Mathi and Medal

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 because my mother was behind me to teach, coax, cajole, threaten and slap me to practice Maths. She also was behind my English, but there she somehow didn’t have to work so hard as the dreaded Maths, by her own admission. In fact it was she who passed all my Maths exams and not me!

By the time I was finishing school, my father wanted me to be an Engineer! He knew the war going on in the house on Maths and he thought of me as an Engineer! It was preposterous. It was absolutely absurd given the scenario. I think all his senses failed him in this aspect. His hearing and sight obviously and I think even his skin! If I were in his place, my skin would have peeled the way mother used to go at me. I think he must have had a real thick skin. But the funny thing was, I joined Army after my BSc, majoring in Physics with Maths and Chemistry as subsidiaries and then this Army made me an Engineer! Can you believe that? The Army took the side of my father, dismissing my inadequacies. The only defence I have for this is, that it is only due to my father’s wish, howsoever unfounded it was, that the Cosmic pushed me to it, carried me in his hands and shoulders, walked with me all the way with his hands on my back, extolling me. And made me qualify to be one. You can fight against your mother, you can argue with your father, but when it comes to that Superpower, the Almighty, in the form of Army, you can’t do a fig. You become what your Army wished. In my case what my father wished, coincided.

Now that Almighty comes in various forms. One, it came as Army. Then it came in two-three human forms. Like Balarama for Krishna. The Protectors - my course mates. The first one was SKN. This fellow had already done his AMIE and was to do Part C of that exam, when he got selected to the Army. We were in the same course, same company, and same platoon! On hind sight I know it was all ordained! We both got the same Corps and both landed for the Young Officers’ Course in Baroda. There we were to learn things technical, with emphasis on automobile technology, apart from other things. There I was, an idiot who did not know the difference between a carburettor and a radiator! (Refer para no 1 ante).  SKN and I became roommates in Baroda. As each night as we lay down to sleep, looking at the ceiling in the darkness, he would verbally explain the engine, the clutch, the gear box, the differential and all that as would be covered the next day in the class. Not to forget carburettor and radiator. He, without being conscious of it, explained those to me like poetry! For him anything mechanical was poetry. Thus what was taught in the class next day became easy for me to understand. And I got through in that course. Or was it me? My Mother in school, SKN in YO’s!

After a few years came the Degree Engineering Course. Many of our course mates were together. So were SKN and I. By now he was married with two lovely kids; a boy and a girl. We began our combined study. Now this SKN had a particular problem in this course. In the exam, he will start from Q1 and carry on in sequence. Now this idiot (I can now call him that, though it is blasphemous still) if gets stuck in the third question, will not leave it. If he had attempted like anybody else, he could have scored centum. Did I say he was the brilliant sort? I didn’t? I am sorry. He was super brilliant. He knew the subjects backwards, often stumping the teachers. Now he is stuck in the third question and will not leave it unless he solves it and draws the two thick underlines! How the hell is the answer so elusive! By then the three hours are up! But he is quite thrilled. I bloody well didn’t leave it. Solved it, hahaha and all that. But the marks? 60%. That’s the kind of chap he was.

As an aside I must say this. One day in his quarters, his son who was all of four years old was running after butterflies ignoring his mother’s call to study. She admonished him thus: You will keep playing like Rajendran and will become useless just like him! My best friend’s wife!

Mathi? Wait, I am coming to it.

Well, as luck would have it, midway of that course we had to be in separate degree courses, SKN and I. Then I got two messiahs as replacement to the one! Bala and Sri.  They took me in their fold and my combined studies continued with them. Now you may want to ask why I needed combined studies instead of studying on my own. But you will not ask, for you know, it would be a stupid question. Both these characters were also brilliant. The latter one went on to become a well deserved Gen! Bala was a great singer who could melt you with all those romantic Hindi songs. He was a divine singer. But there was this Das fellow, who would come up with Shammi Kapoor type songs, the “Ya-hoo” variety each time Bala finished his melody in a get-together! Das didn’t like the mushy stuff! But that is another story. Das was not in our study team. He had his own. Bala, a Tanjoreian, brought up in Calcutta could speak a million languages. About Bhojpuri he would tell us: You must listen to Bhojpuri from girl. Sadly, I never had that opportunity. One day I hope to listen. So 2/3^rd of our combined study time in one our houses (by then I too had married) in rotation went in songs by Bala and other general gup- shup much to Sri’s chagrin and to the wonder of our of our wives, which became a talking point for them in the get-togethers. Sri was more at the business end of the study!

