Karmanye Vadhikaraste, Ma Phaleshou Kada Chana ! Ma Karma Phala Hetur Bhurmatey Sangostva Akarmani !!

Srimad Bhagvad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 47

Nobel Prize winning author and iconic realist Ernest Hemingway defines courage in his memorable Spanish Civil War novel ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ as ‘grace under pressure’. Had he added ‘untrammeled genius’ to this definition, he could well have been describing Capt JK ‘Chotu’ Sengupta. An amazing Cavalry officer-turned-entrepreneur-cum-social worker, Chotu (called ‘Jojo’ by family) became ‘profoundly blind’ in medical parlance after a Cobra Missile hit his Centurion tank turret during Sep 1965 Indo-Pak War. Though 100 percent blind; that blindness was a career turnaround for Jojo because he used it with grit to light up the countless lives he touched; all with Hemingway’s understanding of courage as ‘grace under pressure’. Respecting courage in all forms – across uniforms and gender.

Capt Jayanta ‘Jojo’ Kumar Sengupta aka Jojo

What can You Say?

The unforgettable opening lines of Erich Segal’s Love Story come rushing in when Chotu Sengupta is remembered. What can you say about a brave, outstanding Cavalry officer who died at 70? That at 22, he was blinded by exploding binocular glass splinters caused by a missile hit during the 1965 Indo-Pak War. That he was a topper in all he did. That he was handsome, personable, perceptive, blessed with a family that doted on him. That he made blindness seem like a weapon which could be used for societal good. That he proved that when fate closes doors, the human spirit opens windows for achieving world class excellence in any work one chooses to do. That he loved life, helped children of lesser God cope with the travails of life with confidence, panache, that he also loved Rabindra Sangeet, reading, educating, sharing, fine dining, dressing with sartorial elegance. That the only battle he ever lost was surrendering with half smile to insidious lung cancer. May be there is no need to say more, instead, simply salute his memory at a time when the 50th anniversary of the war that him is being commemorated.

Early Genius

On Honour Boards and in the Army LIst, Jojo was called Jayanta Kumar Sengupta. Names don’t matter really as long as we get the point: ‘Honour’ figured prominently in his life because this officer and gentleman was special.

Born on 17 October 1942, Chotu was the second son of Amar Prasad, a corporate executive and Namita Sengupta. He left Huddard High School after making it to the Rashtriya Indian Military College (RIMC), Dehra Dun, where his genius blossomed. He was adjudged ‘Best Cadet’ and also stood 1st in the All-India UPSC order of merit for National Defence Academy (NDA). He won the Gold Medal for the 22nd course at NDA and again the Gold Medal at IMA, passing out tops with the 31st course.

Commissioned into India’s oldest Cavalry Regiment, The 16th Cavalry, in December 1962, Chotu was awarded the Silver Centurion trophy for the best Young Officer (YO) at Ahmadnagar. When the 1965 Indo-Pak War started, he was attending a Gunnery course at ‘Nagar. Soon enough, attendees were rushed off to war but his peers knew he’d have topped except that destiny had a higher form of life and living in store.

A Cobra Missile Hit: A Hard Knock by Destiny

US based veteran Lt Col Kartar Singh Sidhu-Brar, Chotu’s wartime CO, recalls that Chotu rejoined the Regiment past mid-September; family recall placing his arrival as 17 September. The Colonel recalls that Chotu ‘had a very special place in our hearts and those who knew him’. He recalls Chotu cheerfully roughing it out in the haystacks of village Arjanpur (near Amritsar) where the Regiment was deployed there during Op Ablaze. Pakistan launched Op Grand Slam in Chhamb and the Regiment was moved for the Sialkot Sector – a new area.

The Regiment entered Pakistan at 0630 hours 08 September opposite Ramgarh, Samba, as the right leading Regiment of 1 Armoured Brigade with The Poona Horse on its left. First contact was established with Pakistani armour within hours with mixed results on display. The official record of the MoD published in 2011 shows the Regiment as having shot 14 Pakistani tanks and 4 RCL jeeps but suffering losses too along with two officers who died; one of whom, Maj MAR Sheikh, was posthumously awarded the VrC and the other, 2/Lt Vinay Kaistha (another Silver Centurion) a M-in-D.

