Kerala - Alappuzha   

Fighting a lonely battle for existence

N. Shankar Kurup

ALAPPUZHA: A man who braved the booming cannons and bullets of Hitler and his allies in the toughest of conditions in Cyprus, Libya, Greece and other inhospitable terrains 60 years ago is still fighting a war. A battle for his existence, as he himself describes it.

N. Shankar Kurup, called by his North Indian mates as “Shankar Ka Roop,” is 87 now. But the spirit that helped him survive the Second World War when he was part of the Indian Medical Corps under the British in North Africa, Italy, Syria and other war fronts, is yet to fade away.

The next war that the gritty Mr. Kurup had to fight, long after the British left these shores, was for a decent pension.

His income, after he retired from the Medical Corps in 1947, was Rs.20, a princely sum for a ‘jemadar’ in the Army in those days.

But as that continued till the ’90s, when Rs.20 was hardly enough for a day’s survival, Mr. Kurup began writing letters to the Indian government and the British one too.

His persistence saw the sum, known as ‘jangi inam,’ being hiked to Rs.100 and later to Rs.250.

Now, Mr. Kurup who later joined Indian Railways as an intelligence officer before retiring in 1978 is knocking the doors of officialdom once again.

“At this age, after enduring four surgeries to various parts of my body, I have none to look after me. I do not need a constant companion, but someone who can take me to hospital in case of an emergency,” says Mr. Kurup, whose wife died decades back without gifting him with an offspring.

The only person Mr. Kurup, a native of S.L. Puram near here, could depend upon till a few years back was his nephew’s son, Gireesh K.B. However, with Gireesh landing a job in the Railway Protection Special Force and being posted to Lucknow, Mr. Kurup is left to fend for himself.

Moreover, the paternal and maternal grandmothers of Gireesh, both of whom need help to move around, are the responsibility of Mr. Kurup now.

“I wrote to the Director General of Railway Police Force, to Union Railway Minister Laloo Prasad and all the authorities whom I could think of, requesting a transfer for Gireesh to somewhere in Kerala so that he could come at least once in a week and help us in some way. But so far, there has been no response,” says the dejected old man.

The British Ministry of Defence, when Mr. Kurup (0478-2861281) wrote to them in 1990 regarding the ‘jangi inam,’ had responded. But authorities in India, even in this age of umpteen schemes for senior citizens and claims of honouring our heroes, have not bothered for a single line.

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Fighting a lonely battle for existence

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