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Tributes
December 11, 2022
December 11, 2022
My Dad Lt Col N Chandrasekharan was a man of few words and we rarely heard much about his struggles to pursue Engineering at Annamalai University in the early 40s from him, but we have consistently realized the importance he gave to education.

As he was determined he worked after his HSC (plus 2), presumably in postal / Armed services for a short period, and earned sufficiently to support his education. He also gave tuitions to his classmates to earn for the fees, as pursuing Mechanical Engineering meant not only Tuition fees, but also books, mess and hostel Fees.

We are grateful to the almighty that today we his children are in a position to institute the Lt Col N Chandrasekharan Memorial Scholarship each year to a student in Mechanical Engineering  in the memory of our dad  from Nov 2020 onwards.

The candidates, Amirul Haqe (B190599ME) and Loyad Joseph Losan (B190090ME) -were selected considering their academic performances and financial condition By NITC for the scholarship  this year '2022
The cheques were handed over to the selected students by my brother Dr Sethu Wariyar at  Dean SW office, NITC at 4:30 pm on 7/12/2022. The HOD(MED), Faculty advisors of the students, Faculty coordinator of this scholarship and ,Dean SW and the selected students were present at the event.
 I was touched when the students  wrote back to thank us , and I thought that I should share the same
Gratitude to the Universe, Our Parents , Our Professors in NITC 
Photographs are also shared
Gita Ramachandran
November 11, 2020
November 11, 2020
My humble pranams to the beloved father of my friend who dedicated his life to the nation while looking after his family
November 11, 2020
November 11, 2020
I pay my respectful homage to Daddy on his 20th anniversary. "Soldiers,when committed to a task, can't compromise.It's unrelenting devotion to the standard of duty and courage,absolute loyalty,not letting the task go until it's been done." War has a profound and strangely compelling effect on those who fight,an experience that lasts a lifetime for a soldier.It also changes the lives of their families in ways that those who have never experienced will not know.
It was heartening to read the rich tributes paid to Daddy by his illustrious children and grandchildren.The supreme sacrifice and commitment to serve in the Indian Armed Forces and protect the national and territorial integrity of our motherland speaks volumes of a brave and fearless soldier in Lt Col Chandrashekharan.His dedication and zeal to serve the nation is unparalleled.You siblings are blessed with the valued upbringing he imbibed into your lives.This truly reflects in Gitoppal and Gopan with whom I share close proximity and special bonding of sister and brother relationship.In today's times it is very rare to find a miniscule of simple and genuine  family like yours.Stay Blessed.             Our Soldiers are our Pride .  JAI HIND.
November 11, 2020
November 11, 2020
Daddy was a phenomenon. He breathed knowledge and lived like a perfect gentleman. Soft spoken and a man of few words, all of wisdom and most mature in his transactions, my father's counsel was actively sought by many young officers and junior commissioner officers. From a respectable distance, I couldn't understand why they were coming home and what he was telling them, as he hardly ever spoke.

I also remember being taken to the homes of his grateful orderlies whose wives would be singing hymns of praise for him all through the sojourn. These are soldiers who were delegated to keep our house premises spic and span, iron his uniform, polish his shoes daily and also keep his ceremonial brass regalia shining prior to an army parade. Daddy devoured books and had a huge collection of books, that actually triggered off my insatiable and precocious journey into the world of words and imagination.
He loved teaching. I was arduously taught mathematics personally by him, a losing battle that he endured several years, often late into night when I would have long given up, but he wouldn't! Now, I guess he had more faith in me than myself.

I have seen him laugh, particularly when he was around my younger brother Mohan whom he used to proudly show around. He would come home to feed him and come intermittently to check his temperature if Mohan was ill. When we (I and Mohan) secretly plotted and conducted our misadventures together i.e. enacting Tom Sawyer's raft in the canal (and were fished out by the witnessing jawaans), or when we innocently set fire to our home fence together (and our own home was also almost razed to ground), or we schemingly stole money from his wallet to benevolently purchase candies for all our class mates, I was the one who was reprimanded for teaching my little innocent brother all mischief!

I loved to annoy him to get his attention that I continued to do even as a young adult. I ran away from home several times, and when not one soul came looking for me I would leave it for another day, and promptly return home within the next one hour or when my tummy rumbled. I ascended the highest mango tree that was banned from climbing. I was the forgetful child who within minutes would not be found sitting facing the wall where I had been assigned to a few minutes ago for some 'crime' committed earlier! I was the glib liar who would state things to escape from a situation that I was shameful about, running from fear of being caught out. Not to say that invariably I was caught out!

