The Better India · 9 hours ago

'Support Our Heroes' Helps Veterans and War Widows Build Secure Lives in India

When Gaurav Shukla failed to earn the military uniform his father had worn for 28 years, he found a different way to stand beside those the system had quietly abandoned - veterans and widows who fell just short of the service thresholds that would have entitled them to pensions and healthcare. He spent a week walking the streets of Connaught Place with a printed photograph, looking for a 75-year-old man named Peethambaran who had fought in two wars, left the army to care for his dying mother, and ended up living under a structure of plastic and rope, having survived three attempts on his own life. "I sat with him for an hour," Gaurav recalls. "Forty minutes of that conversation were spent with Peethambaran weeping without pause." In the decade since, Support Our Heroes has reached more than 350 families across 22 states - not by replicating what the state provides, but by filling the spaces it does not reach, guided by a principle drawn from India's first Army Commander-in-Chief: if you cannot help someone who comes to you in need, never simply say sorry and send them away - tell them where else to go. That Peethambaran now keeps Gaurav's phone number on his wall and in his pocket, so that whoever finds him first will know who to call, says something quietly devastating and quietly hopeful about what it means to be found.