On arrival on 17 September, Chotu was appointed troop leader in B Squadron under Maj ‘Morris’ Ravindran. The squadron was then located near Bhure Shah located 2 km northwest of Alhar RS on the Sialkot-Chawinda BG railway line. Pakistani 22 Cav (Pattons) was tasked to hold the ‘Black Line’ – the railway line from Gunna Khurd to Bhure Shah. It was Wajahat Task Force, an adhoc jeep-mounted Cobra Missile set up deployed alongside.

On 21 September morning, Chotu had taken a well concealed position in a sugarcane field with his tank. He was standing on his commander seat, looking out of his cupola for enemy tanks by using his high-magnification periscope (some reports suggest he was conducting Artillery Shoot) when his tank sustained a Cobra Missile hit on the turret fired from Bhure Shah. The metal splinters smashed the periscope’s lens, the glass shards penetrating his eyes, blinding him and ripping up his face, fracturing his jaw and left arm. Capt (later Col) ‘Wendy’ Dewan was close by when Chotu was hit. Blood streaming from eyes and face. Wendy remembers that Braveheart Chotu was calmness personified; ‘I can’t see but “I’m fine”. How are the boys and the tank?’ The tank being serviceable, Chatu was placed on blankets on the tank deck and brought to headquarters as Gen Rajinder Singh ‘Sparrow’ MVC**, GOC 1 Armoured Division landed. He straightaway ordered his helicopter pilot to fly Chotu to the Udhampur MH.

All else Failed but for Chotu’s Spirit

Shifted to Army Base Hospital in Delhi, Chotu was visited by PM Lal Bahadur Shastri who found him cheerful and optimistic despite his bandaged eyes. He was shifted to INS Ashwini and later to top-ranked Walter Reed Hospital in USA but his optic nerve was severed and that meant ‘100 percent blindness’. The Army sent him to London to St Dunstan’s – a world famous medical centre for war-wounded soldiers rehabilitation and mobility training. Chotu learnt Braille and typing there, powered by his remarkable optimis, humility, wit and sense of humour and his zest for life and live. In 1967, he was boarded out from the Army on medical ground with 100 percent disability.

For anyone else that would have been the end but this was no ordinary man. In a rare interview, Chotu avoided speaking about himself, always about others. He smilingly recalled that ‘there was no emotional setback following the mishap. Indeed, my family and the Army were strong sources of support’. He added that his St Dunstan’s stay where soldiers blinded in war are trained was a godsend for him. It was a new beginning and he made it count. ‘I met a lot of Britishers with similar disability. Seeing them go about their work inspired me a lot’. The standards he later set are in actual fact the stuff legends are made of.

A Genius Reborn

Focussing on winning the ‘Battle of Life’, this unassuming, genuine real-life hero attracted people like a magnet to his persona. Nothing deterred, Chotu took up a dealership with Tata Oil Mills. In 1972, he was allotted a LPG dealership in Siliguri and relocated there from Calcutta with infectious positivity.

In 1977, Chotu got married to Ms Rita Biswas, a teacher driven by passion and remarkable self-starting traits. The duo were like minded in visionary goals, compassionate and compelling and together that made magic.  Jojo is on record paying his wife a handsome, heart-felt tribute for the manner in which she brought greater focus, happiness and harmony in his life. Blessed with twin daughters, Sreemoyee and Sreerupa and younger son Bibek, the careers of the trio were on song well before their beloved father, friend and role-model moved on. The lost him on August 31, 2013 but are living out his dreams with rare nobility, success and character.

Jojo kept the Honour Board ticking. He did his BA from North Bengal University obtaining the expected ‘First-class-First’ rating, by now his DNA. He also routinely won the ‘Best Dealer’ Award from the Tata Oil Mills for a number of years. As an LPG dealer at Siliguri, his consumers remember with awe how he had memorized about 8,000 subscriber names, consumer numbers and addresses, compelling people to call up ‘Joy Da’ to verify their details instantaneously when seeking gas refills or terminations/ transfers of LPG connections.

Reaching Out to Help Disadvantaged Society

Having stabilized his family’s future, Chotu went through a transformation in 1990, taking up social work on a big scale. By 1998, he, Rita and friends had founded The Prerana Educational Centre. Flourishing today, it has 145 physically challenged students on its rolls. Earlier, in 1990, Chotu had also founded the North Bengal Council for the Disabled (NBCD) to run the centre. Apart from Prerana, he also reached towards the rural handicapped under the Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) program. Since 1998, about 700 villages around Siliguri have been covered to help rural disabled cope. Chotu ensured that the CBR became a WHO certified initiative which today benefits 3,000 people.

