Keep the belief, magic happens

GROWING up, Commander Deepak Adhar would almost exclusively wear olive-coloured clothes. He would keep himself busy chasing after fighter jets flying overhead or being immersed in the world of movies.

The defence services and cinema, after all, had caught his fancy at a young age. Most people are lucky to realise a single childhood dream. As for Adhar, who was born in Mhow in a family with a rich tradition of military service, he has managed to live out two of them.

“Our house was just a few kilometres from the Air Force Station at Ambala Cantt, where my father was posted, and came under the landing path of Sukhoi fighter jets. When the plane decelerated to land, I could see the cockpit. I would frantically wave at the aircraft hoping the pilot could see me,” he recalled. And one morning, he did. “The jet waggled its wings! I couldn’t believe my eyes… I rushed to tell my mother, who smiled and said, ‘You have made a pilot friend now!’”

After attending boarding school in Dehradun, he would go on to join the National Defence Academy. “I feared if I failed to earn my wings in the Air Force, I would spend my life watching others fly the planes from the sidelines, so I put Navy as my first choice,” he said, while explaining his choice of career.

Long years of service to the nation followed, including in the Kargil War. The nation observed the 27th Kargil Vijay Diwas on July 26. The ground zero experience, however, is still fresh in Adhar’s mind.

The Navy’s Operation Talwar was key in choking Pakistan’s vital oil and trade supplies in the North Arabian Sea. It was an especially challenging time for Adhar. “We had just welcomed our second daughter into the family. I had to leave behind my family, my wife with our three-year-old and our newborn,” he recalls.

Beyond Kargil, Adhar was at the frontlines for other significant moments in history as well, in a naval minesweeper at times. “I manned the ship that cleared the Jaffna Peninsula during the conflict in Sri Lanka. I saw captured operatives of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam swallow cyanide pills on the tarmac of the Palaly military airfield right in front of my eyes,” the memories keep flooding in.

For the last of those instances, Adhar was flying a Naval plane. “I went on to earn my golden wings and fly for the Navy for 20 years, commanding an Air Squadron. I also learnt that the waggle of the wings wasn’t the pilot waving out to me all those years ago; it was just his attempt to align his plane to the centre line of the runway for landing,” he laughs, going back to his childhood memory.

The years in service, however, made one thing clear for Adhar, who has since taken to a simple motto in life: “I don’t regret thinking that the pilot was my friend. That belief decided the course of my life. If you believe in magic, magic happens.”

And more magic was in store for him. Military service left little room for his other passion — acting. It was only when he had children that he had his tryst with the performing arts. “I used to take my children to drama classes. I would sit in for their rehearsals, my eyes glued to the stage. My children’s theatre director noticed and asked me if I ever wanted to act,” he says of the chance conversation that changed the course of his post-retirement life. “Who hasn’t walked out of an SRK film and gone home just to emulate the arms-wide-open pose,” Adhar smiles.

His children’s mentor and the man who encouraged him to audition for a role in a play was none other than Feisal Alkazi, a Sanskriti Awardee for Theatre and the son of National School of Drama founder Ebrahim Alkazi.

“Once I got my first role, there was no looking back,” he says, recalling his first film role, which was followed by a documentary and a short film that went on to win an award at the LA Shorts Fest. He has also acted in some OTT series.

He had always carried cinema and arts with him. And he never lost any of his childhood wonder either. “My first time on set, the clapper boy fascinated me,” he says in a manner reminiscent of his fighter jet story, adding, “I went up and asked him why he needed to call each take. He said marking each take as ‘Take 1, Take 2’ helped differentiate between shots during the editing process. My appreciation for his work went up instantly. If you keep an open mind, you keep learning no matter your age or experience.”

And that learning translates back into real life. Essaying the role of an ageing empty nester in a play, ‘At Risk’, it dawned upon Adhar that he, too, is getting older and his daughter lives in the US. “She, like much of the audience, was in tears after the play. She volunteered to return. But I couldn’t let her do that. I have lived my life and she’s just starting hers,” he says. However, the play did lead him to decide on moving to Bengaluru where his brother lives.

The conversation nonetheless brought him closer to his daughter. “As I said, if you keep believing, you will continue to find the magic. Sometimes, it comes in the form of waggling fighter jet wings, sometimes as overhead lights on the stage. You just have to keep the belief and keep going,” he signs off.