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Today is the birth anniversary of Bidhyadhar Singh.

Bidhyadhar Singh , better known as BD Singh or just BD, joined us in NDA in our fourth term. For someone so phenomenally tough, he never threw his weight around or flexed his muscles outside the boxing ring. He fought like lion in the ring but was ever so gentle outside.

He joined the Madras Regiment and am sure he would have felt at home with the thambis and the feelings would have been mutual. I personally did not have the opportunity to meet him during the service .

BD Singh opted for premature retirement in 2001 after 22 years of service.

Post retirement, he had  been the Secretary of the Zila Sainik Board, looking after 5 districts. He also ran a BPCL petrol pump for 2 years and thereafter an Ex Servicemen Security Agency , keeping himself quite busy . Socially as the  Secretary of the Rotary Club Balasore he had  been involved with many Social Welfare schemes under the auspices of Rotary International.

Post retirement, I did speak to him and what I remember of that conversation was his religious mindset and his turning towards spirituality as the main focus of life. He did talk about his children , particularly his son Harsha  and his work on documentary films. There was that understandable pride in his voice of having served his regiment and society well and of having raised his children wonderfully.

Bidhyadhar was short and stocky, one of those few guys who was shorter than me in the academy; yet as a great human being , he walked tall amongst us.

He has passed on too prematurely, succumbing to the pandemic on 18 Sep 2020. A dear gentle soul. May Almighty God Rest his Soul in Eternal Peace.

– Muralidharan K/55

Write up by Ash

By swiveling one’s memory to the January of 1976 and the central lobby of Foxtrot Squadron where the 55th were congregating as first termers; it could be seen within that motley group that were meeting each other as fledglings that there were four – Shamsher Singh Sangwan, Ram Bhaj Singh Suhag, Sanjay Saxena and Akhilesh Kumar Namdeo who greeted each other as old pals, they were after all, the ambassadors of Sainik School, Rewa. To me, within the world that I had then grown up in, Rewa stood out as the place where Tigers were bountiful and where the “white” strain had first evolved. And as alI of us would also soon see, this belief was borne out since each of them had the fierceness, the physical strength and the character of this formidable species.

Akhilesh may have looked diminutive but there was a certain hard compactness in that wiry frame that stood at odds to a person with a certain gentleness. It was this calmness in Akhilesh that reminds all of us as to what Leo Tolstoy had in that severe cold of Russia’s winter when he had written in January 1902 with a renewed resolve for moral betterment, “The kinder and the more thoughtful a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people. Kindness enriches our life; with kindness mysterious things become clear, difficult things become easy, and dull things become cheerful.”

In the shakeup that occurred after our second term when to allow 57th NDA course unfettered access to NDA, Fox (and Delta, Juliet) had exported all except 52nd Course to other Squadrons, that Akhilesh went to Bravo Squadron and was retained there. He excelled in academics and feline grace of his “Rewa tiger affiliation” saw him shining in his outdoors as well, in fact his journey in NDA, encapsulated in the pen picture of the NDA passing out journal recalls him with a rare, underlying tenderness, “If one saw a set of stripes (with a glitter atop) and moustaches coming towards him, then it had to be our Namu. Always lost himself in the bike racks or the tearoom. Good at PT”

As Sanjai Sawant recalls with great warmth, “Akhilesh affectionately known as Namu was a Technical Branch Officer, a Marine Engineer. He spent most of his tenure in Vizag. In fact, he stayed in the same flat 1 Jai in NOFRA Vizag for more than a decade. We used to pull his leg that he should ask for a transfer so that his two doting daughters Abhilasha and Alanksha should understand what a house shifting during transfer means. Namu was a very dear friend and a professionally outstanding Officer. He had excelled in every academic subject during his engineering degree training at INS Shivaji, Lonavla which he had joined with three other course mates within a year of passing out of NDA – Panse/Charli; Dhaliwal/Bravo and PS Verma/Alpha”.

Namu had an untimely demise triggered by a cardiac arrest while in service as a Commanding Officer at Raipur NCC from where he was to retire soon.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Course, this day marks his birthday as Sharmila reminded us this morning with a soulful rendition of a remembrance with a song. His elder daughter Abhilasha is an environment graduate married to a Merchant Navy officer at Pune and younger one Akanksha graduated as a fashion designer and presently works at Mumbai. Sharmila is at Nagpur; that Namu shares his birthday with such tall national personalities of this Nation was perhaps ordained and a reflection of his personality. For the rest of us, life ebbs on as we gather within the arms of our memories the precious time that we have spent with each other.

Penned with inputs from Sanjai Savant and the guidance of Pradeep Mishra and Ramesh.

 May his soul rest in peace

Write up by Ash

Sameer advent to NDA and later on Bravo Sqn was routed through Fox – in fact many of the 55 have in their DNA that unique Fox chromosome that twirls and curls within them, giving them that soft gentleman’s touch, either at their entry/transit/passing-out point. Thus, it was in those initial days, there came in to our midst, a bit awkward, gangly guy, his face beaming innocence and carrying the distinctness of a Konkani Chittapawan Brahmin. His entry described him as a flyboy but he had the natural attributes of a dolphin. No wonder the NDA Passing Out Parade Journal, captured his completeness, scratchily, “Miss Bravo for six terms running. Good at swimming. Spent more time at home than at the Academy.”

Sanjeev Sehri reminiscences that Sameer was a very sweet and nice guy. “Though, if he remembered correctly, even though he had a Services background, he wasn’t the ‘smart’-type; was more of a monk. His parents were probably in Pune and quite often they would come on Sundays and bring yummy ladoos with them. He was such a sweet soul that he used to offer the sweets to all of us and needless to say they were polished off in no time.”

Pratap Nair recollects that “Sameer was the most innocent NDA guy he ever saw. Sameer was like a lotus shining bright amongst us smart alec’s & crooks. He had a rough time in initially adjusting to the rigours of NDA’s first term but he persevered & succeeded. The best/great part was that he never lost his innocence. A great friend & simple human being, he will be always missed by us. RIP”

A random google search reveals that amongst the 27 IAF air accidents that occurred in 1987, on 02 September, 15883 F(P) Flight Lieutenant Sameer Kalyan Kurane commissioned on 14th December 1979 while on a flight on Kiran HJT-16 along with Sqn Leader Dhiraj Kumar Purkayastha had an air accident. Both did not survive, it is with that hollowness within, that ladies and gentlemen of the course, we remember Sameer this morning on his birthday.

With an eye to his life as a pilot, French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist and pioneering aviator, Saint-Exupéry considers with unsentimental sweetness the common experience of losing fellow pilots to accident or war. In a passage that radiates universal insight into the loss of a friend, whatever the circumstance, he writes:

“Bit by bit… it comes over us that we shall never again hear the laughter of our friend, that this one garden is forever locked against us. And at that moment begins our true mourning, which, though it may not be rending, is yet a little bitter. For nothing, in truth, can replace that companion. Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.”

So, life goes on. For years we plant the seed, we feel ourselves rich; and then come other years when time does its work and our plantation is made sparse and thin. One by one, our comrades slip away, deprive us of their shade.

Penned with inputs from Sanjeev Sekhri and Pratap Nair.

🙏 May his soul rest in peace 🙏