On the last day of my service, as I hung up my spurs, my mind travelled back to the man who most profoundly shaped my years in olive green — Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw, our irrepressible “Sam Bahadur”. My admiration for him began long before I ever saw him. On 20 December 1986, as I took the Antim Pag at the Indian Military Academy, standing in the hallowed precincts of Chetwode Hall, I silently wished that one day I might meet the soldier who had come to embody courage, candour and character for generations of officers. Sixteen years later, fate intervened. Posted to the Defence Services Staff College at Wellington as Staff Officer to the Commandant, I learnt within days that the Field Marshal lived nearby in Upper Coonoor. Soon, I found myself driving up the winding Nilgiri roads to his bungalow, evocatively named “Stavka”. As a young Lieutenant Colonel, I had rehearsed in my head what I might say. But when he walked towards me, upright despite his years, eyes twinkling beneath that …