Boots Belts Berets

by Tanushree Podder

  ‘One of these days I am going to remove all the wires from my ventilator,’ he hissed.

  We sympathized with his tormented soul, and assured him of our assistance in the matter of wire removal from all ventilators.

  The derelict battle tank, with its missing hatch was our hideout, our own private domain, and we escaped there to enjoy a few puffs whenever the opportunity arrived.

  The night was beautiful, but we were in a dejected mood. Drawing on our fags, we bared our souls to each other.

  ‘I wish I could run away,’ I confided. ‘The ragging and the killing routine are getting too much for me.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ asked Bertie. ‘I can’t run away because I opted for this life. If I were to go back to Goa, my father would promptly put me into a college, force me to graduate in commerce, and then enroll my services for the family business. And one thing I am confident about is that this life is much better than sitting in the shop.’

  ‘You have studied in a boarding school, so you don’t miss your family, but I do.’

  ‘That is why I am saying, run away. Go back to your family.’ ‘That’s the problem. I can’t,’ I said, staring helplessly at the stars winking above me. ‘I defied my father to join the NDA. If I go back, he will rub it in for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Why did you want to join the Academy in the first place?’ asked Randy.

  ‘When we lived in Poona, I had several friends whose fathers were instructors at the Academy. They lived inside the campus, and I came here frequently to play with them. I attended a few Passing Out Parades, and that was it,’ I confessed. ‘I was hooked by the glamour and gleam.’

  ‘What about you?’ Bertie asked Maachh. ‘Wouldn’t you like to escape from here?’

  ‘Me?’ he looked incredulous. ‘Banish the thought, my boy. My father has lived for the day I become an army officer. It is a follow-up of his boyhood dream. That is the reason he put me in a Sainik School right from the beginning. He will skin me alive if I were to run away from the Academy.’

  Randy was the only one who seemed quite content with life, as he let out a cloud of smoke from his mouth.

  ‘I’m okay,’ he replied to Maachh’s questioning look. ‘I have never known any other life. Right from my great-grandfather to my brother, everyone has been in the army. It is a family tradition. I don’t really mind the rigour. It sort of toughens you up, and then there are compensations. It isn’t going to be like this forever. Imagine, a few terms later, we will be seniors. This too shall pass,’ Randy ended philosophically.

  All through our conversation, Natty had held his tongue. Now he spoke up, ‘I’ve been tempted too. I have wanted to run away many times, but I can’t.’

  ‘And why is that, my dear chap?’ asked Bertie.

  ‘My school had given me a grand send-off when I left for the NDA. It would be a disgrace if I ran away from it. Imagine the kind of ridicule my entire family would have to face. Besides, I don’t think my father can afford to pay the compensation that is required to be paid if I ditch the Academy.’

  ‘Enough of this nonsense. Let’s change the topic. I don’t like depressive talk,’ interjected Bertie. ‘Why waste time over what can’t be?’

  But no one seemed to be in a mood to talk. A cloud had covered the sky, concealing the moon. The night no longer seemed to hold any enchantment for us. Lost in thought, we walked back to the squadron.

  The gloom didn’t desert me even upon reaching the room, so I decided to borrow a book from Bertie. I found him seated at his desk, reading through a file labelled ‘Gandhi’s Teachings’. I was surprised. My take on the guy immediately went through mutation. A guy reading the lofty ideals of the Mahatma couldn’t be a lost case, I thought. He must be deeper than he professed to be.

  Even in my most abstemious state of mind, I had not resorted to reading writings by the Father of the Nation. Perhaps some sublime reading could lift me out of the blue.

  He broke into loud guffaws when I asked if I could borrow the file.

  ‘By all means,’ he spluttered as he handed it to me.

  I maintained a hurt and meaningful silence at his scorn as I left his room.

  Switching on the table lamp, I prepared myself for some enlightenment. Maybe Gandhi’s wisdom about the bare truths of life would guide me in my darkest hours. With a flourish, I opened the file and stared aghast. Stuck inside were pages and pages of voluptuous nudes torn out from Playboy and Debonair.

