Second Career

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 you have to do is take the first step. Then you pick up and become an expert, often practising in the bathroom.

Ø Driving. Army taught us driving on a medium truck and we graduated to the jeep-the iconic Willys Jeep, and the then ubiquitous Ambassador Car. Can you imagine that, that 4x4 Willys had only three forward and one reverse gear (discounting the 4x4)! And it was practically an open jeep, with a names’ sake tarpaulin on top. It is so sad that the Willys icon vanished years ago and later the right royal Ambassador too. No luxury car of any time can give the comfort of the rear seat of the Ambassador, I can tell you. But that jeep! So romantic. And like an elf in the battlefield.

Ø Tricks. Now some of this stuff was learnt from those experienced in the Army. Other juvenile tricks were taught by the good old uncles and relatives at home, when I was running around as a lost-case kid. Without distinguishing which by whom, as I am sanguine that you can discern nice and proper, following is that list.

·       Smoking a lit full king size cigarette without touching it by hand.

·       Drinking a full bottle of beer non-stop, in one go.

·      Holding two empty beer bottles vertically in the hands to go down and stretch forward with the support of the bottles. Only the bottles and your toe should touch the ground. Keep one bottle the farthest and come back with the support of the other vertical bottle and stand up, without any part of the body touching the ground. This is actually a competition. A party game, best played after downing a couple of rotguts.

·    Sitting on a horizontally kept beer bottle, with only one heel on the ground, the other heel resting on the former’s toes and lighting a cigarette. Lighting with a match stick. Cigarette lighters were a fancy and sparse those days. And a lighter makes it easy. Matchstick is original.

·        Creating various sounds like that of a train, conch, etc. Many can’t.

·        Tapping on the table to make the sound of trot, canter and gallop.

·        Kind of spooling action with the thumbs and forefingers.

·      Folding one palm and touching the base of this palm with the open palm of the other hand and alternating this at speed.

·        Criss-crossing the knees and palms, fast.

·      Moving with toes and heels in and out, opposite and parallel– part of dance   steps.

·     Keeping the fore and middle fingers twisted at the nostrils and rotating it to make the fingers straight without the fingers being dislodged. (My father’s favourite!). Don’t shove the fingers in. Yuck!

·  Sticking various longish objects to the palm and raising the palm facing downwards.

·   Balancing a stick on its end on the palm, moving it to all the fingers and thumb and back to the palm. As an addition throwing the stick up in the air from the balanced position on the palm/fingers to rotate it on the horizontal axis and balance the other end back on the palm.

·      Juggling with two of any round objects. I hadn’t graduated to three and more.

·    Holding a glass on the tip of the open palm, striking the palm with the other hand, causing the glass to be thrown up to rotate in the air. On its way down do catch it!

·      Thumb cutting. Everybody knows it.

·     Holding a pencil between the thumbs of both hands and rotating it inside out and backwards, without the pencil slipping off, of course.

·      Moving/ jumping forward and backward on the floor like a grasshopper with only the toes and palms touching the floor. Secret tip: Be close to the floor. That’s how grasshoppers are.

·     Stretching one leg forward and sitting on the other leg, without bending the  straight leg and getting back to standing position. Repeat with the other leg.

·    Standing three steps away from a wall and touching the wall with the nose-nose only and coming back. No hands.

·   Keeping one palm on the table with the fingers outstretched and with the pointed end of a knife striking a point by the side of the stretched forefinger. Now move the forefinger left and right to strike the same point with the pointed end of knife. To be done very fast.

·    Forming shadows of various animals and birds on the wall with your hands and fingers.

I am sure by now you are able to distinguish those taught by the Army and those by senior relatives, karanavars or karnors, as they are known in Malayalam. In fact there are more but those have to do more with body controls, twists, turns and jumps which are actually initiations into kalari payattu, which are not being listed here. Those were from the exclusive domain of my grandfather and were taught with all seriousness and reverence. He was not given to silly things like shadow play and all. He made my body ductile and malleable, which stood me in good stead during the training I had to undergo in the Army. The physical aspect of the training was a breeze, thanks to him.

I thought I could use this exhaustive list and those unlisted, for a second career, if I were eased out of the venerable Army.

How?

Ø On the Marina Beach. Every evening go there, such a serene spot it was those days, spread a good cotton towel on the splendid sand and perform all those body tricks and other smaller tricks. For good measure, catch hold of some enthusiastic, curious, inquisitive kids and teach them some. It should have earned me my daily bread butter and jam, I thought. And nice evenings at the world’s second longest beach.

Ø Be a Driver. This in itself had two options.

·   One, be a taxi driver in the splendorous Madras City. Those days the taxis were only black and yellow coloured. Very distinguished. How I will get a taxi, I had not thought of. On hind sight, maybe I would have had to ask father to fund it for me. There was no crowd funding technique those days. A very well groomed, clean shaven well dressed taxi driver with a neat hair cut and all.  On top of that, conversant enough in English. Wearing the OLQ (Officer Like Qualities) on my sleeve and a well pressed suit and tie kept in the car for any eventuality. If any lady passenger, like Anglo Indian types (oh, by the way, those days there were so many of them in Madras, those lively breed of people - I miss them), wanted to go to Abbotsbury for a dance, I could not only take them there but could be their dance partner too. With my suit on. Abbotsbury used to have dance sessions regularly.

·   Two, be a bus driver of Ethiraj Women’s College. You see, my college and Ethitraj were just across a small bridge. No other men’s college in Madras was blessed that way to have a women’s college so adjacent. That is design by Providence! We considered Ethiraj girls as “our own”. Sometimes there used to be fights with New College when they came all the way and encroached. As for us, we used to line up at the wall in the morning, to feast our eyes. We also had our own favourite spots at the wall. We all respected each other’s spots and spaces and favourite girls. We never had an internal fight on these issues. You must note that point. It was cooperation by definition. Sometimes our favourite girls changed by the day of the week. There was no restriction on the number of girls one could imaginatively love. All told therefore it would have been an honour for me to be their driver. A young, smart, well dressed and a physically fit one at that, well versed in unarmed combat, (quite useful at certain times) and take them en masse wherever they wanted to go. Since they were good in sports, the destination must have been stadiums, more often than not, which would have suited me too.

None of these dreams which I had nursed came true, as is the wont of dreams. I was given the PC (Permanent Commission).