THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: When civic authorities decided to carve out a slice of the tree-filled campus of the Government Central High School, Attakulangara, for a bus bay and shopping complex, it didn’t go down well with the tall, usually soft-spoken retired lieutenant general. ‘’How can they do that to a school?’’ he fumed. Then he went on to outline the steps that must be taken to protect the 126-year-old institution, whose alumni included several illustrious names in the state’s history.
But that was Lieutenant General (Retd) S K Pillai, the former Deputy Chief of the Army Staff and Director General of Infantry who died here on Tuesday battling cancer.
When he retired from the Army in 1991 and came down to Thiruvananthapuram, Lt Gen Pillai had quickly gone about toppling the popular image of the retired army officer. He engaged himself in local issues. But there was something quite amusing about it all. Very few who accompanied him on tree walks or other events actually knew that he had been a top Army brass. Or that he was an expert on the north-east and Myanmar. Or that he had written books.
’That’s true. But boasting was not in his blood,’’ remembers T P Sreenivasan, India’s former ambassador to the UN, who first met Pillai in 2004. ‘’Had he been a Pakistani general, he would have enjoyed ‘Z’ category security,’’ Sreenivasan said. Unassuming to a fault, Lt Gen Pillai was not a man you easily associated with such trappings of power either.
‘’He became a trustee when we formed the Kerala International Centre in 2007. He became very active in it. He was already active in various other organisations. More than everything, he was a perfect gentleman,’’ recalls Sreenivasan. ‘’His specialisation was the north-east and Myanmar, though. The government used his expertise a lot in these areas,’’ he said.
Tree Walk’s Anitha S remembers the first ever time the clean-shaven, elderly man marched in with a smile to attend a walk. ‘’He just turned up one fine day. The walk was planned at Museum. Ever since, he kept in touch,’’ she said. ‘’It was Lt Gen Pillai who told us that the development of East Fort was possible by protecting the Attakulangara School and the heritage zone. He also quoted examples in Delhi,’’ she said.
S K Pillai served in the Army for 36 years, having been commissioned into the 3rd battalion of the Assam Regiment in 1955. He commanded the 1st Battalion of the same regiment from April 1970 to June 1972. He led the 14 Infantry Division and the 10 Corps, and was military attache to USSR and Mongolia during the Brezhnev era. A recipient of the Param Vishisht Seva Medal in 1989, he was Deputy Chief of the Army Staff (Planning and Systems) and retired in 1991 as Director General of the Infantry. He had also served as Colonel of the Assam Regiment from 1987 to 1991.
His written works include ‘Asam Vikram,’ a history of the Assam Regiment, and two monographs on the Nagas and the Mizos. He was an associate editor at ‘Faultlines.’ ‘’He will be remembered for his outstanding contribution to the Assam Regiment, the Indian Army and the nation,’’ Lt Gen Subrata Saha, Colonel Commandant of the Assam Regiment, said in a tribute on Wednesday.
Lt Gen Pillai leaves behind his wife Mary Jane Pillai and daughter Alpana Pillai.