Write up by Ash
The imprimatur posted by the fifth termers on the NDA journal published on 55th passing out parade on Wagh read as: “The imported General who was rarely seen and never heard, especially by the officers. A decent soul who wouldn’t look for taking extra eats. Good at football and MLs.”
Wagh had joined NDA in Foxtrot Sqn with 53rd Course, parachuted to 55th and passed out in his final (8th) term from Golf Sqn after which he went on to don the Air Force blues to eventually fly the MiG-21s. This morning, ladies and gentlemen of the course, his birthday marks the day.
Remembered by the entire generation of 53rd to 59th courses as a very fit, agile and nimble person, possessed with a remarkable dancing talent, probably the best in NDA at that time when the albums of Boney M, “Saturday Night Fever” and Abba were the rage. He embraced life with its fun and fullness, his eyes lighting up his smile with just the right mischievousness. His calm and macho exterior hid a softness and mushy interior. He and Noel Washington were very close buddies, two course mates who had ridden together the roughness of two relegations with an amazing fortitude.
Ashwini still remembers the day soon after his Regiment had moved to Mamun Cantt, close to Pathankot’s Air Force Base, when Hari called to inform that Wagh had flown that heavily overcast morning in a sortie over Pong Dam in Himachal Pradesh, on his MiG-21 and was missing. The greyness of the sky and of the water in the reservoir would have not been distinguishable from each other and it was that opacity that God used to call Wagh to the Valhalla. It was to be his final sortie in the MiG-21 before he was to move to a Jaguar Sqn.
He loved his doctor wife Sooneita, then close to ending her confinement, with both looking forward to the delivery of their son. The unevenness of life came with a suddenness that devastated all whom he left behind. Anant Anand Wagh (Anu) is now doing his Masters in Real Estate from Cornell university in USA. Sooneita is happily married to Sushil and practicing her medicine (Dermatology) in Hari Nagar, N Delhi.
Thank you Devika Hari Kumar for the additional inputs.
🙏 May his soul rest in peace 🙏