Remembering My Dad

I remember my father as a great family person.  In spite of that, he lived quite a life of adventure.  He was the youngest of the sons, the second last in a family of seven children. Born in 1919 on July 19, after the World War 1, he seems to have inherited a love of adventure and ventured into unbeaten paths!  His father's father Dr. Bisheshwar Das Joshi of Banaras had been a man of action being an army doctor who had taken part in the second Afghan war in Afghanistan between 1878-80 under General Roberts, who later was Field Marshal Earl Roberts of Kandahar.  So was my father, Eric Shantwan Das - a man of action, and yet one who loved his family and home!

He wrote the start of his memoirs which he sent to me and I now put it forth in his own words below:

Eric's Incomplete Memoirs which he started to write!

Eric Shantwan Das was born just after World War I got over and also after the infamous Jallianwala Bagh tragedy, a reaction to the repressive Rowlatt Act which authorized the government to imprison anyone suspected of terrorism for up to two years without trial. These were interesting years for India, when times were changing.  Many voices were coming out like Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, Sardar Patel and many others, not all in agreement with each others' viewpoints.  Eric grew up in the small town of Tarn Taran, studying and playing with the children in the local Khalsa School.  From a very young age he learned to play the Tabla (a membranophone percussion instrument for Hindustani classical music), taught by a raagi from the local Gurudwara.  He became so good at playing the Tabla that in the 1930s he would accompany his sister Joy at the Sitar, to perform in the All India Radio from Jalandhar. This was but one of his interests.  He also loved to play the game of cricket and was captain at school, college and university levels - at Khalsa School, Tarn Taran and at Khalsa College Amritsar. In spite of the communal tensions in cricket at that time, there was great camaraderie among players from different faiths and cricket was indeed a gentlemanly sport for the rich and the poor alike in India!  The BCCI was established in 1928 and the Ranji Trophy in 1934. Cricket was gaining ground amongst the youngsters of India and my father was among them!

Soon after his college, when he was around twenty one years of age, Eric ventured to teach Botany at Judson College in Rangoon as a lecturer.  This was part of the newly opened Yangon University in 1920 to which Judson College, a Baptist college, had been merged. This was the time when Europe was involved in World War 2; USA had joined in, but on this side of the globe things seemed just the same way, until Japan joined the war and attacked Burma in December 23, 1941. Rangoon then fell to the Japanese, as the Allied army retreated.  My father, then a young man, along with a few others, trekked to survive, all the way from Rangoon to Chittagong, a distance of 764 kilometers and then on to Calcutta.  They left Rangoon on December 26, 1941 and arrived in Chittagong on January 17, 1942.  Eric chronicled his trek in the March 1942 edition of "The Illustrated Weekly of India" and you can read it below.

'Afoot from Rangoon to Calcutta' in the March 1942 Illustrated Weekly

On his return, he immediately sought to join the British India army in 1943, and was sent back to Burma. Captain Eric Das was of the 1352 company of the 4th battalion of the 12th Frontier Force which was a Sikh regiment and part of the 17th Indian Infantry Division that took part in the Battle of Imphal. He was part of the 12th Frontier Force for three years and four months.  From 1943-45, he was part of the Burma Campaign and from 1945-47, he was in Malaya.  He received two Burma Star medals, one for the Burma Campaign and the other for the Battle of Imphal.  The Japanese invasion of India was going ahead full steam until the battles of Imphal and Kohima were fought.  In fact, during the Siege of Imphal, it was the Allied forces - particularly the 17 Indian Infantry Division - who were able to overcome the Japanese whose supplies had run out first.  The Battles of Kohima and Imphal were key during the World War 2 and the 17th Indian Infantry Division, of which Eric was a part, and had been much involved here. The Japanese had wanted to invade India and free it from British rule. Even though most of the Japanese troops were deployed to fight the US, they invaded as a last ditch effort, the city of Imphal, the capital of the north eastern state of Manipur in India.  This battle was fought from March 8 to July 3, 1944, through the most difficult terrain and the harshest of war conditions. The Siege of Imphal was broken and the Japanese were driven off and never again threatened British India though at much cost to the Allied troops.  My father and his battalion were one of the last to leave the Siege of Imphal.  After World War 2, he was in Malaya till 1947.  India was to become independent of the British.  He returned to join the new nation of India and chose to join the newly formed Indian Forest Service.

