The_Sidewinder
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This is a story of courage.
A true story of incredible courage of a
soldier, whom I’ve had the privilege of
knowing. Someone, who would just not take
“NO” for an answer, despite the challenges
life threw at him. A story that needs to be
told.
There is inevitably a strange, almost labored
disconnect between the urgent, distinctive
‘pop’ of the speeding bullet as it whizzes past
you and the apparently languid, disarmingly
slow movement of those around you. A
sardonic, yet glowing affirmation of the
theory of relativity, if you will. Those who
have been inactive combat and had the
privilege of being fired at, would know.
Deependra Singh Sengar did. More than once!
It was the day after Valentine’s Day, 1998.
Sengar had just been received at the
Guwahati airport by the unit’s escort team. At
5’6” and 52 kgs in weight, you could easily
mistake him for the a postgraduate student
at Guwahati University. Sengar was re-joining
the unit in active operations in the North
East – after weeks of pleading, screaming &
struggling against the orders of Col Ivan
Crasto, the Commanding Officer – to man
the administrative rear echelon of the unit in
a cosy, sleepy town in Himachal Pradesh.
That is who he was – a man of action. And
men of action, as you would know, abhor
routine admin jobs!
The first message he overheard, 15 minutes
in transit, on the secured communication
radio link was garbled. 5-6 senior militant
leaders in a house, armed with automatics,
pin point location, high credibility of info,
apparent transit profile, likely to move out
soon. The Quick Reaction Team (QRT) from
the unit was starting out, but could hit target
only in an hour. Sengar quickly realized that
with a short detour, he could be at the target
in 20 mins. Saving 40 mins could mean the
difference between success and failure.
A flurry of messages later, Sengar had
convinced the Battalion HQ that he and his
escort team were best positioned to initiate
contact with the militants before they
disappeared. The QRT could follow. Now,
escort teams are usually a rag tag team of
whoever is available. Fully kitted out, sure –
weapons, ammo, secured communication –
the works. But still, certainly not the first
choice of guys for going into combat with.
But that didn’t deter Sengar. He swung in
and hit the target in 20 mins, as planned. A
short, sharp exchange of fire ensued. 2 reds
down, 3 had fled.
It is then that Sengar realized that he had
been hit. Two bullets had pierced through his
abdomen, making a clean, almost
unnoticeable entry in the front and a classic,
disproportionate exit wound in his back. What
they call in the medical world, rather
disparagingly, a ‘clean’ shot.
The rest was a blur. The flurry of the
evacuation process. Hand carried, on four
wheel drive, by chopper, through the local
hospital in the neighborhood, and then to the
Base Hospital at Guwahati. The long,
unending line of surgeries. Cut, sew & cut
again. After about 15 days of chopping and
pasting, the docs were confident of partial
recovery in a time frame of about 18-24
months.
A miracle, they called it. But then, they
hadn’t seen miracles – as yet.
Sengar was no pushover who could be tied
down to a hospital bed. He was up and about
in 45 days. He read books on his condition
and realized that psychological recovery was
as important as medical one. He started
doing what was in his reach- whether strict
army hospital rules allowed or not. Sneaking
out of the hospital, hobbling along to the
theatres to watch practically every movie
worth watching. & some which didn’t fit even
that bill. 60 days from that fateful day, a Unit
officer was getting married. Sengar, attired
in a Lungi & a kurta (he couldn’t wear
anything else – the scars hadn’t yet healed),
with tubes and bags (If you must know – A
colostomy bag & a bag directly attached to
urinary bladder) immodestly but practically
hanging out of his modest frame, hired a car
and travelled 5 hours one way to Dehradun.
“Huh? All this to attend a frikking
marriage??”, You might ask. Well, Sengar
wasn’t the type who’d let anything – certainly
not a little thing like 25 grams worth of
random molten lead that burnt independent,
solitary furrows through his intestines – come
in the way of having the pleasure of seeing
one of his mates being led, willingly to the
gallows!!
Sengar hated hospitals. Much to the deep
dismay of a bevy of nurses there. He was
back in the unit by early May, 98. The docs,
fed up with his constant supplications to be
released, grudgingly allowed him to get back
to the unit, with the solemn promise that he
would not exert himself, and stay confined to
the unit HQs (chuckle chuckle).
