Everyone in India knows the National Bravery Awards, given to children every year on Republic Day. Almost nobody knows that they exist because of a fourteen year old boy who climbed a burning tent pole to save Jawaharlal Nehru, and then spent the rest of his life forgotten and poor. His name was Harish Chandra Mehra. In 1957, Prime Minister Nehru was watching a Ramleela performance at the Ramlila grounds in Delhi, surrounded by dignitaries and a large crowd. Harish, a fourteen year old boy scout, was on duty near the VIP tent. A spark from the fireworks landed on the huge cloth tent, the shamiana, and it began to catch fire. Above a crowd of hundreds of people who had not yet realised what was happening. He did not freeze and he did not run. He pulled out the small knife every scout carries, climbed up a high pole beside the burning tent, and began cutting the ropes and the flaming cloth away so the fire could not spread across the whole shamiana and collapse it onto the people below. While he was up there, his hand touched a live electrical wire. He was thrown from the pole and fell. His hands were badly burnt. He had saved hundreds of people, including the Prime Minister of the country. Nehru was so moved that he asked the government to create a national award for brave children. On the fourth of February 1958, Harish became the first child in India ever to receive the National Bravery Award, handed to him by Nehru himself. That is where the story is supposed to end. It did not. His family was poor. A few years later he had to leave his studies and take a clerk's job to support them. He never rose far. He spent his life in the same old house in Chandni Chowk where he had been born. Every Republic Day, an old man sat in that house and watched brave children ride down the parade route on television, receiving the award that exists because of what he did as a boy. And almost no one watching knew his name. He saved a Prime Minister and started a tradition that has honoured thousands of children since. The country kept the tradition and forgot the boy.