Weak To 'Weaker'

Weak To Weaker

A week after setting foot in the cool confines of Wellington, I found myself with ten colleagues in the syndicate room, waiting to dazzle the Directing Staff (DS), the colonels who instruct us, with our performance in the IKT (Initial Knowledge Test). I had reached the Staff College the way most of us do, having survived a brutal entrance examination, and I carried the quiet certainty of a man who has been told, repeatedly and by competent authority, that he is the cream of the army. An initial knowledge test held no terror for cream. The DS, sensing perhaps that the cream was a shade over-confident, tried to settle our nerves by telling us not to take the IKT too seriously. It was a formality, nothing more. After all, we were the cream. Isn’t it?

At the appointed minute, H-hour for the cream, I began my attempt. I skipped the first page, which was mostly facts and figures; I had never been able to retain the width of a VSL or the span of a BLT, and saw no reason to start now. The later sections, I was certain, were mine. What followed instead was a long column of questions about which I knew nothing whatever. MES, station matters, the doings of other arms, and on it went. Before panic could establish a foothold, I recalled the DS and his counsel of calm. I relaxed, and ticked an answer against every question with the serene impartiality of a man who has no preference because he has no idea. I laid down my pen in a flat twenty minutes. Surveying the room, I found ten faces bent low over their papers, ticking and crossing and ticking again, and I wondered why grown officers were getting so ‘senti’ over something as trifling as the IKT. I sat back. Not idle, exactly, for there were chores to plan: recharging the Tata Sky, getting my wedding suit altered to ‘staff college standard’, the small administration of a man with time on his hands.

My reverie was cut short by the DS, who came to relieve me of my sheet and read it over. I watched, smug, as he settled into his chair. After a while he looked up and smiled at me. I returned the smile and began totting up the brownie points I had banked before we had so much as exchanged names. He asked, mildly, whether I would like to carry on. I said I would, in the affirmative. I packed up my briefcase, the brand-new ‘DSSC’ issue that marked me unmistakably as cream, took a last look round the room of strugglers, and walked out. The thirty-minute head start I put to good use, reaching the CSD well ahead of the pack and ransacking it at leisure. Chores done, I went home to a homely lunch and a thoroughly deserved siesta.

The IKT passed from memory into the general blur of the course. Then one morning, over a black coffee at Chanakya, I overheard the phrase ‘weak list’. I drifted across to investigate. A coursemate sat grieving; the college, it emerged, had taken the IKT scores and used them to sort a few unfortunates into a weak student list, an official register of the academically infirm. I offered the man my condolences. I may also have admonished him, gently, for stumbling at a hurdle as low as the IKT. One must, I felt, keep up standards. He took it well, all things considered.

A couple of quiet days followed. I was deep in the luxury of still being asleep at nine on a Saturday when the phone began to ring. I did the only sensible thing and ignored it. It rang on, with the persistence of bad news. At length I answered, to find my ‘weak’ coursemate on the line, instructing me to present myself at the syndicate room at once. I made him say it twice, and then a third time, before I could bring myself to accept that the message was meant for me. He rang off, but not before mentioning, with what I detected as some satisfaction, that the DS was waiting with open arms.

I do not recall the journey. For all I know I set a Staff College record from Gurkha Hill to Delta Division parking, the swiftest reluctant march in its history. The welcome on arrival was warm. The DS received me into the weak gang and proceeded to a thorough appreciation of my past ‘fauzi’ performance, my IKT, and our collective distinction as the unwanted cream of the 73rd Staff Course. The cream, it appeared, had curdled.

What the weak classes actually consisted of I shall carry to my grave with the dignity it deserves. I will say only that there is a particular flavour of humiliation reserved for a roomful of decorated field officers being walked, slowly and with great patience, through a thing a recruit learns in his first week. Our DS, a colonel of the old school, had a habit of removing his spectacles before delivering a verdict, as though the sight of us was best taken in soft focus. ‘This,’ he would say, polishing the lenses, ‘is fundamental.’ It always was. We had, between us, commanded men in places that do not appear on tourist maps. On a Saturday morning we could not, it seemed, be trusted with the fundamental.

We were released after two hours and ordered to present ourselves at 0900 each Saturday thereafter. Word travelled, as word does, and across the division we acquired the title of the ‘elite lot’. The following Saturday, ambling up in college formals, I crossed a party of ladies who fell to murmuring as I passed. I caught the words ‘weak classes’ in the murmur. Life went on. I consoled myself with intelligence from the grapevine: a fresh weak list, drawn after the first Revision Assignment (RE-1), would relieve the present incumbents. Liberation lay one examination away.

I resolved to acquit myself well in RE-1. I am pleased to record that I did. My definition of acquitting myself well parted ways, admittedly, with the Training Team’s, but a man must be allowed his own standards. The upshot was that I did not merely keep my place; I graduated, with full honours, to the post of most experienced member of Weak List-2. The promotion raised a few eyebrows. A colleague or two assumed a clerical error and said so. But the register held firm, and so did I. I had achieved what no other officer of the 73rd course could claim: selection to the weak list twice in succession. From ‘weak’ to ‘weaker’ in the space of a few weeks, and not a soul able to match it.

I now await the results of RE-2. My faith in the system remains total. Let them bring on Weak List-3; I am, after all, its natural candidate, and I would not wish to break a record I have worked so hard to set. Cheers.

