SAM Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw was his full name by which he was rarely called, as he was known familiarly and affectionately by his men and officers and friends as Sam Bahadur.

Manekshaw was no ordinary run-of-the-mill man. Born in Amritsar in 1914, he died in Wellington, Ootacamund, in the Nilgiri Hills of South India at the
age of 94. Field Marshal Sam Maneckshaw, MC, was the second Indian soldier to be so honoured, with justification, with the highest rank that can be
bestowed upon a soldier, the other being Field Marshal K. M. Cariappa, the
first Indian to command the Indian army, friend and contemporary of our
Field Marshal Ayub Khan, the first Pakistani to command the Pakistan army.
(However, unlike Ayub, both Cariappa and Manekshaw were honoured for their military skills and prowess.)

Sam Bahadur became India’s chief of army staff in 1969 and, as we in
Pakistan must accept with heavy hearts, the highlight of his outstanding
career was his resounding victory over the armed forces of Pakistan in
1971, when we lost East Pakistan to Bangladesh.

Anecdotes about the field marshal abound. His most famous remark, according to one obituary in the English press, was made on the eve of the outbreak of the December 1971 war when India’s prime minister, Indira Gandhi, asked him if he was ready for the fight. His reply came pat: ‘I am always ready, sweetie.’ He famously said that he could never bring himself to call Mrs Gandhi ‘madam’ because it reminded him of a bawdy house. His other well-known exchange with Mrs Gandhi was when she once questioned him about rumours that he was plotting a coup. He asked her if she would accept his resignation on grounds of mental instability.

Held in awe by India’s politicians for his military professionalism, he was
loved by the men of the army he led. I had the good fortune and honour of
meeting him in Delhi, in 2001, when he was 87 years old, upright, with his
moustaches bristling. I had heard much about him from my very good friend
Lt Gen Attiqur Rahman who knew him from the days when they served in the
British Indian Army and as young officers of the Fourth Frontier Force
Regiment were sent to the Burma front.

In February 1942, they were together holding a bridge over the Sittang
River when Sam nearly lost his life. After a night sharing a mackintosh in
a bit of hollow ground, Sam was ordered to take his company down the road
to investigate firing from the jungle. When Attiq later went off down the
road, he saw Sam being carried on his orderly’s back, unconscious, his face
ashen. He asked the regimental doctor how badly he had been wounded and was told that he would probably be dead by the time he reached the other end of the bridge.

Later, whilst reorganising, he heard that Sam was in hospital at Pegu. He
went to see him and it was obvious he was in terrible pain. He hung on to
Attiq’s hand, and whispering, asked him to leave his pistol so that he
could shoot himself. Attiq told him not to be silly, that all would be
well. As we know it was, but it was a close call. The surgeon attending to
him almost gave up on the bullet-ridden body. The story goes that as he lay
in hospital, an English general pinned his own military cross on to the
chest of Captain Manekshaw as the medal could not be awarded posthumously. Attiq and Sam did not meet again until 1945 when Sam was one of his instructors at the Quetta Staff College.

Another good friend of Manekshaw from this side of the border was our
Rangila Raja Gen Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan. At the time of partition Major Manekshaw and Major Yahya Khan were together on the staff of Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck. Sam owned a red James motorcycle which Yahya had always had an eye on. He offered to buy it, and did, for the princely sum of Rs1,000 which he promised to send over from Pakistan. Yahya, being Yahya, let it lapse. After the 1971 victory, Sam was heard to quip, ‘Yahya never paid me the Rs1,000 for my motorbike, but now he has paid with half his country..’

When I met the field marshal I told him that Yahya had never forgotten the
debt, but had never got round to it. I offered to pay back the Rs1,000 with
interest, on his behalf. No, no, said the field marshal, Yahya was a good
man and a good soldier, we served together. There was not one mean or
corrupt bone in his body. Your politicians are as bad as ours. Yahya was
condemned without being heard. After he was put under house arrest at the
end of December 1971, up to his death in 1980, he clamoured unceasingly for
an open trial. Why was he condemned unheard?

Sam was buried quietly in his home in Tamil Nadu, a modest affair rather
than the grand funeral he should have had in the capital, Delhi. Last year
his name was linked to bizarre allegations made by the son of President
Gen. Ziaul Haq, our ‘exceedingly clever’ politician Ejazul Haq, against an
unnamed Indian brigadier who allegedly had sold Indian war plans to
Pakistan. The slur lingered on and the prime minister, the army, navy and
air force chiefs all stayed away from the field marshal’s funeral.

Many were angered by this lack of respect shown to the nation’s brave
soldier and one website is devoted to the comments of Indian citizens on
the reaction of their politicians: http://churumuri. wordpress. com/2008/
06/28/if- you-have- to-die-can- you-please- do-so-in- delhi.