But on the other hand I also sang the best, bagged all main roles in school drama productions, danced the best, one of the toppers in the class (but for mathematics) and shone outside home, a place full of stellar academic heroes. I worked hard to develope skills and virtues to impress and get validated by the world.

I got appreciation for all that decades later, when I got a chance to look after his personal care when he fell ill after a heart attack and was kept in a hospital bed for several weeks. By then, he was showing clear signs of serious dementia. I came from the UK and took care of him day and night - fed him, bathed him, took him to the toilet, cleaned him and helped him to fall asleep. This is when one night out of the darkness I heard a feeble voice cry out 'Sethu... excuse me for having been harsh with you. I did care for you'...and then it sank into oblivion. I wondered if it was a dream, and I never heard his voice again. He passed away a few months later, after I returned to the UK.

Those words ring in my ears even now. I still wonder if it was all my crazy imaginative mind's creation? He was a very proud man and always showed compassion and gratitude only through benevolent actions, not words.

I feel grateful for the values he (and Amma too) instilled in me and my kin- the resolute resistance to corruption and bribery, compassion to put others before self, the courage to speak the truth to support others, and the honesty to admit one's mistakes and move on.

I think I might have tried to emulate him at a subconscious level in my life journey. Although I might have not perhaps lived up to everyone's expectations, I do feel proud that I have lived up to his.
November 10, 2020
November 10, 2020
Some times it's hard to put right words to express our gratitude to the valiants who put their lives to protect our country and countrymen. They say Valiants die only once..but if Valiant is a soldier, they never die. They live in our memory for ever!!

I remember a popular Army Slogan:: to reflect upon men like Col. Chandrashekhar!!

LEAD BY EXAMPLE
LIVE BY CHANCE
LOVE BY CHOICE
AND
KILL BY PROFESSION
November 10, 2020
November 10, 2020
"The brave die never, though they sleep in dust: Their courage nerves a thousand living men." -- Minot J. Savage
November 10, 2020
November 10, 2020
We are proud to remember Col Chandrasekharan uncle father of our close friend and classmate Gita, who is a distinguished woman Engineer herself. Apart from his proud services to support the cause of the nation, Uncle has grown two girls as best citizens of India for which all fathers can be proud of. Long live his memories of contribution to the defense of our nation.
Devan Pillai
November 10, 2020
November 10, 2020
May be it's an Irony of life, or fate or it’s a coincidence, but my Dad left this world on my 21st Wedding Anniversary on 10th Nov 2000,  which also happened to be the Malayalam star of my Mother and Sister. After dedicating half a century in the service of the Nation, he was no more
As my children were appearing for their crucial board papers of 10th and 12th, we could not stay with our parents in Kerala. So after our dad survived the second Cardiac Attack. they came to stay with us in Mumbai. He was off and on from Hospitals in the year 2000. Even though, he almost crashed once, one doctor Dr. Dubey,  at Mumbai revived him using Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR).  But this time, even though he was admitted to ICU, nothing could save him and he bade us goodbye on 10th Nov 2000, mentally and physically shocking us.
Hello Dad. You remind me of so many instances,  where you thought of others before you thought of yourself. Nothing can replace your kindness, generosity, perseverance, discipline, and farsightedness.  
We remember our Soldier Dad with pride, as a self-made man, an engineer par excellence, too honest and upright for words, instilling the right values in us, hard on the exterior, but too soft, generous, loving and caring inside. We salute our Dad Lt Colonel N Chandrasekharan who is no more with us, but was right there in the front, for all the major wars with China and Pakistan, during his tenure in the Indian Army. A life lived, only for the betterment of others
From a Whatsapp post which I received today, this sums it up  “ A Serviceman is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank cheque made payable to 'India' for an amount of 'Up to and including my life.' 
PS ..Pl read My DAD My HERO under the stories section
November 9, 2020
November 9, 2020
I was not yet three when achachan left us, so everything I know about him is through the many anecdotes that have been told about him. My greatest connection to him continues on every time we visit barracks and drive past the old house, hearing stories about the past.

Achachan was not much of a talker according to achan, but amma remembers fondly of all the army stories he used to share with her. I have also heard a lot of his affinity to watch and read the news right on time everyday and his generosity of spirit.

