Deep Ties

The love story of Lt General Prem Bhagat and his wife Mohini has now been preserved for posterity by their adoring daughter, Ashali Varma, whose life was transformed by the people who worshipped her charismatic parents. The much-admired Mohini from cosmopolitan Poona, was “mesmerised by... the kindliest and most compelling eyes she had ever seen.” Commissioned in 1939, Prem joined the Bombay Sappers and was assigned to 21 Field Company—an event that would catapult him to fame as an expert in explosives and building bridges and roads. From North Africa in 1940, Prem wrote long and chatty letters to Mohini, peppered with humour. When he witnessed the horrors of war, with lives snuffed out in seconds, he felt guilt and sorrow, emotions that he hid from her. On January 31, 1941, the retreating Italians booby-trapped the roads with mines. Prem, leading from the front, had two close shaves with death. He ran into an ambush. The powerful blast shattered his eardrum. Yet he continued wh...

A new son has just risen, one who earlier refused to be coerced into taking up a position of power, preferring to start as a mere worker. He made sure that he was visible, as he went around the villages, and sat down with the aam aadmi, having meals with them and making himself quite at home. However, D day is here! The young man has been taken into the bosom of his party, and is all set to take up the reins. As expected, the party members are thrilled, and have already begun suggesting that he is meant for higher, much higher things. Whoever said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, was obviously not talking about our political scenario. A canny old man named Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet is best known for having given some shrewd and practical advice to his son Laertes. Surprisingly, if one shaves the Bard’s language of its extra fittings and trims off the lard, the advice would be just perfect for the heir apparent, advice which his mother could offer to him, in the...