VEEKAY’S NEWSLETTER -2014
Dear Friends,
As we approach the end
of the year 2014, it is time to connect with friends, colleagues and loved
ones. It is also time to take stock of all that has happened during the year. A
New Year is around the corner, but I am not sure how many of us are looking
forward to it. Unlike school children, who always yearn for holidays and want
to grow up quickly, for most people of our vintage it only means another year.
Another year when hairlines will recede, manes become whiter, the bones more
creaky and the backache more painful. But life is God’s gift, to be treasured
and enjoyed. The company of good friends and loved ones, especially one’s
grandchildren, makes live worth living even when one is approaching the sunset
of his life.
The spirit of
Christmas has been marred by the ghastly massacre of school children in
Pakistan. I don’t recall having been affected by any event as much as I was by
this one. The attacks on 9/11 in New York and 26/11 in Bombay may have been
worse in terms of numbers of people killed, but they were mostly adults, who
had at least lived for some time. But snuffing out the lives of little children,
innocent and defenceless, must surely rank among the worst of crimes. One
literally shudders to think of what the little ones have gone through,
including the ones who escaped alive. Their faith and trust in humanity has
been broken, perhaps for ever.
As has been happening
for the last seven years, I still spend a lot of time in court rooms and
lawyers’ chambers. For the record, I had 11 hearings in the High Court, 30 in
the lower courts (Chief Metropolitan Magistrate and CBI Special Judge), 9 in
the consumer courts and 2 before the CIC. That makes a total of 53, which is
more or less the same as in previous years. Of course, there are lean periods
interspersed by busy ones. February, July and September were lean months, with
just one hearing in the month. Many of these cases were filed by me against
various agencies for corruption and against authors and publishers who have
published material that is more explicit than what is given in my own book. To
refresh memories, my book India’s External Intelligence – Secrets of the
Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) was published in June 2007 for which I
am facing prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. The case is yet to start
and will probably never end. Since there is no evidence, the CBI is not really
interested in pursuing it. The lawyers get paid for every hearing and naturally
wish to prolong it as much as possible.
In July this year
another book on RAW was released. Titled Mission
R&AW, it has been written by RK Yadav, who has served in the
organisation for several years. In fact, he has created a records of sorts, by
forming a union and organising a strike in RAW in 1980, after which several
employees were dismissed from service, but later taken back. This book gives
details of several operations of RAW, along with illegal activities, instances
of misuse of the agency by the political leadership and corruption. If
anything, it is ten times more explicit than any other book that has been
written about the agency, including mine. I hope to make use of it in my
defence. Incidentally, as I had mentioned in my last newsletter, the Office
Memorandum of 12/09/1968 signed by the Cabinet Secretary for the creation of
the agency uses the abbreviation RAW, while everyone serving in that agency
insists that the correct abbreviation is R&AW.
The
book by RK Yadav makes several tall claims, some of which cast aspersions on
the Army and Air Force. It also contains many bloopers. Here is a sample:-
·
RAW was conceived by its founder RN Kao, who
was its first chief. (In fact, it was Brig, later Lt Gen, MN Batra, Signals, the
then DMI, who wrote the concept paper for RAW, under the directions of the
COAS, Gen JN Choudhury).
·
The merger of Sikkim with India was engineered
almost entirely by RAW, after approval by Prime Mistier Indira Gandhi. The MEA
and Home Ministry were not even aware of this.
·
The entire blame for the 1962 debacle
rests on the Army, whose generals were timid and had no heart to fight.
·
Thimayya was timid. It was only after
his retirement in 1961 when Thapar became Chief that things improved.
·
When the Chinese reached the plains of
Assam the Army evacuated from (sic) Tezpur, leaving the civil population to
their fate. Indira Gandhi stayed on in Tezpur, to boost the morale of the
locals.
·
When the Chinese attacked our posts in
Tsenge Zong, the military commanders did not reinforce them as they had made no
preparations for this.
