Write up by Ash
Silent that he always was, he still sits unobtrusively in most of our memories. It has always been a wonder that the hill people in India are the very antithesis of what Amartya Sen called the “The Argumentative India”. The voracious capacity and the genuineness by which words bubble across most places in our country has always needed that stolidity of the diminutive and yet coiled with that explosive dynamite energy, the folks that live gently in the mountains. It is they that apply the noise cancellation ability of Bose speakers to mitigate the blaring decibels.
BB Rana came to Alpha Sqn, displayed a capacity to make a wily and fiercely independently minded round ball that we play in the game of football, to acquiesce and willfully be subservient to him. It is not without reason that the succinct pen picture that sits with immortality in the Passing Out Parade NDA journal captures the essence of BB Rana – “This Nepali shortie fumbled while giving MLs. OG to the core. Good at PT and football”. Not only that, at IMA, where he was in Cariappa Battalion, it said, “Cool and unperturbed. A good allrounder.
Commissioned into 13 DOGRAS, BB Rana did the 48th Staff Course on the completion of which he was posted to AHQ. Cancer, the Emperor of all maladies came remorselessly and with a quickness took him away.
Today, from us, the words are few, but feelings aren’t. Rana’s remarkable composite face, barely flickered an emotion, stays imprinted in most of us. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Course, this day marks as BB Rana’s birthday.
🙏 May his soul rest in peace 🙏
Ashwini, excellent write up. I can feel Buddhi Bahadur and into trans those NDA days.