A man for all seasons - Dr Athiqul H Laskar

A man for all seasons - Dr Athiqul H Laskar

Laitumkhwrah, Shillong 1966, day and date unknown - It is evening and in a house in Arbouthnot road, one of the most posh areas in Shillong, a thin, dark 16 year old boy with mischievous eyes sits in a room surrounded by a brood of brothers and sisters. In the centre of the room sits a grave looking thin old man who has his eyes on the boy.

A solitary kerosene lamp burning in the room casts light on the excited faces of the children. Animated murmurs go around the room as the old man motions for the boy to come and sit in front of him. The old man raises his hand to signal silence and a hush descends on the room. A host of inquisitive eyes follows the old man as he takes the hands of the young boy in his and peers into them with a somber look on his face. He takes a long hard look at the hands of the boy, frowns, drops the limp hand of the boy and turns to another man in the room.

A brief look of disdain is followed by, “Not good. I am afraid he is not very smart. If you send him to Guwahati he will go to Tezpur. He…” A cacophony of boos directed at the young boy drowns out whatever follows. The boy gets up and leaves for his room without a word. It is dark in the room and nobody can see his tears. He lights a lamp. He gets hold of a pencil and scribbles on a piece of paper - ‘This is a challenge for me. I will prove them wrong.’

The boy was called Athiqul H Laskar and he made sure that the old man’s prediction couldn’t have been more far from wrong. Not only did he go to Guwahati but he ended up going to more than ten countries and proving the prediction wrong, he didn't get lost.

Guwahati June 2011 - Sitting in the cool confines of the air conditioned room, the short and almost bald man in front of me; with wisps of hair; on both sides of the head talks fast and in clipped sentences as he rushes from one topic to another. Sports psychiatrist, army commander, mountaineer, author, philanthropist; Dr Athiqul H Laskar has donned many hats and all seem to have fitted him perfectly.

The first thing that strikes you as soon as you enter the living room is the remarkable attention to detail. The cupboards are adorned with certificates, medals and citations. A short passageway to his room is decorated with framed photographs and framed newspaper clippings of reports about him in various newspapers. All tell the story of a very organized and ambitious man.

“I have documented records for almost everything since my teenage years which includes photos, certificates, medals, memos and what not”, he says, as his fingers restlessly move over a file full of photographs of his teenage life and years in the army.

Restlessness and a hunger to always do something different led the mischievous boy from Shillong on a globe-trotting spree.It is these qualities that lead him to quit a settled job as assistant tea manager in Holunguri tea estate near Moriani in Dibrugarh district, Assam, where he worked for two years after completing his college education from St. Anthony’s college in Shillong.

“Life was set pretty much like the template that is laid out for all - get a good education, get married to a nice girl, have kids, send them to school, look after them, retire, grow old and pass on. But no sir, no, this life was not for me. I knew since a very early age that I wanted to be different and chart my own course in life and I am happy today that
Athiqul Laskar in Army uniform1/7


I did follow my own path. I always wanted to create a sensation wherever I went.”.And sensation he did create wherever he went.

Soon after his marriage, he left for the United States on a scholarship from Rotary international to study sports psychology and it was in the states that the army bug bit him. Forever, one for adventure and new challenges, right after finishing his degree he found himself in the thick of action in Operation Urgent Fury better known to the world as the Grenada war in 1983. He wades through his album of photos; men and women in army fatigues with guns slung over their shoulders, sitting, standing, cheerful and smiling. He pauses momentarily over one photograph where he is standing with his arm around the neck of a beautiful young lady soldier. ‘Carol Townsend. My best friend in Grenada; she died in the war.’ No glossing over, no over the top reactions yet expressed with emotion.

Never one to shy away from trying out new things, the restless boy in Laskar never left him as he switched from one task to another during his long tenure in the army. Starting life as a specialist in the U.S army, a rank which is fourth in hierarchy from the bottom, Laskar worked his way up the ladder. In all the years in the army, by his own admission, his adaptability, humility and a sagacious acceptance of the dignity of labor helped him rise through the ranks. “In India, people are too bothered about petty things like image. They are too concerned about how they will come across in front of others. In America, people are not bothered much by your standing and profession. During my tenure in the army I switched many jobs thanks to my willingness to try out different things. I served as a driver to a General and even performed duties of juniors when someone had problems. Because of my relatively better educational qualification at the time I was also chosen many a time to represent the United States Army in various ceremonial occasions.”

Not only academics, Dr Laskar excelled in valour too. Recounting one such incident which got him a medal for bravery during the Grenada war, he says, “A fire broke out in the one of the trucks stored with fuel. One truck was completely engulfed and someone had to move the other trucks away from the spot so that the fire wouldn’t spread. I hopped on to the truck nearest to the burning one and drove it away to safety.” This act of courage won him a medal and the American flag as a sign of honour, a very proud moment for an Indian indeed.

After the Grenada war, he came back to the States and became part of the NATO forces after completing his remaining training with the army. Once again, through sheer hard work, dedication and adaptability he rose through the ranks to finally become Community Commander of NATO (Holland sector). Unlike, the conventional role of a combatant, this role saw him switch from active part in combat to understand war and its effects on people. Trained as a soft skills trainer, Laskar’s job was to focus on helping keep the families of the soldiers focused about their role in conflict situations and imparting education to locals in war torn areas about the role and importance of the army for them.

