting your own back was out of the question, of course, but a measure of vindication was to come later. The post-independence Indian Army had many British officers who had opted to serve out their tenure in India rather than to retire prematurely. As an MT (Mechanical Transport) instructor, my grandfather, still at the rank of Havildar, had the privilege of teaching a class full of lieutenant colonels and colonels. The Commandant himself  used to sit right behind him during the class. 

"But you're an Indian! How are you so good at this?" came the surprised exclamation, after his very first class. Hardly a politically-correct remark, but to an Indian in a newly-liberated slave nation, such praise was a triumph, a victory of personal merit over colonial prejudice; hard-won and infinitely precious.

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DRIVING TO WAR

They say that war brings out the best – and the worst – in people.

 Most people come back from war with tales of horror to tell their shrink. With my grandfather, we had tales of adventure from the war (the nastier bits left out), narrated with the flair of a natural-born storyteller, told to a bunch of spellbound, wide-eyed grandchildren. One of the most interesting of his stories, for us, was his recounting of the Burma campaign in World War II.

 General Slim, the Supreme Commander of 14th Army, was to lead the British Indian Army in a campaign to recapture Burma. My grandfather, then posted to COD, Dehu Road in Pune, received orders to move to Ranchi, from where they would then proceed on to Burma.  

 “Waran!” barked Major Heptinstall, the man in charge at Ranchi. “Drive the truck with supplies to the camp!" “I don’t know how to drive, sir,” young Waran protested. “I don’t care! I have 50 trucks and only 30 drivers. You have to do it!” said Heptinstall. “I don’t even have a license,” the young Quartermaster began to explain. Heptinstall responded by making out an impromptu driver’s license on the spot, signing at the bottom to lend it the stamp of officialdom; and handing it over to young Waran.

They were to start driving from India to Burma in two days.

 For all that, Heptinstall wasn’t being unreasonable or unfair. Orders were orders, and Major Heptinstall had his orders to march. In the army, obeying orders is such a way of life that not to do as one was ordered it would have been unthinkable. Heptinstall had to finish the job, in any way possible.

In the course of the second great war that swept across the world, with everything from drivers to supplies at a premium, army men stepped up to the mark to meet impossible demands in untenable circumstances.

Meanwhile, my grandfather, who had never driven a vehicle in his life, had two days to learn the theory of driving. Fortunately, his immediate senior, the Havildar Major, who knew how to drive, was a good friend. Sitting in a stationary vehicle with the Havildar Major (they didn’t have the authorization for practice drives), my grandfather learnt the basics about the accelerator, brake and clutch, moving the gears about to learn how it was done.

It was a quirk of destiny that got a man of such unquashable optimism in just the place which needed men whose spirit could not be broken. Such things happened to my grandfather all the time – fate loves an optimist!

So he drove a motor vehicle for the first time in his life, from one country to another, in the middle of a raging war. At the wheel of a monster 3-ton truck, he drove all the way from Ranchi to Burma, the last vehicle in the convoy of 2000-odd vehicles of different shapes and sizes. The vehicles began driving at 8 am and kept driving till nearly 6 pm, when they stopped for the night and set up camp at one of the designated halts en route. They were on the move, driving through the day, every day, for one-and-a-half months. During the drive, he had to navigate with the help of map reference points, in a truck loaded with all the food and cooking vessels for all the men.

That was how my grandfather learnt how to drive.

This nerve-wracking introduction to driving might have put some people off driving. Not so my grandfather. Till he was 92, he was zipping around on his Sunny, an un-geared scooter that was hugely popular with teenagers - and people like my grandfather, ever the teenager in spirit.

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IS IT A PLANE?

The long drive through Burma led the 5th Indian Division, my grandfather's formation, deep into the interior of the country, and to better quarters and better living conditions. Luck has a way of changing suddenly, when you least expect it, and in my grandfather’s case, he caught a break.

In a small town in interior Burma, next to a famous pagoda (a Buddhist temple), the company settled down to something very like comfort. Among the local people were Indian-origin settlers. With the enterprise of the true Malayalee when he’s out of Kerala (there’s something about the southern state of Kerala in India which makes its expat inhabitants hugely proactive when it comes to the food and beverage business), the ladies would come around on Sunday mornings with traditional South Indian steamed rice dumplings (idlis) and savoury rice-flour pancakes (dosas) to sell to the home-sick Indian men. 

 My grandfather was promoted to Chief Quartermaster. He and his friend Subedar Bali, being two of the  senior-most men around, had the luxury of getting a thatched hut by way of accommodation, a definite upgrade from the tents which had served as living quarters so far. And sharing a boundary wall with an anti-aircraft unit meant that they could relax and stop worrying about the constant, ever-present threat of the German bomber planes that hovered over the Great War.

For my grandfather, who possessed the happy knack of ignoring unpleasant things and enjoying life to the hilt whenever possible, this was living the high life.                 

 For a while.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. My grandfather and Subedar Bali sat outside their hut in the peaceful tropical surroundings and enjoying a breakfast of masala dosas, crispy golden brown pancakes filled with a spicy, savoury potato filling. There was nothing to do but eat and bask in the sunshine. They looked up lazily as seven planes painted with the Indian insignia flew overhead. The planes swooped down, raining bombs on the unit. At the first, explosive sounds of the deadly shower from the sky peppered the camp, my grandfather and Bali abandoned their masala dosas and dived into trenches.

Ironically, the anti-aircraft unit’s artillery guns were just outside the unit, but they, too, thought the, as my grandfather put it, that “the planes were ours”. It wasn’t until much later that everyone figured out that the planes were enemy bombers, cleverly disguised with the Indian insignia and flying under false colours. By the time the anti-aircraft unit realized what was going on, the planes had disappeared.

The ruse had caught everyone unawares. The camp was levelled and as many as 30 vehicles were reduced to smoking wrecks in a matter of a  minutes. 22 people died that day. My grandfather came out of the trench to find that friends and colleagues who hadn’t been so lucky were gone forever. Also gone was the prized thatched hut (which had take a direct hit) and all his worldly possessions, which had been in the hut. But things, unlike people, can be replaced; and as the Quartermaster, retrieving a fresh set of clothing and other supplies from the stores was a simple matter. Far simpler, in fact, than dealing with the sudden deaths of twenty-two people with whom he’d lived, worked and travelled for so long - a loss that cut so deeply that 75 years later, he still couldn’t talk about it.

In fact, he had been lucky again. He could have been inside his hut when a bomb from the enemy planes had landed on it, but instead, he’d been outside.

That was how my grandfather survived bombing by enemy aeroplanes in the Second World War. 

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