Arrogance is the best insult you can get. It means the other guy knows that you think you’re better than him

Read More

Travel Notes 3- Shivanasamudram falls (Shivasamudram), Bangalore

16-10-2011

6:29 AM

I woke up and forced myself out of bed. The guys had been calling for some time saying its time to go. Sherman was also up. I stretched my arms and stood at the open balcony door looking out. Our hostel building is adjacent to Tata BP Solar so we have a great view of drums and mechanical equipment and other mundane stuff from our balcony. Rather depressing really. But in between the two lumps of concrete that make up our building and Tata BP Solar, there is a tree with beautiful red flowers, although I’m not knowledgeable enough to know the name of the tree or the flower. Every morning, dew forms within the petals of the flower and a flock of birds (I don’t know the name of this species either) perch on the tree and drink water from the flowers. It’s a sight which strikes a stark contrast with the urbaneness all around. An oasis in a desert of concrete. One fine morning during exams when Sherman woke up early, he saw a bird and a squirrel drinking water from the same flower from two sides, facing each other. Unfortunately he was enjoying the sight so much that he forgot to get his camera out and take a snap. Today I stepped out and saw the birds drinking the dew as usual. No sign of any squirrel though. My camera’s batteries were charged up for the trip so I decided to start the day’s photo session with this. Would have gotten some better pictures if I wasn’t in a hurry.

10:00 AM

I sat at the back of the tempo traveller, looking out the window at the greenery rolling by. There were 12 of us in the tempo. The guys had been telling me to take my camera out for some time but I had meant to unpack it only once we got there. But nevertheless I took it out and took a few snaps from the bus.

We reached the falls around 10:20 AM. The driver stopped the bus at a viewing point where we could see the falls from a distance. A sight worth describing at length but since a picture is worth a thousand words, here goes.

And this was the group

Even though we got to see a spectacular view, I didn’t want to have to use the camera’s zoom to see the falls up close. But turned out our next destination was a place where you could get up close to the falls and go into the water, even though most of the articles we read online said it wasn’t safe to go into the water. It took us quite some time to get to that point, but I’m not complaining as there was some beautiful scenery on the way there as well.

11:30 AM

I clutched the branches of a fallen tree which lay across the part of the river we were trying to cross, struggling to maintain balance in the current. Even though the water only came up to my thighs, the current was very strong and we were walking on uneven, slippery rocks. I had packed my camera and my t-shirt in my waterproof drawstring backpack. I hadn’t brought any proper clothes for the water so went in my jeans and vest. There was a chain of people clutching the tree and crossing both in front and back of us. It took us a good ten minutes to cross just ten feet of gushing water and get to the bank, on the other side of which was the falls.

 

12 PM

I sat on a rock under the falls, water hitting the top of my head and back with force, threatening to wash me away. I looked sideways at the bank of the river where some of my friends were sitting. I looked at people frolicking in the water through sheets of water that fell from my brow like curtains before my eyes. I sat there and laughed. Somebody asked me why. I said ‘nothing’ and spread my arms out wide. I looked at the digital watch display on my wrist showing 12:00 through the water. I watched the water turn my blue jeans a deeper shade of blue and billowing it around, knowing that if the force of the water increased a little more I wouldn’t be able to stay there. I watched kids play in the water like a silent movie coz the only sound I could hear was water breaking on rocks. For a long time I just sat there and smiled. The watch somehow struck a chord. A symbol of technology showing me the digits by which we live our daily lives, but with crystal clear water frothing over it, reminding me that I came from a city to sit on a rock under the falls.

I had climbed up a rock which was about as high as my shoulder to get to that spot. But seeing some of us up there, people kept coming and coming. I finally decided to get down from there when one enthusiastic guy scrambled up the rock and ended up on my lap when the water hit him.

 

12:46 PM

We decided the main falls was too crowded and went to the smaller one which was about 50 metres away from the main one. There were some vines dangling down the rock next to the waterfall. I saw a guy climb up it and disappear. Somebody said its a crazy thing to do. There was a danger sign and all nearby but I packed my camera into my backpack and started climbing. I soon found out that I suck at vine climbing but turned out Robin was very proficient at it. He nipped right up and told me how to. I asked him how he’s so good at it and he said he’s stolen a lot of mangos as a kid. After we climbed the first rock using the vine there was another one in front of us but with no vines. I found out I was better at rock climbing than climbing with the vine. The rock wasn’t very high but it was still high enough to get injured because there was a crevice right next to the rock. We slowly found different finger holds and footholds and went up to get right to the side of the gushing waterfall.

