Good Friends Are Not Always Good!

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 12. In the Academy, I had represented my Company in all kinds of sports and games, including boxing and in military competitions like obstacle course, cross-country running etc. I was reputed to be tough. But didn’t tell him all that. He might have wondered about the standards of the Army.

However I was commissioned into the Corps of Electrical (later on termed Electronics) and Mechanical Engineers (EME) and was posted to Baroda to undergo the Young Officers’ Course. There they taught us technical, administrative and organisational things to prepare us for our tenures in our future Units. Corps of EME is the maintenance engineers of the Army. It is our job to ensure that all Army equipments are maintained in battle worthy condition at all times. We are a Technical, but combatant outfit and not the outright Fighting Arms such as Infantry and others. I was not very happy that I was commissioned in to EME and not Infantry. After all I had joined Army to fight, not to repair equipments.

After the nine months of training at Baroda, we all got posted to various Units. There are always smart alecks. One of them ‘found out’ beforehand about our postings and declared that I was posted to Madras. I almost cried. Here I was with all adventure in me who wanted to go to any remote part of India, but was posted back to Madras. Fortunately when the actual posting came after a couple of days, the officer next to me in the list was posted to Madras and I was posted to Shillong. Assam was a place that had fascinated me from early childhood, by the vernacular travelogues I had read and so I was happy. Those days Meghalaya had not formed and so Shillong was in Assam. I reached my Unit after a long, very long arduous journey. That in itself was an adventure!

Having reached the Unit, I entered in the syndrome of being a dutiful rookie engineer. However my fundamental interests were in physical activities. There was no thrill in engineering jobs. And chances of indulging in my interests were minimal in that Unit. And so I began volunteering, against the dictum as told to us by seniors, “never volunteer in the Army”. I volunteered three times.

There was, a Physical Training Course, where we learn all kinds of physical activities at a higher level including all sorts of games and sports. There is even a Corps for this. After undergoing the basic and advance courses, one could even seek permanent transfer to this Corps. They train officers and men to be trainers, instructors and coaches. At senior levels, one could be Managers of National Teams even, which I came to know much later. I thought this course suited me to a T, though there was no intention of transferring myself to that Corps. I volunteered for the PT course.

Sometime later it was the turn of the Commando Course. This course is mandatory for all Young Officers (YOs) of the Infantry and is tough. It is in this course that you are trained to catch a snake, cook and eat it. Overall it is a physically very demanding course. PT course mentioned above, one may be able to do even at a slightly later stage. But not commando course. For us in the Services, it is not necessary to undergo this course, but there was no embargo. Our jobs were not so physically demanding. But I wanted to do this for personal satisfaction. I could go around with a puffed up chest, by proving my toughness to me. Self confidence, as it were. I volunteered.

You must have heard of Para Commandos. Those with the Maroon Beret. They are the toughest in our Army. All those people, both Jawans and Officers are volunteers from their parent Regiments. To earn the maroon beret one has to volunteer, undergo a tough selection process and then complete the period of tougher probation successfully. Their training is at a much higher level of toughness than commando course, which is actually basic. Para (chute) jumping is their forte. Only then they can be dropped ‘behind enemy lines’, which is where they are supposed to operate. Stealthily, silently and in small teams. While being all-rounders, each one of them is an expert in some lethality or other. How thrilling! Right from my training time I had admired them. I wanted to earn the maroon beret myself. So, you guessed, it, I volunteered.

Now, as a freshly minted 2/Lt, a rank now abolished, I was in a Unit located next to the Head Quarters of the formation. There were young Captains as Staff Officers in the HQ. They were all from the Infantry. All of us were staying in the same Officers Mess and were friends, thick as thieves. All my applications for volunteering were to be routed through these Captains. They threw each of my application in their dust bins, with equal alacrity with which I had applied. Their reasoning? “You are comfortably sitting in EME, why the hell do you want to go and break your legs?”

They were my good friends. I thought then that I would have been better off without them! I am still smarting. I am unabashedly jealous of the maroon beret. Never mind the PT and Commando courses. Maroon beret is a different thing altogether. The job of those berets is the stuff of legends, what you can only read in espionage thrillers and watch in action filled war movies. They never speak of what exactly they do or did. Real heroes, unsung and unknown, and the better off for it! No idiotic, meddling media, no proof of valour.

Right through my service, I ensured that as the maintenance man of the fighting arms’ weapons and equipments, I never ever raised an eye brow about their “breaking” and my having to “mend” those broken weapons and equipments. And if it is that of a para commando unit, no regulations apply. I took pride in it, again for my own satisfaction.

Now as I sit back and reflect, I wonder about the saying that whatever happens, happens for the good. Does it?