Life of an INDUSTANI: Interaction with armed forces, no-holds barred style give Shiv Kunal's work a unique perspective

Towards the end of June when the Kargil War was at its zenith, Shiv Kunal Verma had wandered into my 8 Mountain Division headquarters which were located at Mughalpura. After spending some time with me, he had left for Drass and then onto Kargil to film the conflict as it unfolded. Perhaps the only one who was subsequently cleared to fly in Army Aviation helicopters by the Ministry of Defence, he spent the next few days mainly with 3 Infantry Division that was being commanded by my erstwhile colleague, Major General Viru Budhwar, with whom Kunal went to almost all the other sectors where the fighting was raging that included Batalik, Chorbatla and the various otherwise inaccessible areas.   Shortly after the Pakistanis threw in the towel and started to make a run for it while they still could, he again came to me and we filmed a summary of what had happened in my division. He would later make a film, ‘Baramula to Kargil’ that even today is extremely relevant and was used to brief the US President, Bill Clinton, and his entourage when he visited New Delhi shortly thereafter. INDUSTANI is almost like a fast-paced thriller that grabs the reader by the scruff of the neck and barely lets him breathe as India’s contemporary history which spanned the decade of the 80s and 90s, unfolds at an incredible pace Though autobiographical in nature, but, to classify it as one would be a travesty. Written in a very readable and easy style, the author does not hold back his punches. He has been very forthright about various issues and Kunal has aired his views on contemporary personalities with candour. In the process he may have rubbed some on the wrong side; however, he has candidly given his views and one must respect him for it. [caption id=“attachment_12176502” align=“alignnone” width=“439”] Life of an INDUSTANI: Six Degrees of Separation. Image Courtesy: amazon.com[/caption] Kunal, has divided his latest book, into three parts in which he seamlessly transits from his early days in Dehradun, to schooling in the prestigious Doon School, followed by a short stint as a journalist with India Today and    Associated Press, to producing wonderful films under the banner of    KaleidoIndia and then going on to writing excellently readable and definitive books on contemporary military history.     As a filmmaker, he had or succeeded in creating opportunities that no one can even dream about. As a civilian, he has had hundreds of hours on fighters, transport and rotor wing aircraft, sailed on virtually every type of naval ship and submarine, and been involved with the army in multiple theatres – ranging from the Punjab to the entire Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, you name it – and for good measure has even interacted with the Naxalites in the Bastar region while shooting the Project Tiger series of films. In Book 1, Kunal traces his family tree and writes about his early childhood spent in cantonments where his father, late Major General Ashok Kalyan Verma, a highly regarded and respected officer, known for his love for hunting and angling, was posted in his early days of service. It is apparent that Kunal picked up his love for the outdoors from his father, as he repeatedly narrates his own wildlife and fishing adventures in the jungles and rivers of the country. He talks of his visit to the Kanha Sanctuary with his parents in 1965, where he encountered his first tiger, and meeting the same evening with the renowned conservationist, George Schaller, who offers him the advice to ‘shoot with a camera and not with a gun’, leaves an indelible impression on his young mind. His vivid and interesting description of life in cantonments with his father’s  battalion,  an unique experience of travelling in a military special, and various activities of military life for a young boy, are as true today as they were a couple of decades ago. Given his own interest in military history, he also briefly recounts the Nathu La incident of 1967 against the Chinese in which 18 Rajput, the battalion his father later commanded,  participated and lost 16 lives including that of Major Harbhajan Singh. Interestingly, he  reveals some facts which have not been shared in the public domain. An absorbing part of the book are the years spent in school, where in the initial days of his joining, he unsuccessfully attempts to confront his housemaster, and learns an important lesson, that ‘injustice was a way of public school life, and you learnt to live without moaning and groaning about it, for there was no one to listen to you.’ Appropriately nicknamed Fauji, Kunal narrates his school days with a sense of pride which helped him forge life-long friendships. Moving to Chennai for his graduation, he encounters a completely different world. Those three years at Madras Christian College would also play a pivotal role in his life, for it is apparent from his writing that for him the entire subcontinent is ‘home’. After two eventful years spent in Kashmir opening up high-altitude routes between the Valley and the trans-Himalayan region, he enters the next phase of his life, where he coincidentally is also a witness to some of the most political public upheavals, that include the Sikh riots of 1984 which were in response to the assassination of the then Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi by her Sikh security guards; the Bhopal gas tragedy and the communal riots in Ahmedabad in 1985. A vivid description of the fall out of this and the political implications is well brought out by the author. This part of the book also contains many self-depreciating and humorous anecdotes which add to the flow and style of the narrative. Book II starts with a fishing sojourn in the Cauvery River followed by a meeting with Bittu Sahgal, who offered him to direct the thirteen-part television series on Project Tiger and Rakshak. He is however, soon thrown into the deep-end and has to shoot the films himself as a cameraman that span across exotic locales in Kashmir, Ladakh, onto Sariska, Sundarbans, Palamau, Manas, Namdapha, Simlipal and in Madhya Pradesh, the Indravati and Kanha Tiger Reserves among others.   