One would think that after more than 20 years with the army and having lived a life of switching between various roles, he would retire to a quiet life of a retiree but the restless boy in him was not done yet.

Academically inclined since a young age, Dr Laskar, did a PhD in creative writing and communications, after retirement. “I always wanted to make good of the education and he next decided that it was time to give back to society some part of what he had learned.

Social service was something that he was no stranger to. “I have been involved with social service since my school days. During my college days in the 1970s I used to work with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity on various projects across Northeast India. In school, I started working with the Rotaract and Interact club. I love to do social work, he beams.

The years in the American army also strengthened his resolve to give back to society. “As an army man, you realize that you are an ambassador and not limited to only one role. The training in soft skills which I received during my years in the army has helped me till today to spread the same skills among public servants and common people alike.” It is these soft skills that he puts into practice now as he juggles different jobs of a motivational speaker, soft skills trainer and educator. Dr Laskar incidentally has instructed the Assam police and various other educational institutions on soft skill development.

Today he is based in Guwahati after a life of adventure abroad. “I didn’t want to stay in the U.S. anymore. I find more happiness here in going to different interior places, villages and teaching the people there.” A family man too, his three daughters from his first marriage stay in the United States and he stays in Guwahati with his wife from a second marriage and a son. As I begin to leave he taps me on my arm and says. “I am just started. I have a long way to go my friend,” and he smiles.

Be what you are – It is the motto of the United States Armed Forces and Athiqhul H Laskar has indeed stayed true to the motto and shown to the world what an individual can be with determination and desire.

About Author

Rupkamal Sarma is the creator of the beautiful web portal http://www.itsmynortheast.com/ , northeast India’s first dedicated cultural and positive human interest story based site. A journalist by profession , Rupkamal worked as a journalist with the Indian Express group, The Sakal media group and the Times of India group and is currently based in Guwahati.He is reachable at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it






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A Human Tragedy

Recently our President Pratibha Patel visited German concentration camps where six million Jews had been exterminated. Her visit reminds my days in Germany during my service as Commander of NATO Forces (Holland Sector). During that time I saw a concrete reminder of one of the worst human disasters in modern times. I visited a concentration camp, and I became sick to my stomach.What Hitler did to the humanity is unspeakable. How did it happen? Where were the civilized people? There are no answers. What I saw there is beyond my ability to tell anyone, and I am sorry that readers have to know about things like this. The event about which I am going to speak is known as the Holocaust. In the Greek language holo means ‘whole’ and caustos means ‘burned’. Originally, it referred to a religious rite in which an offering was entirely consumed by fire. In our modern day society, holocaust relates to any mass human disaster; but when written Holocaust, with the capital ‘H’, it refers to the death of over six million Jews in Nazi Germany's death camps. In the early 19th century, the Jews of Europe and of Germany in particular, began to be harassed by anti-Semitic race groups in Germany. The word anti-Semitism refers to the racism directed against Jewish people. Many Jewish people were prosperous. Germany had problems, and when people have problems, they often look for someone to blame; so when Hitler came to power in 1933, he began to blame the Jews. Jews were oppressed in many ways, and Hitler developed such a hatred of them that he decided to wipe them out. Even if someone were only part Jewish or married to a Jew, they were characterized as racially impure and a threat to the rest of the German people. Hitler began by passing laws that discriminated against Jewish people. Jews lost their businesses and couldn't get hired by other people. There were more and more things that became closed to them. When one young Jew assassinated a German diplomat in Paris, there were riots, and synagogues all across Germany were set on fire. Windows of were smashed, and people were beaten up — and all this with the blessing of the government. In fact, it was the Jew who was put in jail. German people could do anything they wanted to Jews and they would not be punished for it. Jewish people became very afraid, and many fled to other countries for refuge. When the Second World War began, Hitler's army took over many neighbouring nations. In Poland, Jews were forced to move into ghettos surrounded by walls and barbed wire. The houses where they once lived were just taken away from them, and if they had money in the bank, that was taken too. In every country that Hitler took over — and this includes The Netherlands, France, Belgium, Austria and others — it was the same. Then he developed what was called ‘the final solution’. He created huge camps where Jews were taken and killed. He rounded these people up just like they were animals and stuffed them into trains to take them to the camps. The conditions on these trains were so bad that many sick or elderly Jews died before they even got to the death camps. It was a horrible, human tragedy. I cannot even explain to my readers how I felt when I visited some of these camps. There were many of them, located in Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek (Lublin), and Auschwitz (Os'wiecim), Kulmhof, Northwest of the Lodz ghetto. Some of them had carbon monoxide gas chambers that could kill hundreds of people in just a few minutes. In Auschwitz alone, the Jewish dead totalled more than a million, and, in all, six million died. Can anyone believe this? Auschwitz. That was the worst camp. It was located near Krakow in Germany and was the largest of the camps. Unlike the others, it used quick-working hydrogen cyanide for the gassings. The victims of Auschwitz came from all over Europe. They were brought from Norway, France, Hungary, the Lowland Countries, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Greece. Some were subjected to brutal medical experiments, and lots were sterilized, making them incapable of having children. Many died of starvation or disease, because the camps were filthy. Families were split up, people's heads were shaved, and numbers were tattooed on their arms. Then, most were killed in the gas chambers. To get rid of the many bodies, Hitler constructed large crematoriums, where the bodies could be burned to ashes.Dr Athiqul H Laskar
Hyhu