Dharmendra Narain Lal | The Journey, and What Comes Next

सफ़र · The Safar

The Safar. Eighteen addresses, the same man at every one.

Every posting below is from his service record: the places, the dates, the ranks. What the record doesn't show is what it took, and who he was in each of them.

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The makingDaltonganj, Jharkhand

Prologue

Before the uniform, the traits were already there

Daltonganj, Jharkhand

Nothing that came later was new. The CRPF just gave these traits somewhere to go.

HonestyIntegrityHard workUp at 4 a.m.DeterminationBadmintonAdventurousWittyEveryone's friendThe one they trusted

199324th Batch

24th BatchNeemuchTraining

A boy went in, an officer passed out

Training, Neemuch, Madhya Pradesh

Joined CRPF, June 1993

Through the hardest drills and obstacle courses he became the one who pulled others through, and kept the squad's morale up by singing.

1993–963 years

Assistant Commandant030 BNField

First posting: the Punjab frontier

Firozpur, Punjab

30 June 1993 – 09 July 1996

Three years that set the tone for the next thirty. Langar with the whole company. A young officer who ate with his men and looked after every person under his command. They noticed. Thirty years later, they still bring it up.

1995Firozpur years

Milestone

The posting that mattered most

Marriage

Mid-tenure, he got married. From that day every transfer order was addressed to two people, and the family became as mobile, and as adaptable, as the officer.

Sept 1996First child

Milestone

A son is born, and Papa is on duty

September 1996

His first child arrives. He is not there; he is at work. It took his son a good few years to understand that, and then it became the clearest lesson he ever got about what duty actually costs.

1996–971 year

AC030 BNField

First tour of the Northeast

Agartala, Tripura

10 July 1996 – 04 August 1997

Same battalion, opposite corner of India. The first of several tours the Northeast would ask of him.

1997–988 months

AC064 BN

Kolkata

West Bengal

05 August 1997 – 27 April 1998

New battalion, new city, barely time to unpack.

19986 months

AC064 BNField

Deep Nagaland

Mokokchung, Nagaland

28 April – 23 October 1998

Six months in the hills. Hard country, harder duty.

1998–996 months

AC029 BN

Kanpur

Uttar Pradesh

24 October 1998 – 04 May 1999

A short tenure with 029 Battalion, and then orders again.

1999–20012.5 years

AC → Deputy Commandant029 BN

Mathura: Radha comes to the world

Mathura, Uttar Pradesh

05 May 1999 – 30 November 2001

In Braj came his first promotion, Deputy Commandant. And in 2000, in Radha's own land, a daughter was born. There was only ever one name in consideration: Radhika. The family was complete.

First promotionRadhika, born 2000

2001–02UN mission

Deputy CommandantUN MissionDeputation

Peacekeeper in Kosovo

United Nations Mission, Kosovo

01 December 2001 – 27 December 2002

Selected for the UN peacekeeping mission: a year keeping the peace half a world from home, under the blue flag. India's reputation abroad travels in people, not statements.

2002–03Bawana

DC029 BN

Back home to Delhi

New Delhi

28 December 2002 – 16 April 2003

From Europe straight to Bawana. A short tenure on paper. The family stayed on considerably longer.

2003–0414 months

DC145 BN

Nagpur

Maharashtra

17 April 2003 – 11 June 2004

Fourteen months with 145 Battalion, at the geographic centre of a country he had already crossed twice.

2004–073 years

DC → Second-in-Command145 BNNDRF

The Pune years, and the NDRF

Pune, Maharashtra

12 June 2004 – 21 May 2007

Three settled years of school runs and family time, and another star: promoted Second-in-Command. The longest the suitcases had stayed in the loft so far.

Pune was also where he served with the National Disaster Response Force, which meant the settled years were only settled at home. The call-outs went out to Mahad in Maharashtra and as far as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

2007–081 year

2IC037 BNField

Mangaldoi

Assam

22 May 2007 – 05 May 2008

A year on the north bank of the Brahmaputra, back in hard-field country with 037 Battalion.

2008–102 years

2IC037 BNField

Agartala, once more

Agartala Kotwali, Tripura

06 May 2008 – 12 June 2010

New culture, new language, new schools, new friends, genuinely hard at first for two kids. This is where the family learned its real skill: adaptability. Nothing after this felt foreign.

New cultureNew language→ Adaptability

2010–12Commandant

2IC → Commandant011 BNLWE Operations

Commandant, into the operations

Latehar, Jharkhand

13 June 2010 – 21 April 2012

Promoted Commandant, and sent into the forests of his own home state against Naxalism. An operations officer in his element: hardest terrain, highest stakes, leading 011 Battalion from the front.

2012–175 years

CommandantNSGDeputation

Five years with the National Security Guard

NSG, New Delhi

24 April 2012 – 28 April 2017

Deputation to the country's elite counter-terror force. Meanwhile Delhi finally became home: DPS Vasant Kunj and Sanskriti; then DTU and an M.Tech at IIT Delhi for Nayan, NIFT Fashion Communication for Radhika. The kids got their run-up because he had held the line for twenty years.

DPS · SanskritiDTU → IIT DelhiNIFT

2017–20DIG Ops

Deputy Inspector General, OperationsBastar · LWE

DIG Operations, Dantewada

Dantewada, Chhattisgarh

18 July 2017 – 21 July 2020

Promoted DIG and given one of the most volatile left-wing-extremism zones in the country. Three years of operations in Bastar. At home, two grown children tracked every alert out of that district, frightened for him daily, and completely certain he was the right man there.

2020–233 years

DIGDirectorate General

Headquarters

CGO Complex, New Delhi

22 July 2020 – 12 June 2023

Three years at the Directorate General, steering from headquarters the force he had served in the field for a quarter of a century.

2023–26Present

DIGGroup Centre RanchiCurrent

Full circle at Group Centre, Ranchi

Sembo Dhurwa, Ranchi, Jharkhand

13 June 2023 – present

The last posting brought him back to Jharkhand, a short drive from where a boy once woke at 4 a.m. with big plans. The journey ends on the same soil it started on, in the campus where we are all standing tonight.

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Do you have a photo from any of these postings? Most of these years live only in other people's albums. If you served with him, or visited, or have one frame from a mess night, it belongs here.

DharmendraNarain Lal

What people wanted to say to him.