Captain Eric Das with his Battalion

Eric then joined the Forest Research Institute in Dehra Dun which was first started as the British Imperial Forest School in 1878; then became the Imperial Forest Research Institute in 1906 and then the Indian Forest College in 1938. The FRI is the premier institution for those entering the Indian government forest service under the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education. The Indian Forest Service (IFS) is one of the Civil Services of India and belongs to the All India Services group along with the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Indian Police Service (IPS).  The officers are recruited and trained by the central government but their services are placed under the state cadres serving both central and state government.  An IFS officer is independent of the district administration and exercises administrative, judicial and financial powers in their own domain with positions like Divisional Forest Officer, Conservator of Forests and Principal Chief Conservator of Forests etc.  The Ministry of Environment and Forests under the Government of India is the authority of the Indian Forest Service.  My father started his IFS under the Punjab government.  At that time, Punjab was the eastern part of the pre-partition Punjab, the PEPSU area, the Haryana and the Himachal states area. He worked in the first five year plan commencing in 1951 all the way till the fifth five year plan (1974-79) and the National Forest Policy of India was prescribed, the Land Management, the Forest Schemes, Industrial Plantations, Timber Surveys, the clearing and settling of forest reserves, Wild Life Conservation, Forestry Education. These were areas where Eric saw the new India develop in an era when politics was relatively corruption free and the zeal to see a newly independent nation develop.  He was posted to Kulu and the Outer Seraj area.

Soon after completing his time at the FRI, Eric found the love of his life, Shuniela Chandulal, studying at the Isabella Thoburn College in Lucknow who was from Eric's home town Tarn Taran, where she and her family had relocated to from Narowal in Pakistan.  They used to play tennis in Tarn Taran and it was love over the net, making the first known net connection in our family! Although she hadn't completed her graduation being only nineteen years of age, Eric persuaded Shuniela's mother to his marriage plans, promising to see that she completed her education after marriage. So on September 12, 1949, Eric and Shuniela were married in Tarn Taran.

The Marriage Photo of Shuniela & Eric Das

The first posting for Eric was in Kalesar, now in Haryana.  This national park was one of the erstwhile hunting grounds of the Mughals and the British viceroys. At that time, to reach there place of stay, they had to travel by bullock cart!

The 100 year old Forest Lodge at the Kalesar National Park

Wild Life Sanctuary of Kalesar by the Yamuna River

Eric entered into the life of a Divisional Forest Officer with much gusto and was one of the few people who climbed the 16900 ft. Shrikhand Mahadev peak without the aid of oxygen in the Kulu district at that time in Punjab but now in Himachal Pradesh. People in the Kulu area remembered him for this and his empathy with simple villagers to give them their forest rights and gave him the reputation of being a man of integrity and compassion.

Shrikhand Mahadev 16900 ft Peak

The zeal of the new India was much manifested in Eric's love for his job.  He particularly recalled having worked under Pratap Singh Kairon, the chief minister of Punjab when it was undivided - a man of vision who laid the foundation under which Punjab prospered playing a key role in the green revolution and through whom the creation of the city of Chandigarh happened.  When it did, Eric purchased land there in the heart of the city and built his house later, which was a place where grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, all lived as a joint family at some point of their lives.

In the mid 1960s, Eric was chosen to be the zonal coordinator of the northern region with the Pre-investment Survey of India, a precursor of the Forest Survey of India.  Mr. Hari Singh, the Inspector General of Forests in the 1960s had initiated the UNDP sponsored Pre-investment Survey of Forest Resources, of great importance to India to ascertain the availability of raw material for establishment of wood based industries in selected areas of India. In March 1974, Eric became the first managing director of the newly formed Himachal Pradesh State Forest Corporation for the purpose of timber operations, resin tapping and processing operations as well as its marketing.  Eric had a pioneering spirit and he put his heart and soul into these new responsibilities.  After retirement he came down to his home in Chandigarh.

The Das Children in the newly built house in Chandigarh

Eric & Shuniela Das with their Five Children in Bemloe B9 Simla

His five children, Rohini (b1950), Shalini (b1955), Damini (b1957), Sushant (b1958) and Proshant (b1960) have wonderful memories of a loving father, who did as best as he could in our upbringing. We remember our cheeks being pinched when he felt an overflow of love!  Or him cooking Chinese food when all the vessels of the kitchen would be used for his culinary skills! Or of him making wine from grapes, apples, plums and peaches, which was delicious! Or of travelling with him during our vacations into the interior areas of Himachal Pradesh.  He built a house in his wife's orchard in the Kulu hills hoping to be in his beloved mountains but ill health took its toll.  He had a stroke in 1987 after a severe heart attack which he survived but could not when it happened again eight years later, and he passed away on May 5, 1995.  His memorial service had the following eulogy:

Eric Das Eulogy

He was an affectionate grandfather to Karan (Rohini's son) his eldest grandson, and to Nafisa (Damini's daughter) his eldest granddaughter, to Diya (Shalini's daughter), to Siddhant and Vikrant (Proshant's sons). He never met Neymat and Mahir (Sushant's daughter and son) who came in 2000 and 2001 after his passing away in 1995.  Proshant had some memories which are here below:

Proshant Das's Memory of his father

Eric was a strong believer of the Lord Jesus Christ and impacted many people during his lifetime to follow Christ.  As Jeremiah 17:7-8 says "Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD.  He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit."