Review: The War Diary of Asha-San by Lt Bharati ‘Asha’ Sahay Choudhry
Lt Bharati “Asha” Sahay Choudhry or Asha-san’s war diary is an engaging account of her teenage years when she joined the Indian National Army’s (INA) Rani of Jhansi Regiment to overthrow the British Raj.Born in Kobe in 1928, Asha-san (san is an honorific suffix meaning “dear” in the Japanese language) wrote this evocative account of her teenage years in Japanese, her first language. In 1972, she rewrote her war memoirs in Hindi – “from scraps of paper” and from memories of her “tumultuous teenage years in Japan”.…