Courage and service to mankind personified

Some have probably heard about or have met this extraordinarily brilliant Officer Captain Jojo Sengupta, late Trustee of Midas Foundation, who died on August 31, 2013,  of cancer at Pune. He was from 16th Light Cavalry.

A Rimcollian, he topped the UPSC exam for NDA and before that, the RIMC, then got the Gold Medal at NDA and at IMA. He was a Blue in swimming at NDA and IMA. He topped his Young Officers course and was doing the Gunnery Course when the 1965 Indo-Pak War broke out. Leading his troop, he was engaging Pakistani rcl and missile launchers, when a Cobra missile hit his x10 binoculars. He was evacuated bleeding, with a shattered arm and blood all over his face. “I will be OK, but how are my men?” he asked as the GOC (Sparrow’s) helicopter took him away to Udhampur’s Command Hospital.

The Army sent him to the best eye hospitals but he was blinded forever and at age 22. A wonderful girl, Rita, married him, knowing that he was handicapped for life. The sightless man became a man of vision; paradoxical but true. He was given a Gas Agency at Siliguri and his became their best agency. He could recall the phone numbers of his 10,000 customers as also their Consumer Numbers. He then took on a Tata Oil Mills distributorship and became their best distributor.

Restarting his education, he did his BA from North Bengal University and — you guessed it — topped. He started a Special School called Prerna which today has 165 kids across gender. The kids get everything including boarding and lodging.

He also improved the lives of special kids in 700 villages around Siliguri, a work that Rita now handles.

He and Rita have three kids; girl twins and a boy. One girl — guess what — married a blind officer; he was blinded in the Kargil War. He went on to do PG in TISS, Mumbai and then joined the UNO with his wife. They are now top rung officers. The son is with Goldman Sachs. The other girl had come to meet her dad at Pune as his life was ebbing away. Go back to LSE, UK; complete your studies, he motioned to her… I can wait. He did. She came in two days after he passed on; a brilliant human being; a great soldier; an officer and a gentleman.

The responses of the school kids on learning that Jojo had moved on, move you to tears; amaze you, make you a proud Indian. The girls have done it better but the boys aren’t too far behind. Vidya Valley is run by Jojo’s sister-in-law.  200 kids across gender wrote that they wanted to be like him.

A story like this reminds us that the human spirit has limitless potential and no matter what the adversity, we must never give up.

—This is sourced from a WhatsApp message

Note: Winston Churchill, retired and very old, was requested to address his alma mater, the high school. He accepted the invite despite his poor health and when he was called to address, he went up to the stage, looked around the auditorium, students and the staff in pin-drop silence and said: “My young friends.” He paused, looked around, then said: “Never give up.” He paused a while and said: “Never give up.” There was absolute stillness in the hall. Then he continued: “Never give up. Thank you.”

I remembered this incident about Churchill, reading this real life experience in the life of Jojo Sengupta. —KBG