I was born in Jamnagar, Gujarat on 21 June 1956, into a hard core military family. My father then was a serving Lieutenant Colonel and a gallantry award winner (Maha Vir Chakra) in the first military operations of independent India in 1948 in Jammu and Kashmir. My grandfather too had served in the British Indian Army and was also a gallantry award winner (Order of the Star of Kara George) from the Mesopotamian campaign of 1917. We are one sister and six brothers and carry the unique distinction of all having served in the Indian Army and are veterans today.
I was schooled in Sherwood College, Nainital. I therefore, grew up in a strict boarding school environment and attended the school Protestant Church daily. I was never deeply religious but was brought up on good value systems inculcated into me both at school and at home.
I went onto graduate from the Indian Military Academy Dehradun and later from the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington from where I earned my Masters in Defence Studies. I rose to the rank of Colonel and commanded 48 Armoured Regiment. Compelled by my personal circumstances I resigned my commission in 2005.
In 2004 I met and married Madhuri Kapur. She was from a highly educated family who had migrated to India at the time of partition. We were blessed with a beautiful daughter Sarojini in 2007. Life went by at a languid pace during which we basked in happiness, felt deeply fulfilled and travelled a great deal.
Madhuri was a deeply spiritual person and a staunch devotee of Sai Baba, Shirdi Wale and also a practitioner of Nichiren Diashonin’s Buddhism. Then we were drawn into Guru Ji’s fold in 2018, and life took many dramatic turns all of which got captured in a book. Today, I am a single parent, trying to realise Madhuri’s unfinished dream for Sarojini, and also take our lives forward to that distant destination now determined for us by The Almighty.