As the editor writes, ‘The death of the only Indian to be appointed field
marshal when in active service has been remarkable for the warmth of the
ordinary men and women who queued up to say ‘thank you’…. It was also
remarkable for the complete lack of grace and gratitude, civility and
courtesy, decency and decorum on the part of the bold-faced names
rapaciously grazing the lawns of power in Delhi and elsewhere, for the
brain behind India’s only decisive military victory.’

And a sentence which would have made Sam Bahadur chuckle: As he rightly
surmised once: ‘I wonder whether those of our political masters who have
been put in charge of the defence of the country can distinguish a mortar
from a motor, a gun from a howitzer, a guerrilla from a gorilla – although
a great many of them in the past have resembled the latter’.

Recently on one quiet evemomg the imperturbable Gurrie and I were perusing Lord Chesterfields letters and the nugget that appealed to him, probably because he practiced it, was this –

“Learning is acquired by reading books but the much more necessary learning, which is knowledge of the world, is acquired by reading men and studying their various facets. You have to look into people as well as at them and take the tune of the company around you.”

That got us into discussing stuff regarding how most men and women resorted to one or more methods to influence others to help get their way or crudely put, control them.

We listed some half dozen methods used by smart or clever folk to get their way. Here is a look at these one by one.

One. At the bottom of the list is Selfishness and Sex and the quid pro quo thing. You buy guys with money, favors and even use women or women use you. Basic low level cheap stuff which sadly is much too common and too rampant since the beginning of time.

Two. Slightly above comes the ‘Bullying’ method to brow beat. Here the guy uses ‘Accusation’ or ‘Challenge’ and even ‘Threatens’ one to get his or her way. All crude and rather common place for the martinet types.

Three. Now we come to the refined levels where guys use ‘Generosity or Liberality’ and that coupled with ‘Politeness’ to captivate and charm. These never fail to attract and please one and all.

Four. Lots more refined than the above is the method of ‘Harmony’ used by the cleverer guys where they seem to be aligned with your views and values but ever so slowly and most subtly they gradually shift the view point to which they are more attuned.

Five. Next comes ‘Humor’. Like ‘Harmony’ this needs great finesse because Humor is never the telling of jokes or the dirty stuff. Indeed, and this is what Gurrie loved to repeat over and over again because it is so difficult to get, ‘Humor is seeing the ludicrous in the serious’. And one should seldom resort to it until one is able to wholly master this subtle and sublime art.

Six. Here come those emotions most commonly used consciously or unconsciously to get one’s way in this world. These are ‘Interest’, ‘Sympathy’ and ‘Kindness’. All very easy to apply but sadly not that widely or commonly employed. That is the sorrowful part because they cost so little and do so much. More importantly they add value to life.

Did not the guy say, “If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive!”

So, lets look around and see how these are being used by one and all to get their way in life and all over the world. These help make the difficult easy! Why not take recourse to at least the Numbers Five and Six.

And so Adieu till next time.

It aims at passing on stuff learnt over a life time for  Success in Life. There is a fond hope that it may at least rival those hundreds of books on Seven, Ten or What Ever Number of Rules cum secrets for Doing/Getting This That and the Other.

First a wee about dear Gurrie because - He is the person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favor.

I am an average sort of guy but not average by any means is the deep thinking reflective Gurrie who sees life as if a bystander. We are in our seventies and we have known one another for well nigh three score  years. We went to the same school, were together in the Academy and though in different Regiments were together for much of our Army life – which covered a couple of wars and wounds with months together convalescing.

The most striking thing is that I have never ever seen him perturbed over anything anytime where ever. Gurrie has gone through life as an amused bystander who always knew the time of day. Wine women wealth failed to fascinate. His shield is his mocking amusement with nothing ever surprising or bothering him. This includes being under machine gun fire and intense artillery shelling where I once found him under one of our tanks coolly reading an old Time Magazine. He promised to loan it once he was done with it!

He has remained single yet relished the passing association of the few who have held their own. His weakest link can well be a passing disinterested interest. Early in life, some idiot told him that he would die young. I wish I could wring the guy’s neck!

Before getting to the serious stuff allow me to narrate a small incident. There was this tactical discussion with over a hundred officers of Captain or Major rank being chastised and bullied by a particularly nasty Colonel. Gui and I were sitting together on the top most bench in the rear most row. Suddenly the Colonel points to Gui and asks a tactical question. Slowly, very slowly, Gui stands and seriously ponders the model below and its tactical setting. Taking time to fill and light his pipe, he slowly turns to the Colonel and requests him to repeat the question.

Angrily telling Gui not to waste every one’s time, the Colonel repeats the question. Gui takes a couple of puffs studying the model with studied gravity. After a minute or two he turns to the Colonel and apologetically announces, “I am afraid I do not know!”

The fact that Gui made General speaks volumes for the Army! This is the guy who thinks I am his alter ego and hence tolerates my human frailties.

In the evening of life I am penning stuff we discussed and learnt about life and its positives and negatives – playing Boswell to his Johnson.

Recently we were perusing Lord Chesterfields letters and the nugget that appealed to him, probably because he practiced it, was this –

“Learning is acquired by reading books but the much more necessary learning, which is knowledge of the world, is acquired by reading men and studying their various facets. You have to look into people as well as at them and take the tune of the company around you.”

And so onto the one or two weekly posts re Making a Success of Life.

I try not to be biased, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. I had never had a mentally handicapped employee and wasn’t sure I wanted one. He was short, a little dumpy with the smooth facial features and thick-tongued speech of Downs Syndrome.

More importantly I wasn’t sure how my customers would react to Stevie. My trucker customers may not care who buses tables as long as the meat loaf platter is good and the pies are homemade.

But the four-wheeler ones were the mouthy college kids traveling to school – the yuppie snobs who secretly polish their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching some dreaded “truck stop germ!”

Also the pairs of white-shirted business men on expense accounts who think every truck stop waitress is a flirt.

But Stevie was different. After the first week, Stevie had the staff wrapped around his stubby little finger and within a month the truck regulars had adopted him as their official truck stop mascot.

After that, I really didn’t care what the rest of the customers thought of him. He was like a 21-year-old kid in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his duties. Every salt and pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not a bread crumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got done with the table.

Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean a table until after the customers were finished. He would hover in the background, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room until a table was empty. Then he would scurry to the empty table and carefully bus dishes and glasses onto his cart and meticulously wipe the table up with a practiced flourish of his rag. If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would pucker with added concentration.

He took pride in doing his job exactly right and you had to love how hard he tried to please each and every person he met.

Over time, we learned that he lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled after repeated surgeries for cancer. They lived on their Social Security benefits in public housing two miles from the truck stop. Their social worker, who stopped to check on him every so often, admitted they had fallen between the cracks. Money was tight, and what I paid him was probably the difference between them being able to live together and Stevie being sent to a group home.

That’s why the restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work. He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochestergetting a new valve or something put in his heart. His social worker said that people with Downs Syndrome often have heart problems and there was a good chance he would come through the surgery and be back at work in a few months.

A ripple of excitement ran through the staff when word came that he was out of surgery, in recovery, and doing fine. Frannie, the head waitress, let out a war hoop and did a little dance in the aisle. Marvin Ringers, one of our regular trucker customers, stared at the sight of this 50-year-old grandmother of four doing a victory shimmy beside his table.

Frannie blushed, smoothed her apron and shot Marvin a withering look. He grinned. “OK, Frannie, what was that all about?” he asked. ”We just got word that Stevie is out of surgery and going to be okay.”

“I was wondering where he was. I had a new joke to tell him. What was the surgery about?”  Frannie quickly told Marvin and the other two drivers sitting at his booth about Stevie’s surgery, then sighed: “Yeah, I’m glad he is going to be OK,” she said. “But I don’t know how he and his Mom are going to handle all the bills. From what I hear, they’re barely getting by as it is.”

Marvin nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried off to wait on the rest of her tables as now the girls were busing their own tables. After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office with a couple of paper napkins in her hand and a funny look on her face.

“What’s up?” I asked.   ”I didn’t get that table where Marvin and his friends were sitting cleared off till after his friends left. When I got back to clean it off,” she said. “This was folded and tucked under a coffee cup.”

She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk when I opened it. On the outside, in big, bold letters, was printed “Something For Stevie.”

“Some other customers asked as to what it was and I told them about Stevie and his Mom and everything and they ended up giving me this.” She handed me another paper napkin that had “Something For Stevie” scrawled on its outside and two $50 bills were tucked within its folds”.

Frannie looked at me with wet, shiny eyes, shook her head and said simply: “Truckers!”

That was three months ago. Today is Thanksgiving and the first day Stevie is supposed to be back to work.

I arranged to have his mother bring him to work. I then met them in the parking lot and invited them both to celebrate his day back. Stevie was thinner and paler, but couldn’t stop grinning as he pushed through the doors and headed for the back room where his apron and busing cart were waiting.

“Hold up there, Stevie, not so fast,” I said. “Work can wait for a minute. To celebrate your coming back, breakfast for you and your mother is on me!”

I led them toward a large corner booth at the rear of the room.  I could feel and hear the rest of the staff following behind as we marched through the dining room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth after booth of grinning truckers join the procession. We stopped in front of the big table. Its surface was covered with coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates, all sitting slightly crooked on dozens of folded paper napkins.

“First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean up this mess,” I said sounding stern.

Stevie looked at me and then at his mother, then pulled out one of the napkins. It had “Something for Stevie” printed on the outside and as he picked it up, two $10 bills fell on the table.

Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking from beneath the tableware – each with his name printed or scrawled on it.

I turned to his mother. “There’s more than $10,000 in cash and checks on that table – all from truckers and trucking companies that heard about your problems, “Happy Thanksgiving.”

Well, it got real noisy about that time, with everybody hollering and shouting, and there were a few tears, as well. But you know what’s funny?

While everybody else was busy shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie, with a big smile on his face, was busy clearing all the cups and dishes from the table.

Best worker I ever hired.

The office was bare but on her table was her name plate.

Nearly half a century earlier I used to visit this guy forork or the other. He was a sharp sensible guy, and by and large a fair man and he did go onto great achievements. I always remember his office table and name plate thereon.

I often had need to go to him for some work or the other and he rather liked me. How ever when I or any other went to him and asked him for something or other, he would while listening one out seem to be absentmindedly playing around with his name plate. Then he would seemingly, inadvertently turn it around.

One could then read on it, “What have you done for me lately?”

I was reminded of that and I smiled as I turned around this name plate. Written on it as if to remind herself was –

Cure Sometimes. Treat Often. Comfort Alwaysl

Learning is acquired by reading books but the much more necessary learning, which is knowledge of the world, is acquired by reading men and studying their various facets. You have to look into people as well as at them and take the tune of the company around you.

Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are possible, are attainable. Whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well.

Who ever is in a hurry, shows that the thing he is doing is too big for him.

That notwithstanding, here are some notable uses of sarcastic wit used to flatten the offender. 

An MP  to Disraeli, “Sir, you shall  either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease”, only to hear Disraeli respond, “That depends, Sir, whether I embrace your policies or your mistress”.

 ”I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.” – George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill, who replied,  ”Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second  - if there is one.”

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde.

  ”He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.” – Winston Churchill.

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”  Clarence Darrow.

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” – William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).

“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” – Moses Hadas.

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends..” – Oscar Wilde.

“I feel so miserable without you. It’s almost like having you here.” – Stephen Bishop.

“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” – John Bright.

“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” – Irvin S. Cobb.

“He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.” – Samuel Johnson.

“In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.” – Talleyrand.

“He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” – Forrest Tucker.

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” – Mark Twain.

“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” – Billy Wilder.

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening.  But this wasn’t it.” – Groucho Marx

The National Council of Applied Economic Research named Surat as the richest city in India with an average annual household income of Rs 0.45 million (over  $11,000 per year). Incidentally the fifth richest city is Gujarat’s capital, Ahmedabad.

Eighty per cent of all diamonds sold in any part of the world are polished in Surat’s 10,000 diamond units. The only non-Jews in the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem diamond bourse (stock exchange) are Gujjus.

Between 2004-5 and 2008-10 Surat’s middle class doubled in size and its poor reduced by a third. Why? Because Gujaratis DO NOT believe in meaningless strikes, hartals and the like. So of Gujarat’s 18,048 villages, 17,940 have electricity.

The world’s largest oil refinery is in Jamnagar. It refines 660,000 barrels of oil every day and will double that this year.

Thirty per cent ofIndia ‘s cotton is grown inGujarat. Forty per cent of India ‘s Art-silk is manufactured in Surat. The world’s third largest Denim manufacturer is in Ahmedabad.

Gujarat’s GDP has been growing at 12 per cent a year for the last 12 years – as fast as China’s!

India’s wealthiest man Mukesh Ambanis is a Gujarati. So also Azim Premji.

Some of the best and  shrewdest business communities inIndia viz Parsis, Jains, Memons, Banias, Khojas and Bohras – all speak Gujarati.

Gujaratis number 55 million, five per cent of India’s population, living on six per cent of surface area but hold 30 per cent of all Indian stock and account for 16 per cent of all Indian exports and 17 per cent of GDP.

The coup d’ grace  is of course that  both Gandhi and Jinnah were Gujjus; a Bania and Lohana/Khoja.

Here are some great current pictures of the infamous and notorious ‘Burma Railway’ which claimed the lives of over 13000 Allied PsOW plus some 100,000 civilians whose graves are alongside the track.

A must see film, we saw ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ in the NDA in the late ‘50s. It is a great movie with William Holden and Alec Guiness and it won several Academy Awards for David Lean. A memorable feature of the film is the tune that is whistled by the PsOW – the first strains of the famed Colonel Bogey’s March.

The movie is the fictionalized story of the construction of a bridge. Historically conditions were much worse than depicted in the movie which are pretty bad by themselves.

The actual senior officer was far from ever being a ‘collaborator’ where as Alec Guinness is shown with a warped value system.