  Later, I learnt that every cadet possessed his own collection of Gandhi’s Teachings. Since putting up posters on the doors and walls was not allowed, the cadets did the next best thing – they made their personal scrapbooks adorned with female nudes. The next morning, I was the butt of all jokes. Maachh continued to call me Gandhiji for the next few weeks.

  One evening, in the anteroom, Randy decided to play his harmonica. The guy was a natural. Like he did most things, he was pretty good at wielding the mouth organ, too. After he finished playing a foot-tapping song, a burst of applause rang through the hall, and a few first-termers crowded around him. So enchanted were they with his skill that they wanted him to tutor them on the instrument. Some senior cadets also joined the ‘wannabe’ pack of musicians. He agreed to teach the entire lot on the condition that each one got his own mouth organ.

  Within a week, a dozen cadets had acquired mint condition mouth organs with ‘Hero: Made in China’ inscribed on them. From that day, the G squadron resonated with a cacophony of discordant notes at all odd hours of the day and night, except when the seniors were around. Many gave up after a day or two of valiant struggle, while a few had the patience to continue for a couple of weeks. By the end of the month, only a couple of patient ones were seen with their mouth organs. Grudgingly, I must admit that they could make reasonably refined noises.

  One morning, Maachh sprang a surprise on us.

  ‘I want you to meet a general,’ he said.

  Excited at the prospect, we flooded him with questions.

  ‘Is he still in service?’

  ‘Has he fought a war?’

  ‘Is he an ex-NDA cadet?’

  ‘Wait till you meet him,’ was the enigmatic reply, as he led us towards the library.

  Once we reached there, he sought out a senior cadet, and pointed him out to us.

  ‘What kind of joke is this?’ hissed Bertie. ‘That is a cadet and not a general.’

  ‘Stupid, he is General Seth,’ insisted Maachh. ‘You’d better salute him.’

  We rushed out of the library and broke into loud laughter, while he grew increasingly angry.

  ‘Ask anyone, and they will confirm whatever I have told you.’

  He caught hold of a friendly second-termer emerging from the library, for confirmation.

  ‘He is right,’ the guy seconded Maachh. ‘That is General Seth.’

  ‘But he is just a cadet.’

  ‘Didn’t you guys know that there are several brigadiers and generals in the Academy?’ The second termer explained, ‘A cadet who gets relegated once is called a brigadier, one who is relegated twice is a general, and a third-timer is called field marshal.’

  Much to Maachh’s chagrin, we just couldn’t stop laughing at the information.

  Each course, we discovered, had a couple of brigadiers and two or three generals, although field marshals were rare.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind becoming a general in the Academy,’ said Bertie.

  Among the cadets, there was a grudging respect for the generals.

  ‘Nor would I,’ seconded Maachh.

  ‘Go hang yourselves,’ I admonished. ‘Do you know what you’ll have to do to achieve that title?’

  ‘We have to fail in our academics, or outdoor activities.’

  ‘There is an easier way. I have found out. All you have to
do is to get admitted into the hospital and lose a couple of weeks’ training,’ said Randy.

  ‘With Mademoiselle Cruella ruling the MI Room, do you think that is possible?’ laughed Bertie. ‘She will hang us upside down before she allows us to occupy a bed in the hospital. I am sure you guys want to keep your limbs intact.’

  Bertie had bestowed the moniker Cruella DeVille, after the vamp in the film 101 Dalmatians, on Manisha. In fact, anyone who crossed his path was given a nickname. Singularly, he had achieved the feat of naming all the tormentors in our squadron. The monikers ranged from the Biblical ones like Cain, Herod, and Judas, to the more modern ones like Doctor No, Dracula, and Mogambo.

  With just thirty rupees as allowance, we were always broke. The Gole Market shops, with their shelves bursting with exotic things drew wistful sighs, as we cycled by them. All we could afford was an occasional fag. The only cadets who had some money were the ones who had stuffed their pockets from home. In our group, Randy and Bertie were the moneyed guys. Randy’s brother, a captain in the infantry, gave him fancy things and enough money to keep him smoking expensive brands through the term.