Just one more point I would like to make before you accuse me of digressing from mathi. Once we were at the chapter of Induction Motors, in Electrical Engineering. (By the way our Degree Course was an integrated one. Mechanical, Electrical and Electronics, all). As it happened I had my finals of Billiards tournament on that evening. I played the finals and won. That story, some other time. Is it alright for these two close friends and course mates of mine right from the basic training days, to refuse to come and watch me play and win? They were busy studying. You call them friends? On top of that, the next day I joined them in the studies and requested to go over the chapter on Induction Motors. They refused point blank. Point blank! Especially Sri. Bala was a little more accommodating, on my sorrowful pleas. Not Sri. He put his future General’s foot down! And what do you think was the compulsory question in the Electrical Engineering exam worth 20 marks? Induction Motors! I am still foggy about induction motors. Not that I am......well how many times should I repeat that? With their help of three years, I came to be an Engineer.

But that is not the story about! Sri and Bala were Brahmins. So no mathi there.

Then came a time I was undergoing something called the Senior Management Course. And SKN was an Instructor in that Military College. Intelligent people like him get repeated posting as Instructors in Military Institutions. He was in the faculty of Mechanical Engineering and so was not in my faculty. Thank God!

Army instructors have a terrible habit of giving you assignments on the Saturdays to be completed and submitted on the coming Mondays! Absolute sadism. They make it a point to screw up your week end right royally. Now my friend SKN was staying with his family in the Officers’ Quarters and I was in the Single Accommodation. His son was in college studying elsewhere and his daughter was waiting to join college. Every other day SKN used to come to my room and invite me over for dinner. Time went. A stage came when I had to prepare for my Special Study Presentation. Now this was serious. Not for SKN. When I protested and tried to decline his invitations, he kept luring me by saying: today she has fried mathi for you. The preparation of this special study was not a week end job! It took very many days. I protested and denied vehemently. His argument. “Are you trying to top the course and get the gold medal?” Now I had no argument against that. He knew me better than the back of his own hand. So almost every evening I landed up in his house, had enough drinks to drown ourselves, ate many mathis and reached my room after midnight and worked on my presentation till the dawn! My sleep? Sacrificed at the altar of mathi!

Now my presentation being on Engineering Support in Operations, I needed a map of Sri Lanka, as I was writing on Sri Lankan Operations, where I had served. I tried my best to draw a map of that country but failed miserably. Now it was SKN’s daughter’s turn to rescue me. She drew a perfect map of Sri Lanka, by the grid method I believe, and gave me. I took a zillion copies (I still have some) of it. I made my presentation on the appointed day.

I received only three prizes/awards in academics. The first was in a Middle Management Course for a Case Study. The next was for the Project in this said Senior Management Course. The latter was team work, involving four of us. Oh, I must tell you about it some time. I can’t imagine how we won that prize, considering how we worked on the project! The hours we spent gossiping and recounting our postings and experiences, was nobody’s business!

On the final day of the Course our team got the JK Industries Trophy for the Project. We could not control our mirth. We giggled like small children. For me the bigger surprise was when my Study was awarded the medal for the Best Special Study Presentation. SKN was my Guru from a few decades back. Was he challenging me? Like my father did a few years ago while I was going for my SSB? Was he pushing me? Was he trying to break me? If he was, he did it well! He pushed me beyond my limits with mathi as the bait!

I gave that medal to SKN’s wife to keep. Their daughter had a big hand in making my presentation visually good, with that perfect map. After a year SKN’s wife gave me back the medal. Though I have it now with me, I do not think it belongs to me.

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