Too difficult for someone who was called
“Rocket” by the junior officers as Sengar was
the recipient of the coveted “Dagger” in the
Commando course, the one who was known
for being one of the most physically fit
officers and men.
Around this time, a training exercise was
being conducted in the eastern sector and
Sengar saw a chance to prove his fitness. He
pleaded with Col Crasto to be allowed to get
there, to ‘man the telephone’. Crasto finally
caved in after Sengar was able to convince
the doctors to pronounce him “fit” for active
duty. Sengar had amazingly, defying every
single precedent of recorded medical
recovery in cases similar to his, convinced the
docs to upgrade his medical category to
SHAPE1.
He pleaded, struggled, nagged, nudged,
begged, threatened, and resorted to blatant
emotional blackmail of the vilest means
known to be posted on the Eastern Sector.
In the middle of the exercise, news broke
about the Kargil conflict and the unit was to
airlift a team for the Kargil war. Sengar was
back to doing what he loved best – back to
action, leading a team. He led his team to
capture Neelam post in the Kargil war, which
was the highest post captured in the whole
engagement by the Indian Army. By August
99, officially the Kargil war was over, but
escalated engagements along the LOC still
required the unit to stay in the area. And
Sengar’s team was in the middle of action –
again.
In Sep 01, Sengar was hit again.
A violent firefight with a group of freshly
inducted militants. A burst of fire from an
AK-47 tore through his upper thigh and hip.
Bleeding profusely and his hip bone in
tatters, we knew if we didn’t evacuate him in
time, we’d lose him. A paratrooper in the
Divisional HQ, a chopper pilot, who was on a
routine training mission learnt of Sengar
being hit. Without waiting for authorization,
violating every rule in the book, flew in, he
landed at a hastily secured patch at the base
of the hill feature and evacuated Sengar to
the hospital through a route not allowed for
Indian aircrafts – Sengar reached hospital in
45 mins! A couple of more mins of delay, and
he would have been history.
Back to the ‘cut n sew’ story; only, this time,
it was more serious than the first. Sengar
survived. Barely. He was transferred to
Delhi’s super specialty Army hospital two
months later and it was then, that his
parents were brought to Delhi and the news
broken. All this while he was told that he
would recover and be back in action in a
short time- It took him another month to
finally learn from the docs their verdict – He
would never walk again.
This was a body blow (pun unintended) even
for Sengar. He decided to quit the Army. He
had no interest in peddling files clad in the
fabulous olives. Once he had waded through
the rivers of emotion, which lasted all of 24
hours, he decided to take charge of his
apparently fragile destiny.
Sengar started researching options of an
alternate career path. He was 30, single and
had the energy of a bull – or three. It didn’t
take him long to realise that he needed to
tame the beast called ‘CAT’ – the Common
Admission Test, to take a shot at passing
through the portals of the premier business
schools.
As he did a SWOT analysis, he identified that
his analytical skills weren’t what they once
were. So, he decided to take on the task of
conquering Arithmophobia – his paranoia of
numbers. He got all the math books and
diligently went through class four to class 12
books. Minor hiccups like the fact that he had
to be carried from his hospital bed to the car,
or the fact that they had to make special
provision for him at the classes, so he could
recline on an ad hoc chair and take notes
didn’t bother him one bit.
Sengar took the CAT in Dec 2000. Based on
his results, he got a call from 15 of the 16 B
schools he had applied to – IIM (A), IIM (B),
IIM (C), IIM (L) …. A veritable who’s who of
the B school list. Four days after he hung up
his beloved Olive Greens, he got married.
Eight days later, he joined the Indian
Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Two
brilliant years of number crunching analysis
later, Sengar graduated with distinction – on
crutches.
Today, Sengar is a top management
professional with Microsoft, in Singapore
with a doting wife and two wonderful kids. If
you thought that’s the final update on his
story, wait, because, there is one final
flourish.
After ten long years on crutches, Sengar
decided he had had enough. He chucked his
crutches into a corner & decided to rough it
out. Slowly, and with tremendous
perseverance, he started walking. In under a
year, he was going for short jogs. In Sep 13,
on a trip to India, he decided to revisit his
old unit. He got in touch with the
Commanding Officer, who invited him to go
for a run with the unit in the standard Battle
Physical Efficiency Test- with loaded backpack
and a weapon. And Sengar did.
The ‘Rocket’ had returned. To a hero’s
welcome.
Soldier Of Fortune - A Story That Needs To Be Told