 

 

And this is me next to the waterfall..

First photo below- my climbing partner Robin & to the right some of the others who were under the same waterfall,taken on Sherman’s camera

By the time we two got down the others were already leaving, having gotten tired of waiting. We had to cross the river again along the fallen tree to get back to our tempo. I was given the cricket bat this time. Oh I forgot to mention the cricket bat. Somebody in our group thought it would be a good idea to take a cricket bat and ball along with us on the trip and even to the waterfall. Don’t ask me why, I haven’t figured it out myself. Anyway on the way back I had to lug the said bat across the water, which was quite difficult as the current was so strong that it was hard to remain on balance even with two hands clutching the fallen tree. Also the current kept trying to wash the bat right out of my hand. People crossing the water in the other direction were looking at me weirdly. One guy struggled across a bit of the length to be crossed, paused for a bit, saw me and asked his friend ‘What the hell is that guy doing with a cricket bat’. I was thinking the same thing.

During the subsequent tempo ride for lunch and to the next destination, I got these panorama photos. Had to get the driver to stop the tempo several times but it was worth it.

The bridge…

 

The field…

4 PM

Final stop - Coracle ride.

Not as good as the one in Hoggenekkal. Here they only took us in a circle and came back to the same bank where we boarded from. The boat guy refused to take us down the river saying its too dangerous.

The coracle guy did the usual spin-the-coracle trick. We all just laid our heads back and watched the clouds as they spun round and round. Everybody commented on how beautiful the clouds were and how weird it is that there is such a spectacle above our heads all the times and we still never look up. We live right under the sky and never look up at the heavens. Very elementary observation but one that struck us profoundly as a collage of beautiful clouds spun before our eyes. I pushed my shades up to see the sky unrestricted but soon pulled them back down when the rotation of the coracle made me look at the sun. I kept popping my shades up and down- up for the clouds, down for the sun. Exquisite…

 

That was the end of a beautiful day. We had a long tempo ride back watching a movie and checking the pictures I took on my camera. I think I’ve found a new hobby – travelling and taking photos. Hope to post a new travel note soon. Until then peace out.

Read More

Cages & Wings

Memory is a strange thing. Every once in a while it throws up something you had forgotten long ago and throws it up for re-examination, to challenge you to see things you didn’t see before, to understand things you were not capable of understanding before, not when it belonged to the world of your present.

Today I remembered my childhood; I remembered a parrot I once had for a pet. I saw flashes of images – flashes of green, flashes of wings. How long ago was it? How old was I? I couldn’t have been older than 9 or 10. I do not remember where I got the parrot from. I remember I got her in a small cage, too small for her to fly even for a few seconds.

I asked my dad to get her a big birdhouse so that she could fly around. He had one made in our own factory. It was four feet high and two feet wide. There were two iron bars running from one wall to the other, where the parrot could sit, and two rings suspended on vertical bars which were welded to the top bar where the bird could sit and swing. The walls, ceiling and floor of the cage were made of iron mesh with wide holes so that the bird could climb. It was the best cage a pet parrot had ever seen. People asked us why we had such a huge birdhouse for just one bird but we maintained that we wanted the best for our pet.

She used to have a jolly good time in her birdhouse, flapping from perch to perch, swinging on the swings, climbing on the meshed walls… I fed her rice every-day, and gave her chilli treats. She used to love those. There were other weird things that she loved but my memory is foggy. I had some big impressive name for her but no one ever used that name so I don’t even remember it now. Everybody used to call her ‘Thatha’ or ‘Thathamma’, Malayalam for ‘parrot’. Whenever I went to her cage she used to come near the mesh wall so that I could scratch her head. She even used to peck my finger with her beak, gently at most times but hard if she was hungry.

She was supposed to be a talking parrot but she never really learnt to talk. Her linguistic ability seemed to be limited to just answering to her name. If we called out ‘Thathamma’, she would scream ‘aaa’ back, opening her beak wide. I don’t know where she learnt that from. But sometimes early in the morning, just when dawn broke, my parents and grandparents used to hear her trying to talk. She only used to do it when nobody else was around, as if she was too shy to practice in front of us. I never used to wake up that early but my folks said she seemed to be trying to call my name, the pet name that everyone in the family called me. I wouldn’t believe them at first but I heard it a few times myself. It wasn’t very clear but it was definitely my name.

