HOW KILLER RAMPURI KNIFE SAVED MY LIFE.

Rampuri knife...I know it is not auspicious to start with a killer knife. All of you may be aware of this Indian knife of formidable reputation. I got a Rampuri knife as a gift and I kept it as a souvenir as I was attracted by its fame and beauty. But I had no intention to use it for any other purpose than self-protection. Now after forty years still I have this knife with me totally worn out by cutting vegetables. But this lethal weapon has a story of protecting my life.

It was in the early ninteen eightees, I had to go on a T/D from 12 Air force hospital, Gorakhpur to Lucknow for five days. I was staying in SQM three kilometers away from 12 AFH. The booked train was at 10 pm. The posting run started from the hospital at 9.30 pm. regularly.

Keeping a briefcase on my cycle carrier I was rushing to the hospital to catch the posting run. I had to cross a wide railway junction with a number of railway tracks, where there used to be no electric lights and so dark. Hardly we could see human figures and cycles crossing to and fro but could not identify face. When I was speedly crossing the railway, two local people on a cycle, one sitting on the front horizontal pipe, carrying a huge " ladhi"(long wooden stick), and the other pedaling the cycle, suddenly came from the side and hit me down. I was slightly injured and my briefcase was torn. With a reflex anger I shouted, " सलऻ ,कहऻ दॆख कर चलऻतॆ हॊं?"". With this remark, both became furious and shouted in Bhojpuri mixed Hindi, " Whom did you call "sala", Am I your sala?" etc. They started abusing me in the worst possible colloquial language, Bhojpuri mixed Hindi. When they came to understand that I was a Madrasi from my toota.. foota Hindi their confidence increased in double. I knew that I was at a very weak point of time, although, I could only think in my mind that I was a brave brilliant soldier, waiting for their mercy. No Air force coverage was available at that time for me. I remembered someone saying if you cannot defeat better surrender. So I decided to surrender pragmatically. I apologised many times for the wrong word," sala" for which I knew not a bad connotation and we used it one hundred times in a day without any meaning, but only for a punch in speaking Hindi.They were not prepared to pardon me. They advanced towards me with that long wooden stick to attack and I was sure that they would beat me and might kill me because that area was notorious for murders without any effective police investigation. I begged and begged for my life, using my trump card that I was a fouji, that too from a fouji hospital. They were so cruel that these appeals did not melt their minds. I even thought that they might have had a plan to loot me in that darkness.

I was keeping my right hand at readiness on the Rampuri knife, which I had kept at a safe place in the trouser. I was terribly afraid to take it as I was not courageous enough to use a knife for protection and I have never used it in my life as my hands were dedicated for saving human lives, not for destroying it.

When they were about to beat me, some reflex power came to me and I lifted the unlocked Rampuri knife and shouted a dialogue. This dialogue, I think I might have listened in some Hindi film and was leftover in my subconscious mind. I shouted in Hindi, I surprise, how it came, may not be from my real sense. But it worked and was superb. Now if you ask I cannot say in Hindi in the same dramatic manner. That shout means like this, lifting the Rampuri, "My mother never expected me to return to her womb fearing you, nor my wife expects me to run back to my house fearing you, abe, sale, beat me, beat me, sale", I shouted like a mad man.

In fact, they were shuddered on seeing my suicidal encounter with Rampuri and that was my last resort. I would have stabbed if they had advanced at that time. They too knew that. They tried not to display their fear, but I knew that their morale is zero on the sight of my nine-inch-bladed unlocked Rampuri.

They said, We are not afraid of Chakkoo. We are leaving you since you are an Aspathal fouji. Slowly, they withdrew from the spot fearfully watching the Rampuri. Mere jan me jan a gaya. I slowly got on the cycle and rushed to hospital, meanwhile the posting run left to the railway station. Being an extraordinary reason for delay, a special ambulance was given to me for dropping me to Gorakhpur railway station.

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