Rama Chandra Sunuwar - my friend from Bhutan.

This morning as we’re moving to the office in our carpool, the conversation began on the visit of the King of Bhutan to this country. And then it veered to Rama Chandra Sunuwar, my course mate and friend from Bhutan, at the NDA.

Actually, he was a course senior to me to begin with but got relegated to mine as Academics was not his forte. Short and stocky, he was on the heavier side but was agile nevertheless! Disarmingly simple in his general outlook towards life, anyone who interacted with him could not resist liking him for his refreshing candour and childlike demeanour. And for friends, he could do anything like fetching the moon, perhaps, if asked for!

I shall narrate two trivial incidents just to illuminate the personality of Sunuwar and how, being with him, it was a constant cycle of mirthy laughter arising out of comical situations that he seemed to get into, in perpetuity:-

(a) Terror on wheels. All cadets, at the NDA, were issued with cycles to cover enormous distances to traverse and be on time for various sessions of the curriculum, spread from the outdoors to indoors and back again to the outdoors. The movement, however, had to be in organized squads in files of two which, goes without saying, required synchronous movement on the part of the cyclists which was anathema to young Sunuwar and he used be a wreck.

One morning, Sunuwar found himself to be out of one such squad and drove quite recklessly into the Ashoka Pillar circle where Subedar Major Padamdev Singh, was on watch, waiting to catch such defaulters. Shouting at the top of his voice, asking the errant cyclist to stop, he made a bold move by stepping onto the centre of the road, which alas, turned out to be his undoing. The ensuing sight was simply hilarious – Sunuwar and his cycle, crossing all limits of speed as it had begun hurtling down the slope towards the Khandwa gate with a grotesque Subedar Major sitting on the front wheel, facing Sunuwar who was squeaking time and again, “shaab, hamara brake nahin”.

(b) Crossing the ‘double ditch’. On the Obstacle Course, one of the trickiest obstacle to Sunuwar’s progress was the double ditch. He used to carefully analyse and organize himself – taking quite a bit of time in the process, at times. The secret of sailing over the double ditch was to neatly land on one foot on the narrow piece of land, between the two ditches, after jumping forward in one fluid movement from the edge of the first ditch. And with the spring obtained from the one foot landing, one could hurtle over the second ditch with ease.

For Sunuwar, the one foot landing was a difficult maneuver and he, invariably landed on both feet in that narrow space between ditches and then crossed the second with sheer momentum, literally scraping the edges of the concrete rim. All of us, cadets and the instructor, used to wait with bated breath for the evolution to be completed!


But having said that, Rama Chandra Sunuwar was a sweetheart and had a heart of gold. He used to regale us with some of the hilly tunes and associated songs –‘Mann ko kuraala, baaj nahaan ho’ or something to that effect, was my favourite- coupled with stories rich in his country’s traditions and customs.

Rama Chandra Sunuwar, wherever you are, I wish you the very best and Godspeed in all your endeavours. It’s my fond hope that we’ll be able to meet sometime in the future to exchange notes from where we left!!