The parade attendance register of 1 Maharashtra Air Squadron NCC at Jai Hind College, Churchgate, Bombay, for 1988–89 records that Flight Cadet Gadgil K A (1MAHSA/88/223582) was on parade on his 16th birthday. 28 August 1988.
The uniform, a weary shade of dirty blue neither here nor there, clung to our lanky frames like a bureaucratic shrug. The shoes, black leather, embedded with iron nails in their soles (souls?), announced your arrival on the drill square with military flair, and your discomfort everywhere else with equal precision. It was all very proper. Very instructive. Very… government.
I stood there that morning, upright, unsure, and already sweating through state-issued, mother-starched cotton. It was my first real brush with discipline, though, to be honest, I was there more because my father had served in the Indian Air Force than out of any burning desire to defend the motherland.
By then, he was flying the big jets for Air India. Calm in emergencies, unfazed by chaos, and the sort of chap you’d feel rather grateful to have in the cockpit when crossing the Atlantic in heavy turbulence. A man of quiet resolve and even quieter humour. My kid brother, two years behind me, joined the junior wing. Only one of us could eventually take it further, my mother insisted. “One fauji in the family is enough,” she said, possibly foreshadowing more than she realised.
Years passed. I cleared the SSB, the medicals, the interviews. NDA sent me my joining instructions. I was ready. Or so I believed.
But my brother wasn’t having it.
He wanted the Air Force. He wanted fighter flying. He wanted the MiGs. Passionately. Loudly. The way younger siblings often want things they feel you’ve unfairly reached for first. There were arguments, threats, dramatic exits, possibly even a brief vanishing act. Memory fades, but emotion lingers. Eventually, we resolved it. Like most 70s kids. Like Jai and Veeru. We tossed a coin.
He won. I made sure he did.
I withdrew. Told him I’d crack the JEE instead. Ha! I didn’t.
He went on to fly MiGs.
And years later, on a dark moonless night, somewhere on the Western front, his MiG-21 didn’t return. Lexus 1 went down with his lover.
The Indian Air Force, that most impenetrable of institutions, blamed him. Silently, subtly, systematically. Our Maa, the wounded tigress, took on the machine. She wrote, protested, petitioned, fought. Refused to give up. Not on herself. But on her son. Years passed. And finally, the truth outlived the whisper campaign. He was exonerated. Officially. Quietly.
He had done everything by the book. Diligent, loyal, professional to a fault. A son to admire, a husband to cherish, a brother to lose sleep over. And when he died, the world grew quieter. Duller. Less… promising.
There’s no profound insight here. No moral. No divine plan revealed in hindsight.
Just a coin toss.
A set of wings and rings, a peak cap, a folded flag.
And stories I tell little Kym about her Abhi Chacha.
Stories that start with, “Once upon a time, there were two brothers…”