After a while I started feeling guilty about locking her up. I saw other birds in the sky and wondered how it would feel like, wondered how she would feel to be free. I didn’t want to lose my pet, but the guilt nagged at me. One day I went to feed her and paused when I was closing the door. I opened the door wide and walked away. I stood at a distance to watch. She flew down to the open frame and stood at the edge, craning her neck out, looking in all directions. But she didn’t leave. She never went back inside either; she stood at the frame, perched on the boundary line separating familiarity and freedom. After a while I went back and closed it, afraid that a cat will get in and afraid that I would lose her. My conscience was sated. I had opened the door, she chose not to leave. Also after that incident my parents and many other people told me that birds raised in captivity die quickly if they are let out. They said they don’t know how to fend for themselves and find food and water. They said they often get pecked to death by other birds, like crows. So I gave up the idea of freeing her. She didn’t want to leave anyway and I didn’t want my beloved pet to die in a cruel world she didn’t know. But I still kept leaving the door open when I went to refill and clean her water dish. Sometimes I used to sit near her cage and leave the door open so that she could sit at the edge and watch the world outside, unmarred by metal bars in her view. I knew she wouldn’t leave. She was happy where she was. She just wanted to watch the world from the door at times.

Months later, I walked out of the house and saw another parrot on top of the cage – a large, wild one. My parrot was perched just near the wild parrot, only on the other side of the iron mesh. She was excited and cackling. The wild parrot flew away when it saw me. I think it was a male. But the wild one kept returning when we weren’t nearby. Over the weeks we saw it several times, and it always flew away when we approached. We laughed about their bird romance.

One fine morning, I woke up and went to feed my pet. I tickled her beak and gave her a chilli. I saw that the water dish was dirty and went to change it. I left the door open as usual, out of habit. I whistled a tune and changed the water. I walked back towards her birdhouse from the tap and was shocked to see her wobbling in the air two feet above my head, flapping her wings frantically, unsure of their full use. I dropped the water dish and ran after her screaming at her to get back in the cage. I tried to catch her but she flew higher every time I tried. She perched on top of the car for a moment and then flew to a nearby tree as I ran after her. Finally she opened her wings wide and pushed at the air with her full might. And in the flash of an eye she was gone, soaring through the air between the treetops, flapping furiously and purposefully. I walked through the woods crying for her to come back till my parents came looking for me and took me back.

I worried and worried every day. I wondered who would feed her. I worried if she would be able to find water and whether the crows would peck her to death. I wondered if the wild parrot which used to visit her would help her. That parrot, how I hated it. Before it came along she was happy in the house we built for her. Now she was gone, with no one to care for her.

In the next few days my grandpa told me he heard her cry in the morning from the nearby woods. He said there was an old tree with a hole in the side and that she might be there. I walked around the woods calling for her. The tree he told me about was too tall for me to see into the hole but I hoped she was there. One time I thought I saw her, flying out of a tree and then back in. But there were crows there too. The days went on and we stopped hearing anything. I walked through the woods everyday but never saw anything.

My family said she must have flown away, looking for food and water. There aren’t many parrots in that small wood. There was also the dark possibility that no one said out loud. She might have starved or gotten pecked. There was no way to find out.

I grieved for the loss of my pet till time made my memory foggy and my life filled with other concerns. Over the years I forgot about the parrot completely. And now, years later a conversation with a friend about freedom made me remember her again. To my surprise, life and experiences have changed how I feel about the same incident. After these many years, my pet parrot is dead for sure. If she hadn’t flown away and had stayed in the birdhouse, I would still be remembering a bird that died long ago. The difference is that I would have been remembering a life which was spent shackled to the ground, unable to take off.

I walked out the door of my house and looked at the treetops in the wood through which she had made her break for freedom all those years ago. I imagined how it would have felt, flying into the unknown, with just the thrill of flight and vague hope, not knowing where food, shelter or security would come from. She must have been afraid but she still flew.

Today I see triumph in what I saw as tragedy all those years ago. Today I understand what I didn’t understand back then- that a cage is a cage, even if it is made of love. Life is not about knowing where the next meal comes from, or being comforted by familiarity. Life is about hope, and courage. My little parrot had it, even though it took me years to figure the same out for myself.

Wings are made to fly. Who are we to put bars on the horizon?

Read More

Life & JD

To love without holding back,

To live without fearing death,

To die without regretting life,

 

and to drink without a hangover.