I will cherish my limited memories about my grandfather and all the warm anecdotes I get to hear and rehear!
November 9, 2020
November 9, 2020
Page Abohar
Chechi and I were in Abohar quite briefly. Yet, there are some strong memories, could be because we were growing up, could be because, this was the beginning of a hiatus when Amma and Daddy would be once-a-year visitors and heard from letters read out by our uncle/ aunt.
Abohar was nice, the scenery changed to a fast flowing canal beside the tent complex and underground room that served as home and there was no school. Despite several searches, Daddy could not find English medium schools for us. But entertainment was in plenty. We were even taken to the end of the canal and could see Pakistan and their sentries patrolling the border, while ours did it on this side. Daddy was always a well-informed guide!
My swimming lessons started from him. The canal was a favourite haunt for him with his family and he loved swimming in the canal. We had come to Abohar from 2 places, both not being ideal for swimmers. Tawi was rough I suppose and Ganges was more of a ceremonial centre for all kinds of rituals than for entertainment. Daddy offered to teach us swimming in the canal that flowed all the way upto Pakisthan, as per the remembered hearsay. In fact he asked us, rather me to jump into the water and I did. So much was the trust in my Daddy! And there I went bobbing up and down in the relatively strong current of the water much to the fear of Amma. But the strong arms of Daddy caught me much before any calamity and here am I to tell the tale!
Bidding farewell to Abohar, my sister and I boarded the train to Thrissur for or life in Kerala, from then on.
November 9, 2020
November 9, 2020
However, the Indo-Pak war was over, we had shifted house, a sweet pea smelling one, the boys had started schooling and his transfer to Jammu was confirmed and we followed him to ..
Page Jammu
More wondrous than the travel to Jammu was the stay in the barracks with wide open spaces, houses mostly bunkers and tents and we being allowed to roam around, unless school needed us! Daddy was in charge of the army cinema house and many were the movies seen during those times, with special attention to Children’s movies Daddy brought to the theatre for all children. (I still remember some posters especially of The Birds, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad world, Jump for joy it’s Jumbo etc.). I still remember incidents when Daddy was required by the back office for decision making, at which he was so strong that the entire family depended almost entirely on his plans.
Almost all weekends we landed up at river Tawi and I remember the boisterous company of fellow officers and their families, and Daddy mixing easily and freely with all. A good lesson in social mixing and etiquette was on during all such occasions, even as early as that. I think Chechi and I started our reading habits, borrowed from Daddy because of many books he bought us during our stay at Jammu, at least as birthday presents. Still memories of Bhangda, sack race, needle and thread race, and holi and Republic Day march are fresh in my mind, all with the most wonderful feeling of being fully cared for by our most silently affectionate Daddy.
He was also a disciplinarian, as we found out one day, after returning from another round of walking around and enjoying the air ant tranquillity of after-war Jammu. We had neither sought permission nor informed Daddy and Amma who were away in a party in the officers’ mess. The rose creepers growing in front of the house were deployed effectively thorns and all, to teach us a lesson on refraining from scaring the family on one’s where-about.
School reminds me of a day I took Daddy on a wild goose chase. Our school was run by European nuns and we ‘darkies’ did not get any undue attention and so we stuck together. I still remember a ‘Rema’ as my classmate and another girl who invited us to her birthday party. We had recently got new frocks, my sister a bright blue one and me a bright yellow ( the colour stuck to me even late into the time I finished my graduation, when Daddy bought me my first sari, a bright yellow one, which is one asset I lost to Kuwait in our hurried evacuation) and armed with a prize we bought her, we went house searching, just because I was adamant that we must go. I remember going in circles and finally landing up in her house where no party was going on, but Daddy did not blame nor shame me or the culprit who gave us a fake invitation.
Our trip to Srinagar was a colourful one just as the settings around, all the more merry because Dad’s sister and a family friend joined us. We had entered the ‘collection phase’ and started picking up multi-coloured beautiful feathers that were all around. Daddy was horrified since it was clear that he had no tolerance for animal flesh, neither for fish nor fowl and compelled us to drop them all and wash our hands. Of course, he compensated by buying us ornaments with shiny golden designs embedded in an equally shiny black stones. They are still my most beautiful images of ornaments and no design has come to match my attachment to those stones we lost in several subsequent transfers. Yes, it was Abohar, next.
November 9, 2020
November 9, 2020
Remembrances….
To me, memories have always appeared to be either a construct of what one wishes to believe or as influenced by the adulthood collections of perceptions, attitudes, responses etc. Thus my coloured memories associated with Daddy begin in Benaras as I recall it was called then or Kashi i.e. Varanasi. I also think that it was those memories or incidents that gave shape to my own ways of reacting to whatever life has brought me. So, let me start from
Page Varanasi
The earliest memories include a happy jaunt in a tonga through the roads of Benaras on our way to a movie, ‘Sampoorna Ramayana’, we girls in a golden yellow (my favourite colour till today) skirt, the boys in terylene shirts and polyester shorts (as per the photographs of those times). Daddy was always fond of taking us for movies and even in Calicut, when he was in an expansive mood, he would give us money for all of us to go as a team. Well, this is the first movie I remember and the scene when the earth moves away and horrors- consumes Seetha, all to assuage one man’s ego, is one claustrophobic impression that has stayed on!
Daddy’s prejudices were also influencing. He was dead against buying ice-creams from shops. Instead, one day, we were elated to find a man with a machine (like a flask) and I remember the excitement but not how much we must have eaten! Another memory of a nurturing dad was in the evergreen picture in my mind of the baby of the house at that time, i.e. Mohan (sometimes my child who was a baby on his lap when he stayed with us replaces Mohan in this affectionate image) being held on his lap while he fed the baby milk sodden bread or chappathi.
Daddy also loved to travel. So we were taken to Allahabad and Sarnath, I believe though memory is very vague there, but a dip in the Thriveni, when it was him who had to push each one of us under water for a quick and hurried head dip is remembered just as the several visits to the Ghats of Ganges and the temple pilgrimage, though he wouldn’t enter the temple but wait outside. 
Another poignant memory is on coming home one day after school and asking a sad faced Amma for Daddy and her replying that Dad’s gone to the war front. He did not say his farewells to us when he went rushing to meet the war on the western border, which had until then been distant with occasional curfews, and Sri. Lal Bahadur Shasthri’s impassioned plea for austerity (remembering collecting rice in matchboxes). That was our daddy, never a man to show a sentimental side, perhaps deeply saddened when he lost his much-loved mother, our Achchamma, while we were in Benaras and he in Jammu. Never had he shared his war stories with us, but everywhere we followed him, the deep respect for him was obvious in the faces and stances of all soldiers and officers who worked with him. He was particular that we call all ranks by the suffix- ‘saheb’, just as he did.
I believe I got my first lesson on parenting, again from my Daddy and Amma. My older younger brothers, Gopan and Sethu had just started schooling and according to my memory were viciously ragged by the ‘gangs’ in the school. Each day going to school became more and more of a pain in the neck for the duo, until, one day the reason was made known to us. We were much hurt but I don’t remember our parents, especially my daddy going to the school to resolve it, unlike it happens now when parents pick up the feuds between even older children! Even later on in life, we siblings resolved our quarrels with the world ourselves since Daddy had made it clear that, that was not his job. Even between us, our fights were our own problems with no room for appeals to higher committees. 
November 9, 2020
November 9, 2020
Few memories here and there about my Achachan. But ever since I remember, I have been always associated to him due to the shared Malayalam birth sign.

