The flame of the immortal Indian warrior
“A man’s destiny is always passionately interesting if he achieves it passionately”
—Albert Camus
Martyrs never die. They become immortal. History records their names in golden letters. Lt. Triveni Singh, AshokChakra, is one such martyr. In a rare act of courage he killed two heavily armed militants at the Jammu railway station on January 02, 2004 and saved hundreds of helpless passengers at the platform before he succumbed to his injuries.
He was always coming for retests; always on relegation warning; yet he was the most popular cadet of our course—the 24th NDA. He was popular amongst the senior termers even; right from the 1st term, which is a record of sorts because he was not a ‘chic’ by any stretch of imagination, in fact quite far from it! Another record——he is probably the only cadet in the history of warfare who did not do even one front-roll, in a military academy! How he managed to get away with that still beats me! He smoked in NDA, and drank too, when both these were offences punishable with fate worse than death! He was never interested in academics, but was always glued to a book on military history. We lived out NDA “ from picture to picture”. Come to think of it, though a Bengali, he was a veg in the NDA! This is unbelievable but true; and I suspect this lack of a ‘fishy’ diet accounts for his poor marks in the academics! Never played games, but always the first one to come out with an interesting tale. He was a great gossip and could really impress every one around with his spell binding fast-ones, which all swallowed hook line and sinker; including the one about his escapade with a dame—-a friendly-padosan whilst he was still in Class IX, only! Other than NDA cadets, the only other species that would believe that, is that of the sex-starved snakes. And that is not all; on a good day he could be safely relied upon and guaranteed to even charm the hind legs off a given donkey. He was such a spell-binding story teller, that he talked his way out of the first term ragging with much élan, sangfroid and dignity, and wink!