·
The decision to throw out the Chinese in
1962 was a purely military decision. There was no political interference.
·
The training and arming of Mukti Bahini
in 1971 was done entirely by RAW.
·
The wireless message
regarding the meeting convened on 14 December 1971 at Government House in Dacca
leading to the bombing by the IAF and the resignation of the Governor, Dr. AM
Malik, was intercepted by RAW. (In fact, the message was intercepted by the wireless
experimental unit at Lucknow, then commanded by Major DS Paode).
·
To facilitate the arms
drop at Purulia in 1995, RAW had ensured that the Air Force’s radar was
switched off so that the aircraft was not picked up when it flew in to drop the
arms.
There is finally some
good news about the History of the Corps of Signals, Volume III, covering the
period 1947-72, which I wrote between 2007 and 2010. Though it was formally
released during the centenary celebrations of the Corps at Jabalpur in February
2011, it could not be printed due to want of MI clearance. After more than
three years of shuttling between various directorates, clearance was finally
accorded early this year and the book is now in the final stage of printing. If
all goes well, it should be released – for the second time – on 15th
February 2015, if not earlier. Of course, the entire chapter on the 1962 war
has been deleted, along with some portions of the 1971 war and the skirmish at
Nathula in 1967. These maybe added once the records of the operations after
1961 are de-classified by the MOD. For those who are interested, I will be soon putting them on my blog: veekay-militaryhistory.blogspot.com.
The third activity
that took up a lot of my time this year was visits to the hospital. Finally,
the cataract in my left eye was removed, though I still have to wear spectacles
for reading. Kumud also got cataracts removed from both eyes, with a gap of
about a month and a half between the two operations. Unfortunately, she is
still facing problems such as occasional redness and watering of the eyes. All
the procedures were done at Shroff Eye Centre in Gurgaon. Now that my left eye
is functional, I have resumed attention to my right eye, which has a swelling
in the retina (BRVO). I have already had 12 injections during the last three
years – Avastin, Lucentis and Macugen – and there is some improvement. I hope
to get an OCT done next month after which it will be decided whether to get
another injection or leave it alone for some time.
Another time consuming
project that was initiated in the beginning of the year was the construction of
some additional rooms in the backyard of our house and extension of the lobby
and drawing room. After living in this house for ten years we realised the
drawing room was rarely used. Unless the gathering is large, we usually sit in
the lobby that extends into the dining room. So we decided to convert the drawing
room into a bedroom, which can be used when our daughter and her children come
over for the weekend. This necessitated the construction of an adjoining
dresser and toilet. The lobby is also being extended, so that it can
accommodate the sofas presently kept in the drawing room. Though the work is
being done by a builder, he is abominably slow and even after one year, the
project is nowhere near completion. Since Kumud is very particular about the
choice of tiles, bathroom fixtures, electrical
fittings, locks, door and window fittings and the granite to be used on
the counter, this entails frequent trips to the markets in Gurgaon where
hardware and sanitary ware shops are located. I keep telling her that all this
is only shortening our lifespans but she just shrugs it off.
A calamity that struck
this year was the crashing of the hard disk of my computer. (My own PC, seized
by the CBI in 2007, has still not been returned and I was using one given to me
on loan from the Corps history cell. My application for return of my PC was
turned down by the court because the seizure report mentions it as CPU, while
my application called it a PC, as mentioned in the charge sheet)! It happened
at about 10 pm on 4th June, when the mains failed. When power was
restored, the voltage was extremely low and I suddenly found my monitor blank.
Next morning I took it to the Signals Enclave where a mechanic from the IT cell
of 1 Army HQ Sig Regt tried to revive it. Since it also had a virus, he copied
all the files that he could on CDs and then reformatted the hard disc. However,
when he loaded the copied files back on the hard disk, it was found that many files
pertaining to the period 2010-14 were missing. After several attempts to solve
the problem in house failed, I decided to take outside help. I gave the hard
disk to a highly recommended technician in Nehru Place who kept it for about a
week and then raised his hands. I then gave it to Truth Laboratories, who are
reputed to have considerable expertise in the field. They sent the hard disk to
their laboratory in Bangalore. I got it back after two months but the missing
files had not been retrieved. I am now trying to build up some of the files
from emails that I have sent or received, CDs and various other sources.
A similar problem
occurred when I had gone to Jaipur for a few days. I had carried my new laptop
and borrowed a data card from my brother-in-law to see my e mails. It had a
recycler virus that destroyed all the folders. My son-in-law gave it to a technician
in Galleria market who removed the Windows 8.1 and loaded Windows 7, which created
its own problems, since it was not the original version. Fortunately, I was
able to locate the Dell service centre in Gurgaon, who not only formatted the
laptop but loaded the original Windows 8.1 software again. Having learned the
lesson, I now save everything on an external hard disk as well as on Google
Drive. And I have vowed never to use a pen drive to transfer files from one
device to another.
Thanks to my cataract operation
being postponed twice, I missed out on a fabulous road trip that we had planned
in September. Lasting almost 20 days, we intended to cover almost the whole of
Kashmir and Ladakh and some parts of Himachal. The party was to comprise my
son-in-law Vaibhav, one of his friends and myself. At the last moment, the
doctor advised me not to go, since my cataract had been removed just a few fays
earlier. Vaibhav’s friend also dropped out, so he decided to do it alone. A day
before he was to leave, we heard about the floods in Srinagar. So he had to
delay his departure by a day and go via Manali instead of Srinagar. He left
Gurgaon on 9th September and got back on the 26th, after
logging about 4500 Km in 18 days. The places he visited were Chandigarh, Manali,
Karu, Leh, Kargil, Batalik, Partapur, Nurba, Tangtse, Pangong Tso lake, Chushul,
Karzok, Sarchu, Tandi, Keylong, Kaza,
Tabo, Sumdo, Karcham and Simla. It
was a fantastic trip that I would have loved to do. Except for three days when
my nephew Akshay who is posted at Karu accompanied him and when he had Akshay’s
brother-in-law as a companion for the portion from Chandigarh to Karu, Vaibhav
did the trip alone. And he is a sailor who spends most of his time on the
water!
This year we could not
go for our annual summer holiday to the hills. But we made do with a trip to
the national park at Ranthambhore. Kumud
and I were accompanied by Vaibhav, Mauravi and their two children, Mriggya and
Eshaana. We went for three jungle safaris in a gypsy. On the second trip, in
the morning on 23rd October we had a magnificent view of a tiger
from a distance of barely 10 metres. For almost an hour, we watched him
sleeping close to the track. Finally he got up and came on the track. There
were several gypsies and canters on both sides and he could not find a route to
get out. There was a near panic as the drivers reversed their vehicles, until a
small track leading to one side opened up. The tiger strode off into the
jungle, leaving everyone wonderstruck. That evening, we celebrated Diwali at
the hotel where we were staying, leaving next day for Jaipur, where we stayed for another two days before returning
to Gurgaon after a short but memorable trip and an encounter with the king of
the jungle. See the photos at the end.
During the winter
months, we still continue the practice of a trip on Saturday or Sunday to visit
a park, museum or monument. This year, we have visited the Doll Museum,
National Gallery of Modern Art, Book Fair, Indira Gandhi Memorial, Lodi Garden,
Nehru Memorial and the Palate food festival at Nehru Park. Usually, we are
accompanied by the children and grandchildren along with Kumud’s nephew Ajay
and his family who live nearby. We intend rounding off the year with a visit to
the street food festival in the Nehru Stadium that is due next week, from
Christmas onwards.
