Thoughts in Words

When I joined Army, father had seven more years to go for retirement. That seemed a long time. To top it, as I was leaving home to join my Unit, he said something that elated me no end. He said, “You don’t worry about the house. You enjoy your life”. In Malayalam there is a saying, which loosely translated would mean that what the patient wished, the doctor prescribed. That was the case here. The house was not my worry. As we were growing up we, the siblings knew that we were not exactly rich. But we were oblivious to the actual situation. Or so I thought. But later as we discuss our past, my siblings say that they more or less knew the position and that I was the only one ignorant! This ignorance was mistaken belief number one. The long and short of it is, I should have sent money home. I never did. For that I put the blame squarely on my father’s shoulders. It is alright that I should have understood and all that, but my father had no business to pour such sweet music in my ea...

Mathi is Sardine. Medal is medal, of course. Both are as different as chalk and cheese. Or as different as carburettor and radiator, right? With that introduction and explanation of the title, now to the blog. What’s the connection you ask? That’s the story. Those who took their valuable time to read my earlier blogs must have grasped with your quick uptake that I was not exactly brilliant in academics (where else was I, is a moot question best left at that), with particular reference to Mathematics. (Later I realised it was not the entire Mathematics as such, but Arithmetic, one of the three important Rs!). My mother used to say that I was born like that. It seems if I were given two toffees in one hand and three in the other and asked how many toffees in total, I used to throw all the toffees and walk away in anger. So you can see it was not my fault. I was simply, as they say now, wired like that! And I passed all my school exams right upto the school leaving one, only beca...

I reached Meerut in Nov of that year to attend SSB (Service Selection Board). Winter had already set in there. As warm clothing I only had a pull over, an old and worn out one in a mild colour, which we wore in Madras only when somebody in the family had fever! There were a bunch of candidates at the station, all well clad. As is the wont of Army, everything is very finely tuned. We were all ushered into a vehicle and taken to our accommodation and told to report next morning. Next morning we were given an introductory talk and an explanation about the general conduct of the SSB. It was well known that just one or two get selected in any SSB. There were many cases when the entire SSB got washed out with none selected. When I saw the other candidates in my batch, all tall and well built with handlebar moustaches, dressed in suits, I knew I was in the wrong place. I cleared my mind about any chance of being selected that I might have harboured till then. I cleared all the unwanted ...

While in Service, it is imperative that you learn golf, as early as possible. Say, as a Captain. The later you pick up, you lose the lustre. So it is almost mandatory. There are a few reasons. Let me see whether I can list some. 1.         It is an imperious game.   And you are an Army Officer, right? Army is a generic term to include Navy and Air Force. Like ‘man’ includes ‘woman’, notwithstanding feminists deriding me as a misogynist. Have you seen the gait of golfers (alas, though only) in the golf course? Right royal imperious! 2.         Once you pick up a little bit – a wee bit is enough, you will come into the radar of the General and find yourself playing with him. You will be in his foursome. A strapping young lad who would even be termed as smart and capable, even in uniform! 3.         Once you are in the General’s foursome, you have outsmarted your CO, the...

Having been selected for the Army and having undergone the basic Military Training, we were given 14 days leave before joining the Units to which we were posted. During this leave I went to my home town in Kerala to visit my grandparents with whom I had spent my early childhood and imbibed their teachings. On the first day as I was going for bath in the kolam (a built up pond/tank typical of old Kerala) of our house, my grandfather, who was a kalari pyattu expert, stopped me. He stopped me, made me turn this way and that, almost making me pirouette around and looked at me critically all over, rather inspected my bare body.   He then expressed his surprise as to how such a small, thin person like me could be selected in to the Army. He seemed quite disappointed; with me or the Army, I am not certain. You do not joke with your grandfather with such questions! I smiled and thought to myself that it was all due to the early physical and macho training he had given me, before I was 1...

I was Commissioned in to the Army as a Short Service Officer. That meant that after five years I would have had to look for another job. That is if one decides to opt out, or is not approved for the Permanent Commission. I thought I had slim chance of being approved. Therefore it was imperative that I learn a few things on the go. One must always plan for the future to avoid any unpleasant surprise. There was no way I was going to come back home and tell my parents that I needed them to feed me and clothe me. In those crucial five years I learnt some of the following and then some, non military tasks to add to some tricks I was taught as a child:- Ø Ball room dancing. You know, Foxtrot, Quick step, Waltz etc. Oh, they were so lovely and graceful! This was not formally taught in any dancing class or so. Only by friends and their girl friends! To tell you the secret, I was initiated into Foxtrot (the simplest of all) by a senior Air Force Officer’s daughter. God Bless her. All yo...

You see, I had, in my child hood, considered three professions as noble. Teacher, Doctor and Soldier. By the time I was in high school, I evaluated the probability of my becoming any one of these. I knew I couldn’t be a doctor. You got to be a brilliant student for that. No way. A teacher?   Well, okay, not bad. For a rookie teacher. But then as time passes you got to upgrade yourself (this is even worse for the doctor). Now that means I got to keep on studying not to get trapped in a time warp. Soldier? With my build and all that, that was way out of the question. I could never imagine myself as a valiant soldier on a horse back wielding swords, which I couldn’t even lift as I learnt from my visits to the museums. But I was enamoured by the image of a chivalrous knight saving a girl from distress. Well, to cut the long story short, I, by the will of God, became an Army Officer. Oh, no I am jumping. I had become a teacher by teaching some cousins in my early student ...