Going The Distance

What are the wages of war? Major General (retd) Somnath Jha is more qualified than most to answer that question.

- Sahil Jaswal

A year ago, he gave himself the unusual mission of cycling two minutes for each fallen comrade. And there have been so many—20,600 soldiers have died in the line of duty since Independence— that his pedalling took him through all 29 states of the country. His odyssey, which covered 11,000 km, lasted just over six months.

“The Army is not a career,” he says. “It is a way of life. It shapes you, defines you and stays with you long after your duty to the nation is done.” Jha’s ‘Veteran’s Homage’, as he calls it, began on 19 October 2016, just 18 days after his retirement from Ambala Cantonment in Haryana. He was accompanied by his wife Chitra, a self-improvement coach who was also his personal motivator and the driving force behind his social media campaign.