- SCG

Read More

How to scare airport security with dirty laundry

‘This was a bad, bad idea’ I thought to myself as I sat on the back of my friend’s bike with my head lowered against the rain. I had a flight home at 6:30 PM. How I wished I had taken the bus instead. We stopped near a shop and ran for shelter. Desperate, I called my brother in law and explained the situation. He told me to get an auto to Brigade road and that he will pick me up from there and rush to the airport. So after half an hour of gruelling, slow moving traffic in the rain, I stepped out of the auto with my bags. A few minutes later, Roshan showed up in his Santro and I jumped in and shook my wet head. ‘How will we ever make it in this traffic’ I asked. ‘Let’s see’ he said. It took us half an hour to get out of city traffic. The time was 5:30 PM. I would be late for reporting time but maybe I could still make the flight. Roshan drove like a maniac, pushing the Santro to its limits.

Miles of crazy driving later, we braked in front of the airport building at 6:00 PM. ‘Run. Run. I’ll park. Can’t stay here for more than 2 minutes. Don’t check in you duffel bag. Take it as a carry bag. No time’ He said. ‘Ok ok.’ I said and ran with my bags, not really listening. I skidded to a stop at the counter and told them my ticket number and got the ticket. Then I ran to the gate and tried to get in, but for some reason people kept pushing me out, coming in the opposite direction. ‘What the hell’ I thought and kept trying to push my way in. Finally a kindly elderly man said ‘Son’ and pointed at the board – Departure. ’Damn it. Where’s arrival’ I asked. He pointed across the floor. I thanked him and ran again. By the time I got to the check in counter, I had 10 minutes left. I didn’t really remember what Roshan had said about the bags, so I just kept saying ‘Cochin flight. 6:15. No time.’ The guy hesitated, and then asked ‘Do you have any sprays, shampoos, or anything liquid’. ‘Just get rid of any of that. I don’t care’ I said, panting. The guy thought for a second and then gave my bag back to me after putting a tag on it. My laptop bag was still with me and he gave me another tag. ‘I need this too?’ I asked. I hadn’t travelled by flight much. The guy just looked at me. ‘Whatever’.’ I said and ran looking for the security check thing.

I stood in the queue restless. When it was my turn, I put my laptop in some tray and put my backpack and the duffel bag through the scanner. Just before me, a foreign guy was being rudely told by the security guy to disassemble his camera and leave it in the tray. As I went through the metal detector, he came back to do it. I stuck my head back through the frame and asked ‘hey do I have to put my play-station in the tray too?’ ‘Play-station, railway station, put everything in the tray’ said the guard and laughed. ‘Smartass’ I muttered and went back. I went through the detector again and the guy who frisked me told me to go put my cell phone in the tray. Pissed off, I ran back again. Then when I went back in again, I remembered I had another phone in my other pocket and rushed back yet again red faced. People watched me with amused expressions. Finally I got through the detector and past the frisker, saw my backpack coming out of the scanner, grabbed it, stuffed my laptop and play-station portable and cell phones into it and ran, making squeaking noises with my wet shoe soles. As I ran, there was an airlines guy yelling ‘Hurry, Hurry’ from the side of the passage. I nodded and ran like the wind through the passage connecting the building to the plane. Unbidden, an image popped into my head - myself as a boy, running after the school bus, with other kids cheering ‘Run Sharath run.’ If this was a Bollywood movie, they would have showed the two scenes in adjacent boxes on the screen, in slow motion. I dashed through the open door of the plane and punched the air with my fist in triumph. The crew shut the door right after I got in. Smiling, I showed my boarding pass to the air hostess and she pointed me to a nearby window seat. I sat down and stretched my legs, still smiling ear to ear. ‘This sure feels good’ I thought as I settled down in my seat. ‘Damn this seat is comfortable. And so much leg space?’ I looked around. There was a curtain behind me and the window was at a comfortable distance to me to lounge back and peer outside. The air hostess brought me some wine and a few magazines. ‘Wow. I never knew Air India was so awesome’ I thought.’ I mean compared to that dingy flight I came in last time, with my legs cramped for space and chairs that reclined only on paper, this was heaven’. They gave me a nice lunch with chicken kebab and all kinds of tasty things and the food tray folded out from under the arm of my seat in a complex set of manoeuvres like a scene out of the movie ‘Transformers’.

