Book Suggestions Needed
I'm searching for some books on Indian Army Personnel. They can be fiction or Non Fiction but I'm mostly interested in the life of a Military Man and how he spends his time and how he copes up with the country life when he retires. The more comprehensive the better. Biographies would be the best.
I'll suggest - Heights of Madness - One Woman's Journey in Pursuit of a Secret War by Myra MacDonald.
The book, being written by a journalist (she's been a Foreign Correspondent for Reuters), accounts a quite unbiased description of the facts and reasons behind the war being fought on the world's highest battlefields - The Siachen Glacier, taking you back to the days when this all started and through both, the viewpoint of Indian Army as well as that of Pakistan Army, with maintaining a status quo on their view of the war, and the hardships both the armies face in carrying out this "Secret War" since 1984 till date.
The author also takes you to meet individual soldiers involved in the war at the glacier at one or the other point of their active duties, also giving you a resourceful insight and the first hand account of the hardships they faced and the reason they've been doing this, apart from the Army's tradition of following orders without questions.
P.S.: Please read this book, ONLY if, you are able to accept that Indian Army and politicians too had their share of mistakes in giving the conflict the shape, it is in today, else, please bother not reading it, because, the book, as I found it, is an unbiased account of the confict from the POV of a person who didn't have a biasedness towards any of the parties involved. And please do not jump to conclusions about me, because, I've been associated with Armed Forces (even though indirectly), and am indebted for the efforts they make to keep us safe.
Thanks for your suggestion and detailed analysis of the book CK. I just bought Gen VK Singh book and will be checking out this one after that. However, to give everyone a better idea of what I'm looking for: I want to read a more personal account of the army life through the eyes of an entry level Jawan(I donno what we call them) and how he rises in ranks. I heard people unable to live with the rigorous discipline in the army and people leaving Military and escaping away. How does one cope up with the loneliness of the army life and how one feels in a vacation(assuming he has one in his tenure). How does his life change post-retirement etc.
Just to give you an idea, you can think of an entry level jawan's life in army as one of a hostelier's life sans the free time you probably get in the evening, once the classes are over for the day. All of the jawans and even the higher ranks who are either unmarried or do not have a family accompanying them at the current station, live in the mostly British era barracks called Unit Line. This area, much like public dormitories usually found at railway stations, serves as their home, and the fellow jawans as their neighbours. They do almost everything together, so a lot of them develop quite a strong bond over time. Then there are postings to other units, regiments and stations, which usually are after every 3 years or so.
The army classifies its ranks into non-commissioned officers and commissioned officers, non- commissioned ones form the highest percentage of the force, and can be expected to do all sorts of works, from cutting down grasses in lawns and in the unit area to fight the enemy on the borders, thus making an army jawan, a Jack of All Trades. Sometimes a jawan serves as a driver for the vehicles of the army and for the officers and their families, at others times, as a servant for the high ranked officers of the unit, washing and ironing his and his family's clothes, and getting food items and grocery for them and accompanying their children to school and back, and still he can't complain, because the one against you complain has the authority to get you to serve on duty, 24x7 for a week or two, and even more, apart from getting you to be put in the quarterguard (the jail sort of in the units).
All goes well till there's a retirement time. The Jawan who gave all his jawani (his youth years), is thrown out as a useless piece of junk, who is neither young enough to acquire new skills, neither old enough to be called a senior citizen and get the benefits. Most of them retire by the time their children complete their schooling, and the salaries they got (atleast till 2008, before the sixth pay comission came into effect) wasn't enough for most of them to look after their own family and their parents. The retiring jawan has a dilemma in front of him. Half of his life is still in front of him, and the meagre pension he'll be getting won't suffice for his family's needs. So, he goes looking for jobs (here too, the Army has been infiltrated by the so called Placement Agencies, which, get him enrolled for a fee and then help them search for jobs.
Though, the Army has a lot of good things in place for the welfare of the jawans and their families, these plans, in my opinion don't suffice, and leave the jawan midway once he retires from active duty. Armed forces has what it is called AWWA (Army Wives Welfare Association) and AWES (Army Welfare Education Society) which together run a number of activities like the AWWA provides vocational training to the wives of armymen while AWES runs some good schools and colleges like Army School and Army Public School, the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), to name a few, which are considered Private Schools as these are privately funded and operated by the organization under Indian Indian Army, and these schools and colleges provide education at par with the best private schools of the country at a fraction of the costs of these private schools (here too the fees structure, is defined by the ranks of the students' father or mother, with the lowest ranks paying the least fees while the highest ranks paying the highest fees) and since the schools are run by the armed forces, these schools' rules and regulations are flexible to the postings and other rules of the army.
I do not expect a regular Jawan to write an autobiography (for reasons known to all, I don't expect a publishing house to publish an autobiography, even if someone writes one), and IMO, you shouldn't expect the picture you want to see, to be shown to you from the perspective of an Ex-Army General, or even the ones sitting at the top brass, because, they themselves don't see that picture. They just see what they are being shown by their subordinates. I haven't read Ex-General V.K. Singh's autobiography, so won't comment on that, but, this is what my understanding of the issue you might face, in search for the true life picture of an Army Jawan.
Thanks again for your detailed response on my query CK. I think we can IndiMail each other further about this
My pleasure 
(in writing these essays). We sure can continue this over IndiMail.
NSV - There's this book authored by General VK Singh - Leadership in the Indian Army. It's a biography of some soldiers and gives an insight into military life. Worth a read.
There are also quite a few books on Kargil War - cover both the war and stories of military men.
Please send in more suggestions. I need as many as I can get
Thanks Rio. I will get it right away.
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