The Children Follow Dad’s Lead

In 2003, Sreerupa got married to Maj Gopal Mitra, SM (Retd). By itself, this news should not be a reason for specific mention in a Braveheart tribute but for one compelling fact – Maj Mitra having been totally blinded in a terrorist encounter in Kupwara, Kashmir, in 2000.

Commissioned into 15 Mahar, this St Xavier’s Kolkata, Honours graduate suffered total visual impairment. He thereafter underwent extensive reconstructive surgery but his military career was over. Nothing daunted, this young gallantry award winner. He underwent several reorientation courses, ending up with is being the first ‘visually impaired’ student to top a Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai post graduate course. Mitra then pursued MSc in Development Management at London School of Economics (LSE) with outstanding grades. After several career advancements, he is now with UN Children’s Emergency Fund as Programme Specialist for Disability. Sreerupa completed her Masters from LSE, London and now works at the UN along with her husband Gopal. Her twin, Sreemoyee completed her Masters in Early Years Education from the famous Institute of Education, London and now teaches at Neev School, Bangalore.

Chotu’s son, Bibek, is a top-notch financial expert. Chotu’s sister-in-law, Nalini Sengupta, runs the famous Vidya Valley School, Pune, where Chotu was on the Founding Governing Board. Ms Rita carries on her shared legacy with Jojo and has ensured that the Institutions they started together remain vibrant and blooming.

The Never Say Die Spirit

Suffering for almost a year from lung cancer, Capt Sengupta passed away at Command Hospital Pune on 31 August 2013. He requested the astonished doctors for a shift to an ordinary Officers Ward to be more accessible to his family and friends. He faced death with the same calm and equanimity as he faced the Cobra Missile or his total blindness. There was respectful silence as their tribute for a Braveheart who, though small in size, had set sky-high standards of bravery in adversity and in conduct becoming an officer and a gentleman of impeccable class of the rarest kind.

What can you say for such a man who lived and died in a manner that one hopes future generations will take inspiration from? Nothing more than joining the author in respectful salutes for a man who though, ‘profoundly blind’ taught us to see life in all its vibrant colours; live a professional and socially responsible, cheerful, fulfilling, selfless life.

The tribute has been the work of a very fine Cavalry Officer:  Maj Gen Raj Mehta, AVSM, VSM (Retd), another fine soldier, whom I was fortunate to interact with during my service in the uniform.

+ When a cold and shivering jawan gets you a cup of hot tea on a patrol break at 13,000 feet

+ When your sixth sense tells you there is something wrong with a guy at 50 metres

+ When you meet with an accident and the first thing you check whether the weapon you were carrying is functioning; your men come next and last you check your limbs

+ When you speak the language of the boys

+ When you sit from dusk to dawn in an ambush on Valentine’s Day, you know your Red Rose is being delivered home; you understand camaraderie

+ When you are a master to light a pump stove, lanterns, solar lights, bukharis and cold injuries than your average doctor

+ When you indicate people by the clock ray method

+ When only your buddy can dig out the thing you want from your rucksack

+ When your pain submits to your will; when you are tested to your limits of your physical endurance and some more

+  When you find it funny when your relative says he’s going on a holiday to a hill station

+ When your profession is a matter of discussion during marriage proposals

+ When you do not believe in ghosts but do believe in Peer and other high altitudes babas

+ When you know the real meaning of camouflage, in field, in parties, in unit routine and in your own house

+ When you can live, anywhere, with anybody, on anything that nature/ circumstances has to offer

+ When you know this LMG (light machine gun) will be re-sited by everybody up the chain, till it comes back to where it had been sited initially

+ When somebody asks, “Do you play Golf?” and you look at the brass on your shoulder and say, “Not yet!”

+ When you are the biggest consumer of foot powder, DMP oil (anti mosquito), water sterilization kit, ORS packets and Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) packets

+ When you give it all that you have and some more, go beyond the call of duty .. to get the job done; izzat is the end all of your living and existence

+ When you are the only one to get trained in bayonet fighting and you expect it to happen

+ When your GF thinks you are a combo of Rambo, Commando, Gladiator and Braveheart

+ When your Commanding Officer (boss), btw thinks you are none

+ When you get lost in a multiplex with signboards but are at ease in a jungle with just a compass to navigate and night the stars guide your way

At 22,000ft, with temperatures falling below minus 40 degrees celsius, Siachen is the World’s highest and coldest battlefront. Crossing a crevasse is an adventure of its own.