Kunal narrates the various activities of his travels and the film shoots in a most interesting and absorbing way, which keeps the reader glued to the book. He candidly writes about his first  marriage to Simi, which from the beginning was destined to end in a divorce. An equally interesting episode in this part of the book is the meeting between Lt General Adi Sethna, his wife Dipti and him with Rajiv Gandhi to produce a series on the Indian Armed Forces post-independence.   The conversation veers around to World War I, especially 1919, where the India Office of that time had prepared a detailed plan for the partition of India into three separate parts–Hindustan, Pakistan and Princesstan. Since this had political implications for the ruling Congress, the project was shelved. However, it is an important and informative narration unknown to many of us. In his earlier book, The Long Road to Siachen, he had also argued that Mohammad Ali Jinnah had been recruited by none other than Winston Churchill in the 1930s with the intention of looking after British Interests after the Raj wound up. His handler had been Churchill’s secretary, a fact that was also ratified by the vice chancellor of Karachi University. From shooting films on wildlife, Kunal forms KaleidoIndia with Dipti Bhalla and steps into a totally new terrain–producing and shooting films for the armed forces. Their initiation into making the film on the Air Force, ‘Salt of the Earth’ is fascinating. He is perhaps the only individual, besides the service pilots, who has logged close to 500 hours of flying in most of the aircraft in the Air Force inventory of that time. No uniformed individual from the other two Services can match this feat. Interestingly, he in his inimitable way describes his interaction with the top brass of the service, the problems of finances, which get resolved with the intervention of the late JRD Tata, who laid out two conditions; the first being to only once ask for whatever finances were required for the film and second to make the Air Force look nine feet tall. During the research for the film, Kunal meets Air Vice Marshal HC Dewan who was the Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Operations) in 1962, who mentions that he was the one who dissuaded Pandit Nehru from using the Air Force during the war, thus giving another angle to the belief that the offensive Air Power was not used for political reasons. After an year-long  adventure around shooting Salt of the Earth, the film was released between the Hindi and English news with a viewership far outnumbering the popular programmes of the state run Doordarshan. With the success of the IAF docu-drama, the other two Services also reached out for making films on their respective service. Kunal was commissioned into making a film for the Navy which saw him sail in a number of warships which again would be the envy of personnel of the other two services.   Concurrently, the filming for the Army also commenced with shoots tied up at Rajouri, Poonch and the Valley, with the high point being the meeting and filming for four days with representatives of the Hizbul Mujahideen, which was subsequently shown to a select gathering of ambassadors, military attaches and news editors. This part of the Book ends with the Kargil War, interviews with the prisoners of war and the aborted promises voluntarily made by the top political hierarchy to compensate for the making of the film. Book III starts with the Naval films coming a cropper because of the sacking of Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, even though Kunal was seen to be on extremely good terms with Admiral Sushil Kumar, the Naval chief’s immediate successor. In the meantime, the Kargil and IAF films were widely advertised and distributed by the Media Trans Asia group where for a while he functioned as the Group Features Editor for the Indian Airlines magazine Swagat and Discover India. Kunal then gives a thrilling account of producing the next film for the Air Force–Akash Yodha–in which he flies once again to most parts of the country with the Air Force. The assignment also reflects on his ability to carry out multiple tasks with professionalism and enthusiasm. While making Akash Yodha, he was also working on The Standard Bearers, a film on the National Defence Academy and The Making of a Warrior on the Indian Military Academy, both of which were highly acclaimed by the Services. However, a controversy that had nothing to do with him around the footage of Akash Yodha made Kunal persona non grata with the Air Chief which left a bitter taste in the mouth. However, he continued with the shooting of small aviation related films. The shift from making films to books seems but a natural progression. Ironically, after the telecast of both Aakash Yodha and Standard Bearers was made into an issue, he began to focus a lot more on his own literary and photographic abilities, producing ‘Ocean to Sky: India From the Air’ that was published by Roli Books.   Subsequently, the four years spent around shooting for the Assam Rifles and the making of the Northeast Trilogy takes the reader into areas that were literally then ‘blanks on the map’. With Aleph publishing his subsequent 1962: The War That Wasn’t and 1965: A Western Sunrise, military history in India has certainly got a major shot in the arm. INDUSTANI absorbs you from the very beginning, as it unfolds against the canvas of the entire subcontinent; the adventures in the forests, rivers and various regions of the country all come together in this fast paced narrative. Shiv Kunal’s interaction with all three wings of the services also gives him a unique perspective, which when combined with his excellent no-holds barred style of writing, combined with his knowledge of military history, makes this book a ‘one-of-a-kind’. The book is strongly recommended for reading by all, and it is almost certainly a must for all Indians, young and old. The author is the retired Lt. General of the Indian army. Views expressed are personal. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.