  In Bertie’s case, it was his mother who spoilt him. She laboured under the illusion that like every other hostel, the Academy supplied inedible food. The poor lady believed that her beloved son was next to starving, so she smuggled all the money she could into Bertie’s wallet, right under his father’s nose. Our pal didn’t make any efforts at dispelling his mother’s illusions. Rather, he worked on her emotions to extract more money.

  Maachh and I were mostly pinned by the merciless talons of bankruptcy. After buying bare necessities like shaving cream and blades, soaps and toothpastes, nothing much remained in our wallets. I cursed the shaving habit imposed on us by the seniors, since it took a big bite of my small allowance.

  With our emaciated wallets, all we could do on our Sunday trips to the city was stare longingly at the shop windows and the fancy restaurants. It was only when Randy or Bertie decided to open the purse strings that we sponged on them for an ice cream or a movie. Of course, I kept an impeccable account of the expenses in the fond hope that I would be able to return the borrowed amount one day.

  Khare was a local chap. Come Sunday and his family would turn up at the squadron laden with homemade snacks. Academy rules specified that visitors could only be entertained in the anteroom. One day, the sight of Khare's mother with the packets of food was too much to bear. As soon as the dutiful son left the anteroom to see his folks off, we sped in and polished off everything.

  When he returned after waving to his family, the poor man found nothing left, not even little scraps of the delicacies. After that day, Khare went out to meet his parents in the parking lot, finished the eats in the car, and then brought them to the anteroom.

  Girls were an obsession with the cadets. One day, we discovered the photograph of a beautiful girl in Macchh’s wallet.

  ‘You scoundrel!’ Bertie scolded him. ‘Who is the girl residing in your wallet?’

  ‘Oh, that! She is my girlfriend, Reena,’ replied the Fish in a breezy manner.

  ‘You mean you have a girlfriend, too?’ We were incredulous. Which girl would want to befriend the Fish?

  To prove his point, Maachh began to inscribe her name on the wristband of his watch. He also wrote it on his wrist in very small, barely noticeable letters.

  ‘Just for motivation,’ he explained.

  Bertie was the next one to follow suit. He wrote ‘Diana’ on his wrist. We had no way of knowing whether he meant Phantom’s girlfriend or his own.

  Soon, the craze caught on among the other first-termers of G squadron. Every cadet displayed a female name on his wrist. Finding myself the odd one out, I wrote the name ‘Sunita’ although I didn’t have a girlfriend. I suspect most of the first-termers didn’t. Initially, the names were restricted to the wrist, and were written in small letters, which were generally not visible from a distance. With time, they began appearing on various parts of the body, and got washed off during the bath. As days passed, many of us got bolder and began writing the names in bigger letters and permanent ink.

  It was around this time that the name of Manisha, the lady doctor who was a favourite with most cadets, appeared on the inner side of Harry’s biceps. He wrote her name in big letters in permanent ink. One morning, during the PT parade, Captain Sabharwal caught sight of it when Harry was hanging from the beam. ‘Come here you scoundrel. What is this?’ he asked, pointing at the name.

  Harry had been adventurous enough to use coloured ink to inscribe the name.

  ‘Who is this Manisha?’ barked Sabby. There was pin-drop silence as we waited for the reply. Seconds ticked by, and silence grew thicker.

  ‘I am asking you a question, cadet, and I want a reply.’

  Harry mumbled something incoherent that drove Sabby up the wall.

  ‘Meet me in my office after PT,’ Sabharwal announced angrily.

  God knows what happened thereafter, but Harry was found scrubbing his biceps so hard that they became badly scarred. Permanent ink doesn’t rub off easily.

  The craze died as suddenly as it had begun.

  ‘That bloody ***!’ cursed our pal, his arms raw and swollen. ‘All I had done was write a name. I didn’t rape anyone.’

  ‘That Sabby is a frustrated goon,’ we all expressed our sympathies.

  ‘Was Sabby born old?’ asked Maachh indignantly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He doesn’t understand the surge of testu ... whatever,’ he broke off.