Achan, amma and even my amamma have fondly shared stories about him helping me get to know my grandfather. He was described to me as a gem of a person. Genuine, warm, wise and a stickler for time.

I vaguely remember going to the army canteen with him. Achan used to take us to the house in barracks visually narrating funny incidents and fond memories. I smile when I think that he was convinced that as a kid, I was capable of almost burning something down!

But what I admire about him was his passion for food. I remember how much he loved desserts and pappadams. He relished bondas and vadas. And so staying true to his passion, my achan has consistently held feasts on each of his birthdays. Every year we all share a wonderful meal celebrating Achachan.

It is true that I wish I got to know him a little more. But, I know he is with us, watching over us and cheering us on :)
October 31, 2020
October 31, 2020
                Our Daddy lives on.  
Gita, Sudha, Gopakumar , Sethumadhavan, ChandraMohan and spouses

A mountain of memories, is what he gave us;
Yet, ne’er a moment of ‘nay’, in our choice of life.
Its course was mapped, from the standards he set up.
Silence was his command, his support in our joys and strife!

His words were few, and far between;
Their worth have traversed, the passage of time.
His quiet pride, his silent love, his wordless dreams.
Gave us our beacons, showed the steps we must climb!

His ‘foot’ was always longer, than our meter;
Much larger was his heart, which embraced a-many.
His ‘pounds’ were heavy, from tons of untruths for us to deter.
An engineer in life, a soldier at work, a great dad, he needs no litany!

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