An archive of lived service

What this is

The Living Epics Project is a digital oral-history archive dedicated to documenting the lived experiences of Indian Armed Forces veterans. Each interview is recorded and curated as a primary oral record, intended for long-term preservation and future reference.

The archive treats personal memory as a legitimate historical source — situating individual recollection within the wider frame of military and social history, rather than beneath it.

Why it exists

Sustained dialogue across generations has thinned, and with it the preservation of first-hand testimony. Lives rich in individual history — particularly those rooted in institutional service — too often remain undocumented, or confined to private recollection until they are lost.

By building a structured, accessible archive of recorded conversations, the project works to ensure that these accounts survive, and remain available for future engagement and research.

What it covers — and what it does not

The archive documents the experiences of Indian Armed Forces veterans across branches and generations, including both combat and non-combat service, institutional life, and reflection beyond active duty.

It deliberately does not engage in operational analysis, strategic commentary, or political evaluation. The emphasis remains, throughout, on lived experience and personal recollection as historical record.

How each record is made

I began this archive in June 2025, the month I left the Rashtriya Indian Military College. Every record on this site has been made the same way, by me, from the first message to the last footnote. This is the method, step by step.

1. Finding the person. Officers come to the archive by introduction. Most are alumni of the Rashtriya Indian Military College, now retired, reached through the College’s old-boy network; several were referred by an officer I had already recorded; a few were introduced by my school. I do not approach anyone cold.
2. Asking. Each officer receives a written questionnaire in advance — usually twelve to sixteen questions, built around his own career from whatever is on the public record, and ending with the same request every time: the one story whose fading he would feel as a loss. Questions are open. They are written so as not to assume anything he has not said himself; where one has assumed and he has corrected it, the correction is printed and the question with it.
3. Recording. The officer chooses the medium. Some have sat with me in person; some have sent voice recordings over several evenings; some have written their answers out by hand. The register below records which. I do not press for one over another — the medium a person is comfortable in is the one that produces the truest account.
4. Transcribing. Recordings are transcribed in full, then cleaned only of the stumbles of speech — repetitions, false starts, fillers. Nothing is reordered, reworded or smoothed. Where the officer is uncertain, the uncertainty stands. Written answers are reproduced as written, with the officer’s own abbreviations and service usage intact.
5. Checking. Names, places, dates, units and events are checked against the public record — the Gazette of India, published service records, regimental and squadron histories — and footnoted so that a reader can see what is memory and what is record. Where the two differ, the officer’s account is kept as given and the record is set beside it in a note. The archive does not correct a man’s memory on his behalf.
6. Review and consent. Nothing is published until the officer has read his own record and approved it. Anything he asks withheld is withheld, including after publication, and the page says that something has been withheld rather than closing the gap silently. The archive does not publish operational, tactical or strategically sensitive detail, and it does not publish the contact details or private documents of any contributor. The full commitments are on the Ethics & Consent page.
7. Publishing. Each record is laid out the same way: a factual masthead; a feature story, which is the officer’s own Keystone where he has named one and the archive’s reading of his account where he has not, and which says which; an editor’s note; the full interview with footnotes; the Keystone; and an Associated Archive of photographs, documents and a service record. Where an officer has not yet answered a question, the page shows the question and says so.

The photographs and documents on this site are published with the permission of the officers who supplied them. Where a photograph is of low quality it is because it is the only one that exists, and the archive would rather have it than not.

The interviews, in order

Every officer recorded or in progress, with how the account was taken and the year it was begun. An interview here is not a single sitting — questions go out, replies come back over weeks, and gaps are followed up — so the register records the year rather than a day.

Twelve records published, one in transcription, two forthcoming. Four interviews were begun in 2025, the archive’s first six months; ten in 2026.

Beyond the spoken word

Alongside the recorded conversations, the project maintains an Associated Archives section: materials voluntarily shared by contributors — recommended readings, written reflections, photographs, documents, or objects of personal and professional significance.

Together, these extend the record beyond the interview, and give each conversation its fuller context.