May Day saw the launch of a Tamil book on India-Pakistan wars at the Anna Centenary Library in Chennai. The event was attended by H.V. Hande, former Health Minister, and a few former members of the Defence services. The author, Saroja Sahadevan, is no specialist in strategic affairs but a septuagenarian-homemaker who, along with this work, has come out with five books which include both fiction and non-fiction.
What is more significant is the circumstances under which she took to writing. On the morning of October 29, 2003, her husband, P.V. Sahadevan, a former Chief Engineer in the Water Resources Department and a Chennai water specialist, was injured in a “hit and run” on the Kotturpuram main road near his residence, after which he died.
Saroja Sahadevan
A few months later, even as she was struggling to cope with the reality, she came across an article in a Tamil daily which prompted her to write a response that was also published. Thus began her journey in writing. “Even when my husband was alive, I had started writing though my pieces were not getting published in journals. However, he would encourage me to continue with writing,” she recollects.
The sense of emptiness that Ms. Sahadevan felt after the loss of her life partner was gradually overcome by her passion for writing. “My works include a collection of short stories and a social novel,” she points out. As Ms. Sahadevan obtained a degree’s certificate in geography through distance education a couple of years prior to the death of her husband, she also began to devote her time for being a scribe for visually handicapped students for higher studies. Her services have been recognised by different institutions including Presidency College.
Asked what prompted her to write a book on the wars between India and Pakistan, she replied that the clash between Indian troops and the Chinese PLA at Galwan in 2020 and the 1962 India-China war were among the events that made her to study developments that had been taking place on the country’s border with neighbours such as Pakistan and China. The book, beginning with Partition, also covers the 2001 attack on Parliament and the 2019 Pulwama attack. As for Dr. Hande’s participation at the book launch, she pointed out that it was the former Minister who had advised her to bring out her works as books.
