A Soldier-Scholar & an Indian Army Veteran
Colonel Hemant Saxena: A Citizen Soldier and Raconteur
My love affair with rural folklore that revolved around the adventures of ‘दिलवर चोर’ and ‘समुद्र बादशाह की बेटी’ began 50 years ago as my grandfather’s fascinating narrations became a bedtime ritual for the younger lot. It must have been the vacuum created due to his sudden demise that made me search for stories in every walk of life. This also led me to a pleasant discovery of being able to stitch heartwarming stories when every summer, my siblings and cousins from the extended family gathered for the vacation. It gave me a new high, and with this, my affair with storytelling started many decades ago.
My early childhood memories are filled with rich graphics of me scribbling away merrily in the empty pages of my notebooks, although most of it never reached a conclusion. Notwithstanding this, my passion for words continued to flourish, duly fueled by over three decades in the Indian Army and unique opportunities to discover untouched aspects of a soldier’s life in the nondescript nooks and corners of our country. My writings can therefore be seen with unmistakable imprints of the journey of a soldier in his personal and professional life into the unexplored.
Olive Diaries is my first published book, a collection of eight sensitive stories of our soldiers with different hues and colours. My current project, a novel in Hindi titled दरार: एक ग़ैर ज़रूरी कहानी deals with challenges faced by a soldier during the hardship he faced in his personal and professional journey and his struggle for the search for meaning of life in the face of multiple encounters with death.
My two other stories form part of two different anthologies. These are “Tso Near yet Chho Far” and “Tau Express”. The first one (TNYCF) deals with my esoteric experiences in Ladakh during a hike, while the second one (TE) is a travel anecdote that touches a gentle chord while triggering childhood memories inside a crowded train compartment.
In recent years, upon his retirement from the Army, I have been contributing to the Hindi-language newspaper Dainik Bhaskar on defense-related topics and flash points along Eastern and Western borders with China and Pakistan.
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