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The Rediff Special/ A Ganesh Nadar'I am proud my son was the first officer to be martyred and the last to come back'
On the opposite wall there were three large photographs of Saravanan. And a photograph of his father, Lt Col Mariappan who was a doctor in the Indian army. On a small table was the Vir Chakra which the government had posthumously awarded Major Saravanan. There were two small lamps on either side and an agarbatti stand. Fresh flowers adorned all the photographs. On the same stand were citations given by the Tiruchi State Bank and Canara Bank to the late major. There was also a Netaji Bravery Award given by the Wisdom Club. Speaking about her husband, Mrs Amirthavalli said, "He was part of the IPKF in Sri Lanka. On the way back home he died in a road accident in Bangalore in 1988." Of their three children, Saravanan, the eldest, was born on August 10, 1972. The next, Chitra, is a doctor at the Government Hospital in Tiruchi. The youngest, Revathi, is a computer engineer in Chennai. Saravanan studied in a convent in Bihar till the eighth standard, and continued in several central schools wherever his father was posted. This took them to Assam, Punjab, Kerala and Karnataka. "Even as a young boy Saravanan wanted to join the army. He used to like shooting. He always wanted to be different from others," said his mother. "As a child he used to dismantle all his toys. If he couldn't put them back together, he used to hide them fearing that we would punish him. As he grew up he used to repair everything at home -- the television, mixie, bike or car." At this his sister Chitra joins us: "He was a man of principles. He wouldn't do what he thought was morally wrong. He wouldn't even allow others to do anything wrong. He was always ready to question injustice."
Said Chitra, "He used to suddenly wake up from his sleep saying that he was flying an airplane. Sometimes he woke up saying he had been shooting in his sleep." "He had made his own model aeroplane. It must be lying somewhere in the house," adds his mother. Originally from Ramnad district, the family shifted to Tiruchi so that the children could study. Chitra works from 8 am to 2 pm and visits her patients in the evenings. Saravanan's mother used "to be involved in a lot of activities earlier" though not anymore. "I now cook for my child and go to temples." She stops talking, and is lost in her thoughts. Chitra gets up to light the lamps in front of Saravanan's photographs. Her mother puts some fresh flowers on all the photographs. Their fragrance fills the house. Saravanan was close to his father. "They were more like friends than like father and son," said his mother. His father, though a doctor, was also mechanical minded. He had once bought computer parts to assemble at home. "But he left us before he could do it," said Mrs Amirthavalli with a faraway look in her eyes. Saravanan completed his graduation in economics at the St Joseph's College, Tiruchi. He was studying to appear for the IAS/IPS exams but never gave the exams. He got a call form the Officer's Training Academy in Chennai as he had cleared the mandatory exams and the interview some time back for admission to the Academy. In 1994 he joined the Academy and passed out in 1995. His first posting was in Tamalpur, Assam. He was also posted in Cooch Behar and Bhutan. He used to get two months leave in a year. He liked spending that time with his family. He liked to watch English and Hindi movies. "When we used to pressurise him to get married he used to say, `there are so many things I want to achieve and you all are bothered about getting me married'," Chitra said. Whenever Saravanan called home from his postings (which was twice a week) he always asked about his dogs. And the dogs, on hearing his voice, used to lick the telephone receiver. As part of the 1 Bihar regiment, Saravanan had volunteered to go to Siachen. He was trained in high altitude warfare and wore a bullet as a pendant round his neck. It was when his unit was moving from one post to another that his commanding officer told him on one railway station, "Saravanan, you deserve to be a major," and pinned the Ashoka Stripes on his label.
His family had seen a few girls as his prospective bride. They had even sent him the girl's photographs. They had planned to get him married in June 1999. His mother poured me another cup of coffee. The Kargil war started on May 27. The battalion had not even adjusted to the cold climate. Two officers had tried and returned when Saravanan volunteered to go. He was given the objective of capturing Juber Hill. He went up with his men. One of his men was shot dead. Saravanan was injured with bullet injuries in his hand and abdomen. His commanding officer instructed him over the wireless to return. His code name that day was 'Ghengis Khan'. The officer had said, "Ghengis, come back, we can return to fight tomorrow." "No sir!" Saravanan replied. I am very near my objective. Nothing will happen to Ghengis. You just watch the fun." His junior, a reformed militant, tried to persuade him to return, but in vain. Saravanan was adamant that he would avenge the death of his men. He ran through a volley of bullets and shot five enemies dead. He fell to a bullet in the head. He fell on May 29. His body was recovered 45 days later. "He wanted to be different. And he did it," said his mother. The mother and sister were silent. Tears threatened to spill out. But they managed to restrain themselves. He fell only 40 feet from the enemy bunker. Saravanan never realised that he was surrounded by the enemy. Before his death it was believed that there were only 200 intruders up there. Only after his death did it become known that there were many more and were heavily armed too. He never wore a helmet. He used to say "Every bullet has a name on it, the helmet won't make a difference." His first commanding officer, Colonel A K Singh was so fond of Saravanan that he flew to Tiruchi for his funeral. He said of Saravanan, "A fighter, a leader and a mission accomplisher." On the day of the funeral it looked like all of Tiruchi was here. The commanding officer came with the body. Saravanan's body was embalmed in Leh by a doctor, Lt Col Shivshankar. The doctor had known Saravanan since he was five years old. He was a colleague of his father's. For the funeral, Vaiko was in Tiruchi. Rangarajan Kumarmangalam came from Delhi. The district collector and the commanding officer walked from Saravanan's home to the Cauvery river.
