Ex-Army Chief General Sundararajan Padmanabhan passed in Chennai on 19 August. The author recalls his memory of the veteran soldier.
Published Aug 19, 2024 | 2:21 PM ⚊ Updated Aug 19, 2024 | 4:00 PM
Former army chief General S Padmanabhan, in Chennai on the roof to watch the solar eclipse in 2009. My youngsters were early-morning groggy. (Aditya Sinha)
General S Padmanabhan passed away in Chennai on Monday, 19 August. He and his wife, Roopa, lived opposite me on the same floor during my four years in Chennai (2007-2011), my family and I lived in the front of the building, facing Besant Nagar Road. So I knew him a bit from his retirement days.
However, I had known him before: I first met General Padmanabhan when he, the Commander of the XV Corps, held a press conference in Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir.
This was in September 1993, when JKLF (Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front) militants had been trapped inside the Hazratbal Shrine, a beautiful marble mosque on the even more beautiful and marble-like Dal Lake, with snow-capped mountains yonder, and the army had the JKLF boys surrounded.
The general declared his intention to wait out the militants. “I can be Gary Kasparov,” he said, referring to the dominant world chess champion, who lost only when computers got powerful enough.
I was impressed. Generally, faujis are not seen to be thinkers. But this one was. I tracked his career after that.
We didn’t cross paths during his career for some reason or other. He went to head military intelligence and I thought it best to avoid that because I was not a defence correspondent so it would be futile, story-wise. Then I left journalism for a few years, and he became the army chief.
During his time (as the chief), Operation Parakaram took place, where, after the Parliament attack, India’s army mobilised to the Pakistan border, ready to move in and attack.
A friend of mine was posted at the High Commission in Islamabad at the time (as was current foreign secretary Vikram Misri), and he told me that the entire Pakistani establishment was shaken up by this mobilisation. So it was effective.
However, another friend went to lecture at the National Defence College in New Delhi, where a course was given to officers destined for the highest ranks in the army or intelligence establishment.
There, he said, all the army fellows demanded to know why the government did not allow the army to invade Pakistan for punitive action.
“But it was your general who did not want it,” he told them, and they all quieted down.
When he retired, he wrote a book. It was 2004 and I was the books editor at Hindustan Times, and so I somehow landed at the mess where he stayed in Delhi Cantonment, and we hung out. He gave me a copy of his newly-published book, “The Writing on the Wall: India Checkmates America 2017″, a wildly improbable and wordy title from a retired officer’s favourite publisher, Manas.
I saw his book that predicted a war with Pakistan over J&K and then, well, the title. I was sceptical but still gave him the necessary publicity.
In 2007, I moved to Chennai. I got the job at The New Indian Express in January and moved in April. In the meantime, I looked for a suitable flat.
A friend had advised me to live near the beach in Besant Nagar, even though Ambattur was far away, I would have a driver. (The car would become my favourite napping place.)
It was frustrating and my wife was despondent until a kindly woman broker put me on to General Padmanabhan’s flat.
“I know you!” he exclaimed as my wife and I walked in.
We moved in, and my three youngsters became fond of them. There’s a photo somewhere of the three children and General Padmanabhan one morning on the roof, watching the eclipse.
My job would keep me away from home till about 9.00 pm or so, by which time he had had his drink and dinner, so it was not every evening that I went across and chatted with him (about things that I suppose I can’t write about). He also told me a joke that can’t be printed here.
And in the mornings, before I went to the office, he was often immersed in prayer. He was devout. He got four newspapers at home and spent his mornings (and afternoons, sometimes) attacking the crossword puzzles.
His wife was more devout because often she would be on these temple tours around the state (which is filled with temples hidden away) while he stayed at home.
Once he and Roopa ma’am were chatting with us, she told us that they had known he would become army chief, even though he was not in line to be the army chief — his turn would not come before he retired at 58 years. However, two fortuitous matters occurred.
First, General BC Joshi, the army chief during the Hazratbal crisis, died of a heart attack in 1994, and the succession plan, based on seniority, underwent a change.
General Padmanabhan might still have missed out had the government not raised the retirement age from 58 to 60 in 1998, just months before he was to retire. Roopa ma’am claimed to have known this from a Nadi astrologer.
Seeing the low quality of National Security Advisors overall, I always thought that someone should forget about spies and diplomats and instead appoint a soldier like General Padmanabhan as the NSA.
Cerebral, gutsy, loyal: what other qualities does one look for in a man? A rare one, indeed.
(Views expressed are personal)
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