In late 2009 I had a chat with a friend. This friend on mine told me about a co-worker of his whose name (IIRC or was it middle name) was Shaitan. He said in beginning it was bit awkward for all to call him that because of it meaning. This was till the co-worker said that he was named after his grandfather, Major Shaitan Singh.
Of course, I knew of his brave hero and felt kind-of honored to know someone who knew someone from Major’s family. Let me try to summarize why this is such a big deal by quoting form Wikipedia article:
“Of the 120 defenders, only three survived, seriously wounded. The rest, including Major Shaitan Singh (who was awarded Param Vir Chakra), were discovered after the winter, frozen, mostly holding their weapons but with no ammunition. This was a genuine ‘last man-last round’ defense and many times more Chinese were killed, the evidence again being frozen bodies on the slopes. Of the 120 soldiers, 114 were Haryanavi Ahirs.”
I can’t ever get enough of thinking of personal courage and ethics of these 120 people and not be inspired. For some reason this story keeping coming to me every so often and inspire me to go beyond the ordinary.
No, this is not a blog on nationalism or hero worship. This is a lesson in work ethics on how some can do what has to be done, even when on one side it is duty-death and on other side it is dereliction-life.