  ‘Testosterone,’ I completed it for him.

  ‘Boys of our age must be allowed some liberty,’ the Fish frowned, ‘I drew oodles of inspiration from the tattoo, and now he has taken it away.’

  ‘Right! It certainly provided us the extra josh (energy), needed to carry us through the tough routine. Now, even that motivation has been snatched away from us,’ Randy rued.

  seven

  p

  It was the month of festivals, and also the time for the mid-term break. Like a carbonated drink to which a pinch of salt has been added, our excitement seemed to froth over. The very thought of getting away from the Academy for four full days pepped up everyone. Most of the cadets were going home for the break. For the cadets from far-flung places like Assam and Jammu, it was an impossibility to go home for the brief period. But even they decided to get away from the Academy. Some of them went to stay with their local guardians in Poona, while some embarked on sightseeing trips to the south, or to Goa. A few, like us, were undecided about their plans.

  In the afternoon, Maachh burst into my room and announced, ‘Hey guys, did you know that the Academy has organized a trip to Bombay?’

  ‘Fantastic! I would love to go there. Imagine – beaches, babes and beer!’ sighed Randy.

  ‘I am thinking of opting for the trip,’ I said. ‘There is no point going home for four days when two days would be wasted on the journey. Besides, I have never been to Bombay.’

  My words elicited varied reactions from the gang.

  ‘Hey man, our Pessi is getting adventurous!’ shouted Bertie. ‘What a transformation!’

  ‘I will also opt for Bombay,’ declared Maachh. ‘If I go home, my dad is going to harass me about my grades. He expects me to take home a couple of trophies.’

  Randy had no alternative but to go to Bombay since his parents were on a vacation to the Andaman Islands.

  Since the three of us were opting for the Bombay trip, Bertie was reluctant to go home to Goa. That evening, when he called home to inform his parents about his change of plan, his mother began sobbing into the phone. He came back fuming. ‘No luck! I’ve to go back to good ole Goa,’ he confided. ‘My mom uses emotional blackmail the way the army uses rocket launchers. Wonder what she’ll do when I have to fight wars.’

 
In the end, it was Maachh, Randy and I who reached the shores of Bombay. The navy, our hosts, had made excellent arrangements for the cadets. After the tough routine we followed at the Academy, the break was like a five-star holiday, and we were determined to make the most of it.

  Every day was a new day, packed with excitement and adventure. Not willing to lose a moment, we set out for exploration much before the city began stirring. We went to movies, and window-shopped to our hearts’ content. We packed in as much bird watching in our schedule as possible, basked in the sun, and frolicked in the sand.

  ‘This is life,’ remarked Maachh, glancing around. We were lolling on the Juhu beach, close to the Sun ‘n’ Sand Hotel. From our vantage point, we could observe a few foreigners clad in the skimpiest bikinis we had ever seen. Our eyes popped out of their sockets when one of them removed her bra to tan herself.

  ‘Boy, this is too much.’ Maachh’s excitement had reached a feverish pitch.

  ‘My dear Fish, this is Bombay,’ laughed Randy. ‘Don’t forget we’ve to get back to the Academy.’

  ‘Dampener!’ retorted our pal. ‘And I thought only Pessi was capable of it.’

  The navy did its best to keep us occupied. I guess our host did not want the cadets to go berserk in Bombay, which we did anyway, at the first available opportunity. We were taken to the first aircraft carrier INS Vikrant, and shown around. With so many aircraft tucked in its belly, the entire ship looked like an impressive airport on the move. We were a privileged bunch to visit the first submarine acquired by India. It was a thrilling experience.

  We visited most of the five-star hotels around the Gateway of India, parading confidently in the lobbies, and in the shopping arcades of the hotels. We loafed around as if we owned the place. By now, we had learnt to dress up immaculately and conduct ourselves smartly with a large dollop of self-confidence, although our pockets were empty. The hotel malls were too expensive, and all we could do was feast our eyes on the pricey ware displayed in its windows. We did, of course, indulge ourselves with a cup of coffee at the coffee bars. The luxurious surroundings made us feel like royalty.