Musings from Antique Origins

Lord Robert Baden Powell (1857-1941) D uring the recent siege of Mumbai, which had live telecast for three days, I saw the snippets of some boys offering water to our tired soldiers and was instantly reminded of the Boer war and the Scout movement. I had my school days, in the late sixties, in the Alleppey district of Kerala in a remote village school-where the medium of instruction of course was the vernacular language Malayalam -and got introduced into the Scout movement and became a boy scout. At that time, little did I know about Lord Robert Baden Powell, the founder of the Scout movement but for unknown reasons he always came to my mind during my visits to South Africa. Baden Powell served the British Army during the Boer War in 1899 defending the South African town of Mafeking from over 9000 Boers. There was a nine month siege and children helped the British soldiers numbering only one thousand by running errands and being helpful to them by bringing water and food. This sow the

I drop two tears in memory of the brave soldiers and the policemen who laid down their lives fighting valiantly during the eventful Mumbai days of November 2008 igniting the waves of patriotism, unity and of the supreme sacrifice. May their breed prosper and live long till the earth lasts! Let’s also salute all the soldiers who took part in “Operation Cyclone” and saved many lives and brought back cheers to our kids! Rudyard Kipling, the much controversial poet had brilliantly written the following epitaph for a dead soldier, “If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied” These bitter word written after WW I, were written in agony because, the poet thought that if they had lived, they would have corrected the errors of the generation that preceded them. I think that it wont be improper if we replaced the word “’fathers”’ with “politicians” to make the statement more explicit. Had Hemant Karkare, Vijay Salaskar, Ashok Kamte, Sandeep Unnikrishnan or any of the others