In April 2000 the government honored him with the Vir Chakra. His mother received it on his behalf from President K R Narayanan in New Delhi. He was given the title, 'Hero of Batalik'. On her visit to Delhi, Chitra met her brother's commanding officer, O P Yadav. He told her, "Saravanan once ran to a militant hideout, opened the front door, dumped RDX in and ran back." In Delhi, Defence Minister George Fernandes had asked Mrs Amirthavalli, "How is your engineer daughter and doctor daughter?" He remembered Saravanan's family distinctly. L K Advani also remembered them well. Chitra had donated her first ten day's salary to the Kargil fund -- Rs 5,000. Chief Minister Karunanidhi was so happy that he wrote an article about her mother in Murasoli, the DMK newspaper. While the Kargil war was on, the army chief had given a unit citation to the 1 Bihar regiment. At that time the battalion had promised to recover Major Saravanan's body. When the body was recovered, his mother wrote a letter of thanks to the army chief. A line from that letter reads, "I am proud that my son was the first officer to be martyred from the Indian army and the last to come back. I am proud that he kept vigil over the frontiers even after his death." Chitra told me, "The army chief called us personally and said he wanted to meet mummy. We went to meet him in Chennai. At that meeting he said, "You are not only Major Saravanan's mother, you are a mother to the nation -- an inspiration to the Indian army." I leafed through an album which had lot of photographs of Saravanan and his army colleagues. There was one of his commanding officer pinning the major's stripes on the railway platform. There was another album of the funeral. A photograph of his mother receiving the Vir Chakra from the President of India. Kargil rekindled patriotism. "One 117 battalion is next to our house. You should have seen the crowds on the last three recruitment days. Small boys in our neighbourhood say, `We want to grow up and be like Saravanan Anna'." Saravanan's family receive fan mail from Indians all over the world. I read a few of them. Letters from total strangers, one from a prisoner in Salem jail. The letters praise Saravanan and thank his mother. "These letters give us some solace in our sorrow," she told me. "We are thankful to all who stood by us and we feel that everybody should have a patriotic fervour in their hearts," is what Chitra feels. "When people talk about Saravanan I feel very proud but it does not compensate for the sorrow," says Saravanan's mother with tears in her eyes. As I looked at Saravanan's photograph and bowed my head before him, I realised this house was full of memories. And that is all that remains. |
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The voice on the phone was firm. 'I am Saravanan's mother." I cross-checked the address with her. "You don't need the address, just tell any autorickshaw driver to take you to Major Saravanan's house and he will bring you here." Sure enough, the rickshaw driver said, "Military Saravanan's house? I know, everybody knows. I too went to pay my respects to him last year. You should have seen the crowds."
As I ate the snacks they offered me, his mother recollected his
childhood. "Saravanan was very fond of animals. As a child he used to
bring home sparrows, squirrels, pigeons and dogs. When he was in kindergarten, he once brought home a small water snake in his water bottle. That was when we were in Belgaum on the Karnataka-Maharashtra border. We have two dogs in the house. This Doberman that you see, he bought it two years ago."
His unit moved from Cooch Behar to Kashmir from where they were
called to the front. In his last letter home he had written, "I plan to
come home on leave in June but I cannot commit to anything at the moment." On May 14, he called home. "My unit is being shifted to an unknown destination. Stay close to the phone. I will call whenever I can," he told his mother.
Saravanan's body could not be kept in his home for long. The entire
crowd wanted to come in. The police commissioner said, "It is becoming very difficult to control the crowd. Some people are threatening self-immolation. We might have to use tear gas or resort to lathi-charge, which I don't want to do." So they first shifted Saravanan's body to the verandah and then to the army carriage, so that everybody could have a look. The entire route to the crematorium was jam-packed. Nobody had seen such a procession before. It was an emotional outpouring of patriotism.