Institution 02 · Forging
NATIONAL DEFENCE
ACADEMY
Khadakwasla, Pune · 60th Course · E Squadron
Khadakwasla, Pune · 60th Course · E Squadron
The motto on the crest above — "Service Before Self" — is the first thing every cadet at Khadakwasla is made to live by, years before he is ever tested in combat.
The National Defence Academy trains cadets for the Army, Navy, and Air Force together on a single campus at Khadakwasla, near Pune — the only tri-service academy of its kind in the world. Cadets are organised into squadrons that function as their home for the length of the course: living, training, competing, and often failing and recovering together, long before any of them commission into a particular service or regiment.
Hari arrived at Khadakwasla in the autumn term of 1978 with the 60th Course, and was placed in E Squadron — a squadron known across the Academy for the emphasis it placed on physical training above almost everything else. Cadets there were, half-jokingly, nicknamed the "PT Squadron," and competed hard in cross-country running, boxing, and every inter-squadron sporting fixture the Academy calendar offered.
Course-mates remember Hari as one of E Squadron's standout athletes — agile, competitive, and rarely, if ever, unsettled by a setback in competition. He carried a broken tooth from a boxing bout for the rest of his life, a small souvenir of a squadron culture built on absorbing hard knocks and getting back up.
Athletic ability was only the surface. Course-mates who knew him at Khadakwasla describe a man whose talent never came with an edge of ego.
Those who trained alongside Hari at NDA remember him as talented and, in the same breath, humble and unassuming — a thorough gentleman who carried a gentle smile through most of what he did. That smile, course-mates would later reflect, concealed the fierce and dedicated warrior and leader he always was underneath.
He had a sense of humour, too, one that came out most visibly on stage: his turns in cadet theatricals left his course in fits of laughter, delivered with the same effortless, natural quality he brought to everything else he attempted.
On the games field, Hari was a true all-rounder — PT, team games, boxing, he was everywhere, and everywhere with one common trait: smooth movements, long strides, and a natural grace, as though he were gliding rather than running. Course-mates recall no trace of effort or struggle in the way he moved — just flow.