In November we
celebrated the 20th anniversary of completion of our NDC course (NDC
34). Incidentally, our course is the only one that has been having a monthly
get together without a break for the last 20 years. It is usually held during lunch
on the 1st Sunday of the month, hosted by members in rotation at their
homes or in a mess or club. Over the years, the Air Force golf course, Sabre
mess and Kotah House have become hot favourites. For the 20th anniversary,
we had a lunch on 23rd November, hosted by Surinder Singh (Arty) at
his home. The next day, there was a contributory dinner at the NDC. Since Peter
Cosgrove, now Governor General of Australia, could not make it on those dates,
we had another dinner on the 30th, hosted by Gulshan Kalra in his
house (he was with Indian Oil when he did the course, later moving on to Coca
Cola). Finally, Air Marshal Bindra hosted a lunch on 2nd December at
his home.
One would imagine that four days of wining and
dining was more than enough for a couple of weeks. But this was not to be. On 5th
and 6th December I had to be in Hisar for the biennial reunion of
the unit that I had raised in 1982. This was the ninth reunion and no less than
nine ex-COs attended, apart from several other officers, JCOs and OR. I have
always felt that having a reunion at unit level, as is the practice in the
Infantry and Cavalry, is a better option than the one we have for the entire
Corps once in five years at Jabalpur. I have attended three of them and except
for a few officers, I did not know any of the JCOs or OR. In fact, we were
literally rushing from one event to the other, without a break. It is a good
idea for signal units to have an annual or biennial reunion, in addition to the
one held every five years at Jabalpur.
To reduce the load on the unit, it can be kept simple, with just a barakhana or a cup of tea for all ranks,
followed by dinner in the Officers Mess. To ensure that the officers are not
taxed, one can follow the custom that I had started in my own unit – each ex-CO
carries a bottle of Scotch to the party!
We are still staying
in Palam Vihar in Gurgaon. My son Abhimanyu lives on the first floor with his
wife Jasmine and their two children Bhuvanyu (11) and Khushi (9). My daughter
Mauravi and her husband Vaibhav live in Hextex Commune near the DLF golf
course, which is close to the school of their two daughters Mriggya (11) and
Eshaana (9). Vaibhav is a captain in the Merchant Navy and is presently sailing
across the Pacific. He expects to be home sometime in April next year.
Our routine remains
the same as in yester years. I go to the gym in the DSOI at 0700 and return at
0745. Instead of walking on the treadmill, I now do a bit of cycling. The
orthopaedic surgeon in the JRC at the RR Hospital told me to do this when I
went to see him for pain in the knees. According to him, cycling and swimming
are better than walking, since they take the weight off your knees. Kumud goes
to the gym at around 0830 and returns only at about 1000. She also does a bit
of walking in the evening when she gets the chance. I have to do some extension
exercises for my back once I come back from the gym. Whenever I stop these
exercises for a few days, the pain in my leg returns. This also happens if I
sit on a low sofa or settee, or take a ride in a car with low seats. Once I had
diagnosed the problem, I switched over to the Innova about six years back and
that is the only car I prefer to sit in now.
Sometime
back, I went to a free spine camp at the Columbia Asia Hospital next door. After
seeing my MRIs, they advised me go in for spine surgery straightaway. I went to
my good friend KK Singh who had diagnosed my ailment – lumbar canal stenosis –
way back in 1992. He was now Comdt of the RR hospital and advised me to not to
go in for surgery. I went to the Spinal Injuries Centre and they told me the
same thing. Since three vertebrae - 3rd,
4th and 5th - were involved, the surgery was a bit
complicated and they advised me to carry on as long as I could.
That about sums it up
for the year 2014. This is my ninth newsletter (the first one was sent in
2006). Those who wish to read the previous ones can do so by logging on
to my blog veekaysnewsletter.blogspot.com.
Let me close by wishing all of you a Merry
Christmas and Very Happy and Prosperous New Year.
Vinay and Kumud Singh
G-31, Palam Vihar,
Gurgaon – 122017
Tele: 0124-4074077,
9873494521, 9899110913
23rd December
2014
At Ranthambhore on
23rd October 2014, shortly before we met the Tiger.
At Ranthambhore on
23rd October 2014, face to face with the Tiger.