After 45 minutes of relaxation I walked into Cochin airport and went to get my baggage. I stood at the conveyor belt, calm and happy that I was going home after a triumphant last minute dash like that. I checked my ticket and was surprised to see ‘Business class’ written. ‘Oh I got a free upgrade from economy. So that’s why the seats were so good’ I thought, laughing at my dumbness and continued waiting for my bags with the confident, and in retrospect – dumb smile of a guy who expected his bag to turn up any second. But as everybody else trickled out and the conveyor belt offered less bags than chicken pieces at our hostel mess, my smile faded. I stood there with a puzzled expression and started rewinding the events of the past 2 hours in my head – my brother in law’s advice, the check in counter, and the tags. ‘The tags!!’ I thought and looked at the one I was holding in my hand. ‘Wait...So this tag wasn’t like given so that I can recognize the similar tag on my duffel bag?’ My eyes bulged as I understood it was supposed to be put on my backpack and not as a token. ’But that means…’ I saw myself putting my bags into the scanner and taking only the backpack out of it and running. I gasped. “God damn it. So they don’t send that bag directly to the luggage area you dummy’ I thought to myself. ‘Of course they won’t. How the hell would they know which one goes to the luggage and which one with you?’ answered another voice in my head. ‘So the tag doesn’t give them that info?’ ‘No!! You IDIOT!!’ I swallowed and muttered ‘Uh-oh.’ Ten minutes later, I was in the office of an airport officer. ‘So you left your bag in the scanner and ran?’ he asked. ’Uh yeah’ said I. ‘I see. And what do you do?’ ‘Uh…I’m a management student’. He twisted his lip up in a smirk. His assistant came back in, ‘Sir. I called up Bangalore. They have the bag. They handed it over to airport security. They just finished checking for bomb threats and cleared it.’ I put my fist up to my mouth and tried to keep a straight face. ‘Airport security? Bomb threat?’ I thought. There was nothing but dirty socks and underwear in that bag, and maybe a deodorant spray. ‘I wonder if they called sniffer dogs’ I suppressed a chuckle. ‘Maybe they thought my deodorant spray was a liquid explosive.’ ‘You think this is funny?’ the officer asked, narrowing his eyes. ‘No sir’, I said, biting my lip. ‘You can collect your bag at lost and found at Bangalore when you get back. Now leave’, he said.’ ‘Yes sir’, I replied. On my way out I stopped and thanked him but he just sat there and glared so I left in a hurry, wondering how I manage to do these things.

A few weeks later I stood at the lost & found section at Bangalore airport describing my green bag. ‘Oh you’re the laundry bag guy’, said the girl, laughing. A few minutes later she handed me my bag and said with a smirk, ‘Congratulations. You created a bomb scare with just socks and underwear.’

Note: The blunders given above were performed by an experienced trouble maker. Don’t try this yourself.

Read More

Notorious student ‘Tintumon’ expelled for modifying old proverb

Changanasherry, Kerala. Controversy has broken out about the expulsion of 5^th std. student Tintu Vijayan  ( known in the playgrounds as ‘Tintumon’) from Sacred Heart’s Elementary School for writing an old proverb with a twist on the class blackboard. The incident occurred on the morning of 5^th April, when Tintu allegedly came to class late. According to school sources, Tintu is often tardy on Monday mornings.

However this time, the class teacher, Mrs. Ammini Abraham took offence to his misdemeanour and set him to work writing the proverb “the early bird got the worm” 10 times on the blackboard in an effort to set an example to the other students and teach them the importance of rising early as well. However at this point, Mrs. Ammini got a phone call and had to step out of the class for a few minutes. On returning to the class she found Tintu standing in front of the blackboard being applauded by his classmates and even exchanging high fives with some of them. The confused Miss. Ammini looked at the blackboard and found written ten times in capital letters “The early worm got eaten”. She also accuses Tintu of having drawn a suggestive cartoon of her in one corner (something that has been denied by Tintu).

The shocked and visibly upset Miss. Ammini stormed to the principal’s office to register a complaint straight away, following which Tintu was expelled. Tintu’s parents has filed a case against the school and also contacted the education minister of the state Mr. M.A Baby who has assured them of launching a full enquiry into the incident. However since the documentary evidence was destroyed when the class leader and Tintu’s close friend Akhil Pradeesh erased the blackboard, the investigation will be difficult, added the minister. Eyewitness accounts are varying from time to time as Tintu’s classmates are telling a different story each time. The school authorities allege that ‘Tintumon’ is a notorious gang-leader in the class and that the students are supporting him either because they are afraid of him, or because they too have been influenced by his rebellious ways.

The school authorities have also come under criticism from various prominent literary figures in society, for suppressing literary talent. Popular author and activist, Prof. Anne Vincent argues that Tintu in fact applied a well known literary practice called deconstruction, in which an old and accepted literary piece is deconstructed and reconstructed in a new light.

