This article has been taken from the personal blog of Potharaju Ravindra , author of GIVE ME BACK MY GUITAR , http://ravi.givemebackmyguitar.com 

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I love playing the game  "Guess the person" with my daughter Sahaja  . One person has to think about a great personality and the other person has to guess the name within ten questions . It was my chance and i could not guess the name within the stipulated questions . After making me accept defeat she revealed the name "Som nath Sharma " .

I was irritated and rebuked her : " You are supposed to think of only famous personalities . Who the hell is this chap , Som nath Sharma ?"

She replied : "Daddy , he was the first armed force personnel to be awarded the Param Vir Chakra."  She then went down to play .

To be very honest , i felt like a vermin . I thought about it for a real long time and realized / wondered  

 I had no idea about the real war heroes of India . In other words i was blissfully ignorant of the Valiant soldiers who demonstrated patriotism of the highest order. I should have been extremly proud of this worthy son of soil . But how can i be proud when i was not even aware of him .

 If i were to take a poll , most of us would know the likes of Amitabh Bachchan , Shah rukh khan , shilpa shetty , richard gere , sachin tendulkar ,  Mukesh Ambani ,   Aishwarya rai , Sri Sri Ravishankar  , Baba ramdev  etc  . How many of us would know "Som nath sharma" ? I can bet that most of us would know more about Dawood or Osama Bin Laden rather than Som nath sharma . what a shame ..

    There are no comics on the War heroes of India .

    Children textbooks do not include the war heroes of india .

    There are margs / streets names in metros after so many worthy names but was there  any street in the major metros named after any of the "Param Vir Chakra " awardees .

    We have statues of our politician all over the country but how many statues have we built for our war heroes ?

    We have a plethora of biographies / autobiographies , what about our war heroes ?

Some highly entertaining movies like "Bunty aur Babli" become massive hits whereas movie like LOC becomes a flop . Do we go to see a movie like LOC Kargil for entertainment or for realizing the great sacrifices made by our war heroes ? I have heard comments like " the movies was very violent " . If these people flinch at seeing the movie , can one imagine how these brave people actually fought against such unfavorable conditions ? BORDER was a hit but can one recollect the names of our war heroes in the Indo Pak war of 1971 ?

How can we call ourselves " a developing country ' when we are not developing any kind of reverence to these war heroes as a nation ?

All my thinking finally led to a decision :

 There was no excuse for my abysmal ignorance about the war heroes of my country . However , i would make amends and initiate few small steps which are in my control . To start with :

 I am going to get hold of as much information on each of the Param Vir chakra Awardee and post it on my blog . I am confident that everyone who read them will ensure visibility of these war heroes within their friends and colleagues .