Much has been written about the Siachen glacier. Statistics and technical terms, however, rarely do justice to what it feels like to be up there.

How can words describe the bitter cold slicing through the metal of the lumbering IL 76 aircraft that ferries you to the world’s highest killing grounds? Or how it feels to be buffeted and tossed about by turbulence as the aircraft careens through the narrow mouth of the Zojila pass.

How it feels to see grim faces of comrades around you, knowing that some will not return. How the first breath of -30 degrees celsius air feels like inhaling powdered glass, making you choke and bend over. How the numbing cold oozes through the sole of your boots, layers of clothing, skin and gristle, and into your bones within seconds. How your limbs and digits are frozen, and hurt all the time.

How can words describe that sinking feeling when you look at the memorial rock pillars with names of the dead etched all the way up, as far as you can see? Or how your world is perpetually dimmed by the dark glasses you wear so UV rays don’t lacerate your cornea. How it feels to forcibly swallow congealed lumps of canned food, meal after meal, for months on end. How every breath is a struggle because, no matter how deeply you inhale, the thin air cheats you of oxygen. How your head constantly throbs, spins and aches because of the high altitude.

The long trek to the post in rarified atmosphere is an effort in itself. With battle loads, its tests your grit, determination and courage.

How can words describe the small fibreglass hut, reeking of kerosene and unwashed bodies, that will be your home for a year. A home you share with a dozen other souls sleeping in squashed bunkers that have housed hundreds before you. How you search for a tiny space on the soot-darkened walls, to scratch your name among the hundreds already there. How hygiene is nothing but wiping yourself with a rag dipped in warm water, when you can. How your world is split between the blazing rays of a fierce sun and the perpetual shadows of kerosene lamps.

How every day is a battle to stay alive, every patrol a life-threatening mission. How every step can crack through an ice sheet hiding a crevasse and swallow you forever. How the slightest vibration can set off an avalanche and entomb you under tonnes of rocky ice. And, how a patrol that would take a few hours in any other terrain, takes days because your legs sink all the way to your knees into the subzero snow. What it feels like to carry a load of more than 20 kilos for endless hours, every day, for months, so that rations and fuel are stocked for the winter. How the winters are -45 degrees and “summer” a cruel -35.

How it feels to be emaciated as low body metabolism wastes your flesh away. How you stop recognising the face in the mirror, with listless eyes surrounded by circles getting darker every day, and bones outlined by papery skin scorched by a sun that is 20,000 feet closer than in the plains. How it feels to have matted hair that can’t be cleaned or washed for months, slowly obscuring your face. How it feels to make a choice, in the middle of the night, between emptying your bowels and staying away from the cold.

How it feels to hold the hand of a comrade affected by pulmonary oedema, choking on his own blood, feeling his pain as he crushes your fingers in agony. How it feels to hope against hope that a casualty evacuation chopper would be able to make it in time. And how, deep down, you know it won’t, and your blood brother will die in your arms, slowly, painfully, and there is nothing you can do. Except write down the last words he wheezes through frothing blood— for his family, parents and children. And how you will later lie to them saying he went swiftly, painlessly.

Prior to induction, soldiers are trained at the Base Camp. You can see the 90 degree rock face, where the training is on.

How the thump of an inbound chopper becomes the sweetest sound in the world. How your heart pounds wildly when you hear your only physical link trying to pierce blizzards and gales to reach you. How you pray for the pilot to make it. How you curse him and the world when you hear the rotors veer away because he can’t. And how you cheer when he doesn’t give up and approaches you again and again till he lands dangerously, sometimes perched only on one skid—long enough to load a wounded comrade—before being blown away like a mosquito in a storm.

How one day, your tour gets over and the relievers come up to take over the watch from you. How unbelievable it seems that this ordeal is over. How elated you feel as you gather your men for your journey down and how painful that journey is when the men you take back are fewer than those you brought up.

After an avalanche, the rescue missions look for survivors. Without a single landmark, and the entire area covered in snow, the task is arduous, gruelling and tiring. 

And how ironic it feels that the countrymen you do it for will never know what it feels like to lose a part of yourself forever. That’s how it feels like to be in Siachen or any one of the thousands of posts where our soldiers stand watch.

Capt Raghu Raman, a veteran, authored this article.