IN MEMORIAM-SAMIR BANGARA (1974-2020)

It is now a year since you left us. A very loving family left behind perhaps rudderless, till they find their safety course to steer. I am just behind you as you can see. Awaiting my call in whatever manner that is ordained. When we join the Armed forces, we sign an open cheque to lay down our lives when the need arises. I went through a war 50 years ago. I was unscathed and lucky to be around this wonderful family of children and grandchildren. We have had our challenges; so essential in life for us to learn to be grateful for little mercies. We jointly learnt to look at a glass that was always half full. Never half empty. 

That you exceeded my expectations in putting people before profit and went on to tirelessly exhort and support those in need, has been well documented by the sheer grief-stricken outpouring of sentiments from a vast cross-section of people. But all this will be soon forgotten as that is the reality of life. One is honoured and felicitated because of the chair one occupies and rarely because of who one is. In your case, I am willing to lay a wager that you will be remembered for years to come for what you were and not what you achieved in professional and material terms. That is hardly a consolation for the family and people you left behind as abruptly as you did. But then, as was our inclination, a half-full glass, in this case, assumed that you were spared the mortification of being reduced to a vegetable after a crash, at the speeds that a 1000 CC motorbike propels you. Remember this was not the first crash. On 29 September 2019, you had a horrendous crash on the Budh circuit at NOIDA. It was well recorded by cameras on the track. It would have looked good in a theatre! You survived it with minor injuries and laughed it away.  

To an observer, it would appear stupid to continue a sport that is not the safest. I merely pointed out to you that with each passing year your reflexes inevitably slow down.  I could see your passion for the sport. No one understands it better than us in the Military. We too are exposed to danger even when carrying out routine training exercises. Countless Pilots have had accidents, some lost their lives during routine flying but no one stopped flying, for, it goes beyond the call of duty or just a  profession. 

In this clip you alluded to your passion. I had no answer when you challenged me. So, we did the next best thing, we punched each other in the stomach till someone called a truce and we rolled in laughter! Oh! how I miss those sessions. Your Mother who left us just two years before you and perhaps is now standing next to you never approved of our dispute resolution mechanisms! To alleviate the pain of her loss, you drove me 500 km to a Coffee estate where I was born. When I suggested that we could fly instead, to save your precious time, you promptly called it our bonding time. So it was, only I didn’t know it was our last journey together. But I am grateful for those few precious days. 

To underline what a service brat learns from his parents, I am attaching a 2-minute clip on what you said on my 70th birthday, five years ago. 

A practice we followed in service is not to give full marks to anyone. Of course, the boundaries have to be pushed until each reaches his limits. Excellence has no final boundaries and often it is a moving line. You knew that about me and so I could not get myself to say that your speech was par excellence. I left your best ever for my funeral.  Fate reversed the sequence of departure. So now I have to execute Plan B.... but I am just behind you as you well know. Au Revoir my son.