The celebration of the birthday of Rajkumari Shrinagesh, who turned 100 on April 14, reminded me of two incidents associated with her late husband and former Army Chief, Gen S.M. Shrinagesh. In 1956 I was evacuated to the Army base hospital in New Delhi after a serious injury in J&K and was recuperating in the Gen Ward with plaster from hip to toe. The hospital was in temporary barracks and we used to be moved in wheelchairs to the verandah in the afternoons.
Next to my bed was Nippy Kochhar of the Gurkhas with a leg injury. One day when Nippy had been taken to the washroom block and I was alone in my wheelchair in the verandah, a huge Cadillac passed by. After a while a suave smartly dressed officer came to me and asked me where Nippy was and then waited for him to emerge from the washroom but Nippy seemed to be taking his own time. After about 15 minutes' wait and chat with me, he left a packet of Sohan Halwa for Nippy. When Nippy came out, he told me that the gentleman was Gen Shrinagesh, his brother-in-law, the COAS. During the time he spent with me he was alone, without even his ADC and no one in the hospital knew of his visit. All the while he was talking to me he kept standing and I never felt that I, a 2/Lt, was talking to the COAS. Rank consciousness was totally absent.
It also reminds me of a prior incident in 26 Inf Div in J&K being commanded by the famous Gen Henderson Brooks. He was very fond of Sappers (Engineers) and would hold meetings in our mud-walled, tarpaulin-roofed mess with his commanders like Brig (later Lt Gen) Harbax and Brig Gurbax. I had purchased a new camera from Bombay and was showing off to other officers. One subaltern dared me to call the GOC for a photograph. I accepted the wager and marched in when the conference was in full swing and blurted out, “Sir, will you like to be photographed with the Sapper subalterns?”
There was a pin-drop silence since I had transgressed all protocol and all the commanders were glaring at me. General Brooks saw my embarrassment. He got up and came to me and said, "Don't worry about them, you are more important. After all both of us wear the same rank on our shoulders (ie one star), then pointing to his shoulder epaulette, he said "I have just this 'gainti-belcha' extra", that is, the sword and baton on a General's epaulette. Gainti and belcha are the two tools used most by us Sappers for digging.
Things were quite different when the officer fraternity was considered as one bereft of so much rank consciousness like ‘General's Forum/ Club’ today, as if they are a different breed. Manu seems to be slowly making incipient inroads into our psyche once again.
Mrs Shrinagesh’s three brothers were also officers — Gen Kochhar, Brig Bhaloo Kochhar, both Sappers, and Nippy Kochar of Gurkhas, besides her father Col Kochhar, a doctor and a contemporary of Gen Srinagesh’s father, who too was a doctor.
Brig S S Virdi
[Col. Prakash Rao : TriServiceVeteransIndia] 17 September 2015 at 21:14
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