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My dad built a cool thing but never boasted about it
- vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago[dead]
- garganzol 3y ago[flagged]
- indrora 3y agoIf you read this as bragging about war, I absolutely ask you to reconsider your read here. This is tribute to a man who went "I'm bored, I'm going to go far outside my comfort zone," helped rebuild infrastructure destroyed by (war, negligence, etc) and solved a hard problem in a short amount of time that improved the lives of others. The ethics of war has many corners. If there is a war that may have actually been justified in its time, the freeing of Bangladesh may have been one of the few, but that's beside the point of the discussion entirely.
- EdwardDiego 3y agoIf there was ever a just war, that war was one. The evil West Pakistan delivered upon East Pakistan staggers the mind. It started with secret police abducting, torturing and murdering intellectuals, academics, community leaders, any Bengali in East Pakistan who might lead a nationalist movement. Then it got even more crueller and vicious. Massacres of civilians, weaponised rape, all inflicted upon their co-religionists.
- kalabilla 3y agoTo all talking anti war here, do you never talk about american veterans of vietnam war. Do you not remember their service positively while still being against the war? Let a man remember his father. Especially when he is talking about building bridges and not how valiantly he killed n enemy soldiers.
- known 3y ago[dead]
- dinom 3y agoVery cool; condolences.
- Elixir22 3y agoGrateful for your dad's service
- themodelplumber 3y ago> My father designed a "distribution beam girder," a rigid structure made of steel plates, to distribute the load on to the new pier. He got it made from a shipbuilding yard in Calcutta. They produced it overnight, and the army transported it and assembled it on site. Overnight production for this huge custom design sounds pretty intense to say the least. Wow. My condolences by the way. I was doing some digging in my own family lines in recent years, since I had previously mainly been taught to focus on and respect those ancestors who had been part of the religion into which I was born. When I decided not to practice it anymore, it was like I had to rediscover my own heritage. I was pretty happy to find a bridge-engineer in the family who didn't fit the same mold. It's fascinating to me that not too long ago, you could build a 600-foot rail bridge responsible for so many millions of tons of freight, without even getting a university degree beforehand.
- Gud 3y agoYou probably still can, if you have the chops. If you’re a skilled x builder, you’ll build x with or without a degree
- qingcharles 3y agoIt's amazing what can get made, and how quickly, when the will is there, without any interference.
- sublinear 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y ago"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mocko 3y agoI wouldn't say so. The story needs this context to make sense and outside a war, where else would one need to rebuild large bridges under fire. As a technical achievement it certainly is something to be proud of.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lostlogin 3y ago> where else would one need to rebuild large bridges under fire Ukraine, now. But that doesn’t diminish the achievement.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago> and outside a war
- OJFord 3y agoIt didn't read like that to me at all. If anything more like the author's slightly pacifist (and actually, explicitly says of their father 'literally wouldn't hurt a fly'), making sense of their father's career. But as sibling says, it like any obituary needs some context; what do you expect for someone who spent practically their entire career in the military? I think pick almost any other and it will be 'worse', if you didn't like that.
- 3y ago
- shmde 3y agoPeople ITT should read about the Bangladesh Liberation War which the man's father here fought in. Pakistani troops mass raped between 200,000 and 400,000 women and killed an estimated 300,000 to 3,000,000 people. And USA supported Pakistan.
- yunohn 3y ago> Indian troops invaded East Pakistan to help the Bengali rebels, forced the Pakistan military to surrender, and created the new nation of Bangladesh. AFAICT OP’s father was on the side of the rebels, not the Pakistani troops you’re talking about right?
- CrimsonRain 3y ago"Bengali rebels" aka the freedom fighters where helped greatly by the Indian forces. Yes, his father helped the freedom fighters.
- AnnikaL 3y agoYes, America's involvement was pretty shameful, but the author's father was in the Indian army fighting against the genocidal Pakistani army.
- mkl 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- null_flavour 3y agoMy condolences. I wish the author could explain why he chooses to disclose that he is a _Bramhin_. The author seems to have emigrated to a different part of the world but still mentions labels used for the longest running discrimination of humans in history.
- Thorrez 3y ago> he is a _Bramhin_ By "he" do you mean the author or the author's father?
- shas3 3y agoWhat do you know about the caste system? Do you similarly police posts that say, “he grew up on a nobleman’s estate in England,” or “grew up on a farm in Alabama,” just because those are associated with historical oppression? This smearing of Hindus and Indians with accusations about caste are ridiculous and par for the course on HN where Indo-phobia is pretty commonplace (see any discussion of US work visas, for example).
- rocket_surgeron 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aaomidi 3y agoCertainly an interesting take. How do you measure this against white pride for example?
- rocket_surgeron 3y agoMillennia of sectarian strife in a region that has always exceeded the population of the "white" world since Europe was covered by hundreds of meters of ice? I suppose you could measure a star against a lightbulb... ...I mean, they'll both burn you.
- 3y ago
- pkphilip 3y agoInteresting! It is not often that we get to hear about the achievements of the engineering arm of the armed forces in India.
- ripe 3y agoDear HN: I am the author. Thank you for your wishes. I do see that a short obituary like this needs some context. To address some of the comments: * Why choose to disclose that my father was a Maharashtrian Brahmin: being brought up in such a household in the early twentieth century implies a lot of things. For example, rigid rules about non-violence and purity; not being exposed to other people's food and customs; avoiding leaving your country and going far away from home. These are huge barriers for a twenty-something signing up for a commission in the military. It's very relevant to reveal who he was and what choices he made. I should note that historically, certain groups sign up in the Indian army, and many groups don't. [1] Regarding objections to the word Brahmin being mentioned, I should clarify: the caste system was evil, particularly in the nineteenth century, and the government of India made it illegal as soon as it became independent. Despite that, discrimination continues in many places today. But to understand people, you need to know something about them. The word Brahmin by itself is not a precise enough descriptor. Indian castes are much more local than that. "Maharashtrian Brahmin", in particular "Chitpawan Konkanastha Brahmin", is much more precise, and these gruops have their own history. In Maharashtra during this period, these groups gave up their land under the land reform movement [2]. Brahmins no longer owned property or exercised much real power, especially not over other groups. They tended to be well educated but middle-class. It would be quite different from being an upper-caste landowner in (say) Bihar during this period. * Why say that the Bangladesh war was justified: again, looking at it from my father's point of view, I think it would be an important consideration for him. Not that he would have a choice in the matter---once you sign up, you have to fight. But he would need to justify it to himself. [1] The Indian Army: its contribution to the development of a nation, Stephen P. Cohen. https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Army-Contributions-Development-Nation/dp/0520016971 https://www.amazon.com/Indian-Army-Contributions-Development... [2] The "Bhoodan movement", (donate-your-land movement) by Vinobha Bhave in the 1950s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhoodan_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhoodan_movement
- robertlagrant 3y ago> the caste system was evil, particularly in the nineteenth century, and the government of India made it illegal as soon as it became independent. I've heard this before, but can't find evidence of it. Does the caste system not live on to this day? I thought caste is a protected class in terms of legally discrimination, and not a thing that's been banned. Any present-day Indians able to clarify? My dad left India when he was three, so my knowledge is not current :-)