HUMILIATED SOLDIER

I spent for four months in Indian Army at Madras Engineering Group and Center in Bangalore and came out as a recruit after getting the number. I could not live a caged life bearing the hardship of the job. I am an escapist and hypocrite in this regard. I continued my studies and became eligible to get some job in the civilian society. My eldest brother served in the same for seventeen years and came out voluntarily minding the studies of his two sons. He worked as a security supervisor in the private agency taking care of the pipeline network of a big petroleum company owned by the government of India. It involves frequent visits to the risky points of underground petroleum transport. He has to remain awake and alert day and night. He bore with it for two years for the sake of the small salary it offered. One day he received a letter from the District Sainik Welfare Board. His name was sent to a private bank for consideration for the position of armed guard. He felt very happy. In two months, he received a call from the bank asking him to attend the selection procedure in Hyderabad. He reached me this happiest news in his life. I rushed to meet him in the hotel near Nampally railway station that Sunday morning when he came to face the test. He did well in all the rounds and confidently said that he is going to be selected. His dream came true within two months. I helped him a little in this process reaching him the information in time. He underwent a two-day training session in Hyderabad before being inducted into the bank for work as an armed guard. He was posted to the main branch of Boco Bank in Visakhapatnam. He is living there in a rented house with his family. Recently I went there to spend for sometime attending the editing work of my diaries to be published. My brother knows me well as a fighter against corruption at individual level. He strictly warned his wife not to tell me the truth. My sister-in-law loves me as a fellow with energy to question a wrongdoer and desire to appreciate a great person of any stand or state. She disclosed me the secret one day when my brother was at the bank. The bank union concerned took a bribe of fifty thousand rupees from each newly appointed armed guard at that bank to confirm their posting. My brother borrowed that money from a relative and kept aside visualizing future developments in the process of his getting job in the bank. He does not like to go against the system risking his job at hand. He says that he got a bit happy life now after his birth joining this bank. He can sleep happily now at night which he could not enjoy for many years as a soldier. He believes that India is a country of corruption and hypocrisy presenting itself as great to rich foreign lenders. He likes to accept that truth and live with it. He served to the nation for long and it is the gift he received for his work. He is happily doing that job now not considering the bribe as an issue at all. I sent a letter to the head office of the bank questioning the corruption prevalent in the system being run under their supervision. I remained anonymous because my brother gets badly disturbed if the issue becomes serious. My sister-in-law is a very sensitive creature. She failed tenth standard and lived like a parrot in a cage in the house before marriage. She cries if something happens to me in the fight because it is going to be a one-man show. My affection and concern for these two sensitive creatures stopped me from moving ahead. I felt humiliated after hearing this news from her. If a soldier is being victimized like this by the bank unions, what about ordinary people that never dare to question anybody superior to them? There was no response from the head office. There are no evidences to go ahead because the money was already handed over. Our courts of law live and die for evidences. My brother does not believe in reliability and honesty of the bureaucracy. He likes to go along with it silently. Silence and complacency are his guiding principles in life because he has wife and children. I am a bachelor presently and so a free and daring bird. He cannot be reckless like me! For that matter how many of you can be?

Datla Chiranjeevi Raju