It’s like a page from Boys’ Own. But without levering young adults back into the gender stereotypes of the last century. Major John Daniel of the Para Special Forces (SF) stands in a pit facing a tangle of snakes. It’s one of the tasks he has to perform to clear his probation with the SF, among the deadliest combat units in the world, besides training to be a free faller, deep-sea diver and jungle warfare expert. He is also an ace in unarmed combat — something he has in common with fellow officer, Major Marian Antony of the Army Service Corps.
While their regimental histories are still crammed with acts of incredible bravery and sacrifice, 21st Century conflicts have changed the profile of the Indian Army officer. The nation they serve is no longer the romantic India of Kipling’s tales; counter-insurgency operations and cross-border terrorism have altered the course of war. Neither are officers expected to declaim the odes of Horace as colonial-era subalterns once did. Plumed shakos, sumptuous balls and polo matches on manicured lawns are increasingly now part of a sepia-tinted world. But the thrill and adventure remain. Flying a helicopter to work, detonating bombs, skinning and eating snakes when in dire need and holding their own in a waltz — there’s nothing our men and women in uniform can’t do.
Rachna Bisht Rawat’s recently released Shoot. Dive. Fly. (Penguin Random House) aims to introduce this life to young adults through 21 nail-biting stories that give a peek into a career in the armed forces.
An Army daughter and wife, Rawat has been a Harry Brittain Fellow, won commendation from the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, and worked as a print journalist. She has written two regimental histories, is working on a third, and has authored two non-fiction books — The Brave: Param Vir Chakra Stories and 1965: Stories from the Second Indo-Pak War.
Speaking on the telephone, Rawat says she wrote the book while living in Delhi Cantonment, a world of preening peacocks, lazy retrievers, swanky schools, plush gymnasiums, state-of-the-art hospitals and that most precious asset — friends for life — and often wondered why more teenagers didn’t look at the armed forces as a viable career. “I was familiar with the subject, but writing it for a new audience was not easy. Initially, I wasn’t keen. But, when my father passed away and I was struggling with the loss, this book came as an opportunity to pay tribute to the soldier he was. The challenge was to write it to draw youngsters to the Army.”
In the foreword, Lt Col Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Indian cricketing icon and officer in the Territorial Army, writes, “The book will help bust the false belief than an Army officer is a man with a gun who lives on the borders... which might sound like a boring job to a lot of teenagers. They do that, of course... but that’s not the whole truth. Army officers do a lot of things too that most teens want from a career. The Army has engineers, doctors, cyber warriors, Olympians, skydivers...”
Rawat says that her initial brief was to just introduce the different arms of the Army. “It wasn’t going to be a people book. But that would’ve been boring. I found people who had done interesting work in each of these arms and decided to write it as a career guide disguised as a story book.”
She also says that writing for young adults was far more challenging than writing for adults. “I hired my 15-year-old son as the editor. He charged 200 bucks to read a story. Then, I roped in more teenagers. The vocabulary was not a problem, but I had to reformat the stories as the kids wanted action. The girls wanted the emotions of these officers highlighted. That was difficult to do, because it’s almost a given that most officers underplay their heroism.”
The stories are slotted into five chapters that look at daring rescue missions, daredevil acts on the unforgivable climes of Everest, amputating your own leg with a khukri while continuing to fight, the punishing schedule of becoming India’s first blade runner, a missing finger for a mountaineering trophy, signing up at 40 and the spirit to keep marching even on a wheelchair.
“Not every story is positive. There have been losses too. But these are people, who with their earnestness, have touched lives,” says Rawat. “Most of these stories came through personal contact. My father and brother are paratroopers and most of the stories are drawn from these units.”
With a chapter on the institutions and modes of entry, the book gives the young reader a glimpse of life behind the fog of war. And although it doesn’t accentuate the brutality of conflict, it tells you how to get your chance to ‘live a life extraordinary’.