Tintu has so far remained silent about the debate on his expulsion. The expulsion has reportedly made Tintu busier than ever, as he has been in the neighbourhood playground playing various games ever since he was expelled. Your correspondent finally tracked Tintu down as he was taking an ice cream break at a nearby shop during a game of cricket. When asked if the motive behind his act was literary deconstruction, or just plain mischief (as alleged by the school), Tintumon shrugged and said, “I don’t like waking up early. Ammini can go to hell.”

Read More

Footnotes in history

“A man who can keep his childhood dreams in all their purity,
Preserving them in his naked and defenceless breast,
Who, despite the laughter of this world, dares to live as he had dreamed in his childhood,
Down to his last day: yes, that is a man, a man in all he is.”

This was a poem that came in a newspaper, the clipping of which was sent by Henning Von Tresckow to his wife Erika a few days before he sent her a disguised farewell letter.

Henning Von Tresckow was a Major General in the German military and one of the principal organizers of German resistance against Adolf Hitler. Tresckow was a veteran who had volunteered for the army at the age of sixteen and became the youngest lieutenant in the army in 1918. He served in the first world and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st class for exemplary courage and independent action against enemy forces.

Though a die hard patriot, he was appalled by the atrocities done under Hitler’s orders such as the mass shootings of Jewish women and children, the treatment of prisoners of war, the Commissar order, etc. After Tresckow witnessed the killing of captured soldiers in 1941, he decided that Hitler’s government had to be overthrown. He organized several failed attempts on Hitler’s life, the last and most famous being the July 20th, 1944 plot carried out by Clauss von Stauffenberg, whom he had recruited in 1942. Stauffenberg planted a bomb at a meeting attended by Hitler on July 20th, however due to some unexpected problems, Hitler survived the bomb blast even though his right arm was badly injured. The bomb killed four other men in the hut and would have succeeded in killing Hitler if the conference table leg hadn’t shielded him from the impact. If the assassination attempt and the following coup had succeeded, the war may have been over in 1944. The July 20th plot was depicted in the popular movie ‘Valkyrie’, although the character of Tresckow wasn’t given the deserved importance in the movie. 


A few days before the assassination attempt, when asked by Stauffenberg why they should risk their lives so blatantly when the military situation suggested that the Allies would end the dictatorship soon enough, Tresckow replied 
“The assassination has to take place, whatever the cost. Even if it doesn’t succeed, we have to try. Now it is no longer the object of the assassination that matters, but rather to show the whole world and history that the German resistance movement dared to gamble everything, even at the risk of its own life. All the rest, in the end, is merely secondary”.
In this, they succeeded. Even though the world will by and large remember Hitler whenever they talk about pre-WW II Germany, Tresckow and his men ensured that history records, at least in the footnotes that there were men in Germany who resisted Hitler and that they died for their principles.


On hearing about the failure of the attempt on Hitler’s life, Tresckow decided to commit suicide saying he wont let their enemies have the satisfaction of taking his life as well. However to protect his co-conspirators towards whom investigations may lead if he committed suicide, he carefully faked an enemy ambush giving attention to details such as the submachine gun he was holding and the grenade he pressed against his belly and resulted in his death. For a while. people believed he died in a lethal skirmish and his body was taken back to Germany and buried on his family estate with military honours. However a month later. investigations pointed at his involvement in the conspiracy and the SS came to dig up and dispose of his body. His wife was arrested and his children placed in foster homes, however she was later released and survived the war.
Henning von Tresckow’s parting words to his cousin and co-conspirator Fabian von Schlabrendorff were


"The whole world will vilify us now, but I am still totally convinced that we did the right thing. Hitler is the archenemy not only of Germany but of the world. When, in few hours' time, I go before God to account for what I have done and left undone, I know I will be able to justify what I did in the struggle against Hitler. God promised Abraham that He would not destroy Sodom if just ten righteous men could be found in the city, and so I hope that for our sake God will not destroy Germany. No one among us can complain about his death, for whoever joined our ranks put on the shirt of Nessus*. A man's moral worth is established only at the point where he is ready to give up his life in defence of his convictions."


* The shirt of Nessus was the poisoned shirt that killed Heracles in Greek mythology.
References:

1. Valkyrie: the Plot to Kill Hitler: by Philipp von Boeselager, a memoir by the last survivor of the conspiracy.
2. http://www.gdw-berlin.de/bio/ausgabe_mit-e.php?id=13
3. http://www.wikipedia.org/

Read More