'We failed as a country because those who should have been there to say goodbye did not show up.'
As a young army officer serving in the Naga Hills in 1964-1965, Second Lieutenant Rustom Nanavatty was unhappy with the posting order he had just received.
He was barely two years into service and was deployed in counter-insurgency operations with his battalion in the North east.
The order letter told him that he was to take over as Aide-De-Camp to Lieutenant General Sam Manekshaw, the highest ranking officer in the Indian Army's Western Command.
But Second Lieutenant Nanavatty did not want to go.
"I was perplexed. Neither had I volunteered, nor was I keen to be an ADC at that time. I did not want to leave my battalion which was involved in anti-insurgency ops," recalls Lieutenant General Nanavatty who retired from the Indian Army as the Northern Army commander in 2001.
The officer belonged to the 2nd Battalion of the 8th Gorkha Rifles. Then Lieutenant General Manekshaw was the colonel of the regiment and its highest ranking officer.
Another reason Second Lieutenant Nanavatty did not want to assume the role of ADC so early on in his career was the adrenaline-filled field tenure.
His roommate advised him to simply follow the order, but Second Lieutenant Nanavatty did what he thought was right.
He picked up a services inland letter -- officers were given two each month as part of their ration -- and wrote to Lieutenant General Manekshaw.
"I said I do not wish to go as per this posting and gave him my reasons," he tells Rediff.com's Archana Masih in a phone conversation from Dehradun where he now lives.
Ten days later, he got a reply from the general's Secretariat.
"It was written in his own handwriting. He said, 'I am deemed that your posting be cancelled. Good luck to you. Best wishes, Sam Manekshaw'."
"So my first interaction with him was through the letter. But whenever I met him subsequently, he never once mentioned it."
In a few months, Second Lieutenant Nanavatty's battalion was posted to Calcutta where General Manekshaw had taken over as commander of the Eastern Army Command headquartered in Fort William.
Captain Nanavatty was the battalion adjutant which is an important staff appointment dealing with a host of administrative duties, among them the responsibility of over a dozen young officers inducted by emergency commission in view of the 1965 War.
He clearly remembers his first meeting with the futural field marshal.
General Manekshaw's ADC then Colonel Behram Panthaki walked him into the commander's office and said, 'Sir, this is Rustom'.
Sam looked up and said, 'Hello boy, how are you?'
"Subsequently, I saw a lot of him in the next couple of years. He took the salute on our Raising Day and would be invited to the various functions."
The general would often drop at the officers' mess in the evening and chat with whoever was present. A bachelor at that time, Captain Nanavatty occupied a room in the Officers Mess.
One evening, the mess in charge informed him that the army commander was walking up the stairs.
"I met him and we had a drink on the mess balcony talking about the Arab-Israeli war which was going on."
"I was a young captain. He was the army commander, but that was the sort of man he was," remembers Lieutenant General Nanavatty.
At the end of his tenure in Fort William, Captain Nanavatty was posted as company commander on the China border in NEFA [present day Arunachal Pradesh].
By then, General Manekshaw had become the chief of army staff and would come to visit the troops on the border in a helicopter.
A few years later, General Nanavatty met the field marshal in Coonoor, Tamil Nadu.
The field marshal had retired in 1973 and General Nanavatty was posted as an instructor at the Defence Services Staff College in nearby Wellington.
The officer and his wife would occasionally call on the field marshal and Mrs Siloo Manekshaw. They would have a meal together.
"Every time I was promoted, he invariably wrote a congratulatory letter to me, right until I was promoted as the army commander," says General Nanavatty remembering the field marshal's graciousness.
After retirement, General Nanavatty settled down in Pune. It was during that time that it was brought to his attention that army headquarters in Delhi did not have a plan in place for the ceremonial official funeral in the event of the field marshal's passing.
It was a shocking piece of information considering that the field marshal was the highest ranking officer in the defence services. A field marshal remains in service till death.
General Nanavatty travelled to Delhi and worked with Army Headquarters and the Manekshaw family to prepare an official draft for a ceremonial funeral befitting the field marshal.
He looked up manuals about ceremonial events and drew up a plan which was approved by the army and the family.
By that time, the field marshal was in poor health and in the care of the small military hospital in Wellington where special arrangements were made for him.
"He was very comfortable in that hospital and never wanted to go anywhere else. He was receiving the best care in that Wellington Military Hospital and was looked after by his family and Gorkha boys," says General Nanavatty.
Shul Bahadur, one of the longest serving men on his staff, was by his side and looked after him till the end.
General Nanavatty's last meeting with the field marshal occurred two days before he passed away in the hospital.
The Manekshaw family was there and his daughter Sherry Batliwala took him to see the field marshal.
"He looked at me and said, 'Hello Boy, what are you doing here?'" remembers General Nanavatty.
"I was there for barely two minutes. I held his hand and then walked out. That was the last time and he passed away that night."
The military ceremonial funeral was conducted in the precincts of the stately Madras Regimental Centre in Wellington.
The field marshal lay in state. All the military ceremonies were carried out with dignity.
His accoutrements were handed over to his family. Military officers, civilian administration, ordinary people paid tribute.
"The entire Staff College, the Madras Regiment and retired officer fraternity came to pay their respects," says General Nanavatty.
The field marshal's body was then placed on a gun carriage and driven to the Parsi cemetery in Ooty. People lined the hilly route to pay their final respects.
"I was sitting in the vehicle that towed the gun carriage with his grandsons. As we drove up to Ooty, a number of civilians stood along the route, wherever there was a little hamlet, there were civilians who came down to the roadside to silently pay respect."
The field marshal's last rites were conducted according to Parsi custom. He was laid to rest beside his dear wife who had passed away seven years earlier.
"A lone piper played the pipes while he was being lowered into the grave. It was very poignant," says General Nanavatty.
Neither then defence minister A K Antony nor the three service chiefs attended the funeral. The army chief was out of the country, says General Nanavatty and the Indian Army was represented by the vice chief.
The air and naval chiefs did not attend the funeral. The junior minister for defence was the only central minister present at the funeral.
"The government completely failed in fulfilling its duty. But as far as the military ceremonial was concerned, everything was done right," says General Nanavatty.
"We failed as a country because those who should have been there to say goodbye did not show up."
Looking back at his personal interactions with the field marshal, General Nanavatty says he had a magnetic personality which had tremendous impact -- from the senior-most officer to the junior-most jawan.
"He bonded with soldiers wherever he went and spoke fluent Punjabi. He was extremely dynamic and a great communicator," says General Nanavatty.
"He was a man with a very large heart."