Update. This morning I had my counselling with the SI, the Senior Instructor, a Brigadier who heads Delta Division and to whom all the DS, and all of us, ultimately answer. He had news. The weak list, he informed me, has been abolished. The whole apparatus, the register, the Saturday parade, the soft-focus fundamentals, gone, as though it had never existed. No more ignominy. I confess to a small, traitorous pang. I had been the last and the greatest name on a list that no longer exists, undisputed champion of a contest the authorities have quietly resolved never to hold again. There is, I find, no medal for that.

Sripada Sriram

L/No 554

Letter to Father

          LETTER TO FATHER

Dear father,

It’s been a long time since I wrote to you. The advent of mobile phone has stolen the sheen of the good old letter writing . Letters that could pack in themselves some unsaid emotions that the words so easily conveyed. I remember fondly that the letters that I wrote to you from school were almost always an experiment for me in dabbling with the English language. I was, of course, discovering the magic in those prose, little aware that reading and understanding the words was difficult for you. That you used to get one of your English affluent colleagues to decipher the meaning of my words did little to hamper my continued experimentation. One of those many things that I failed to appreciate and understand.

But, it is not to reflect upon those letters that I write to you today. I have picked up the pen to share with you, my unbounded joy of visiting our home town after a gap and reliving our good old days in the simple environs of a calm and laid back place like Bilaspur. It won’t be a cliché to say that not much has changed. But the changes that have happened will leave us with a tinge of nostalgia and an acute pain of no longer being a part of the city which, for so long was our home.

The railway station has undergone a massive transformation. I guess your old office has also shifted. I searched for it, but in vain. I also tried to scout out a few of your colleagues, but I found none. All those trains streaming in reminded me of those old days when I sometimes used to accompany you in the tight confines of the Diesel engine and later on the Electric ones. I tried to figure you standing inside the engine, looking out for the signal as the locomotive cooed onto the platform. As I trudged along the platform, I saw the same old black coloured standard sized boxes bearing the names of their owners and in that instant, I saw the image of your box in my mind – ‘SJ Pantulu, Driver, Bilaspur Division’.

I then went off to each of the houses that we stayed in. My earliest memories were of the one room quarter in the old Loco colony. To my surprise, it is still standing strong. But it seemed so small to me that I wondered how we could have lived there so happily all those years ago. I then went to the house in Wireless Colony. To my surprise, it was in ruins. I was aghast at the sight. The best memories of my childhood were associated with that home. Here was the place where I learnt to play cricket, made the best of my friends and started understanding our overall situation and also was introduced to the vagaries of life, obstacles, problems and yet how to stay happy and content. The Mango trees that we had planted as kids had been uprooted too. I came away from there, a piece of me, left behind at my favourite home.

As I was driving through those narrow roads, I crossed many a people cycling away to work and I felt it was you, with your black bag, tucked behind on the cycle carrier, pedaling away to work, come sunshine, cold or rain. I so wished you would turn back and smile at me. I also went to the house which I only used to visit as a guest, on my vacations from Sainik School and later on, NDA. I fondly remembered the kind of excitement you all showed when I was home, preparing the choicest of dishes for me and leaving the TV completely free for me to view to my heart’s content. The taste of the special spicy curry that you used to prepare still lingers in my mouth.

How can I not mention to you the excitement I felt when I passed the vegetable market? We used to go to this place once a week, me, piggy riding on that Atlas cycle of yours, holding those massive cloth bags to accommodate the truck load of vegetables that we were going to bring home. I still cannot erase my memory of your unadulterated enthusiasm in selecting the vegetables and driving a hard bargain. Vegetable shopping was almost like a religion to you. Can’t we go back to that market one more time and soak in the unbridled joy of such a simple pleasure of life?

And, finally, the day you retired from the Railways. I recall your relief as well as the grief you felt at having to bow out of the life that you had lived for the last 33 years. Your emotional Farewell speech, flanked by the juniors that you had mentored, choke me up too. But I was also happy that years of active work were finally behind you. They gave you a worthy send off. I could see how much you meant to them all. One would have thought that after the retirement, we could spend more time together – as Father and Son, sharing joy and sorrows in only the manner that a father – son duo could. How did we fall apart? We kept drifting away to an extent where it became irrevocable to get back.

I wish you were here today. I have so much to tell you. Lots of good stuff to share, some agonies to narrate, places to visit and people to introduce. I wish you were here to see your grandson wreck havoc, throw caution to winds and make life sweetly miserable for us. I wish you were here to play with him, talk to him, tell him how good I was when I was his age (!) and give him the pleasure of having a grand dad by his side. I wish we could go into the forests of Kanha together and unlike the last time when we came back empty handed, I wish we could sight a Tiger together.

Do you remember our constant debates on the state of Indian cricket? Your disappointment vs my optimism? I wish we could watch matches together. I especially missed your company when the Indian Test Team was defying odds upon odds in scripting a marvelous ‘come from behind ‘Victory on the Australian soil. I wish we could discuss Virat, the way we used to discuss Sachin. How I wish, I could gather all my unfulfilled desires and go back in time to sit with you and share it all. Alas, if only we could go back in time.

I wish I could sit across from you and tell you that I realise how much you sacrificed for me, in giving me a decent education and the opportunity to do well in life. I want to acknowledge your efforts and contribution. I want to tell you, at least once, how much I love you. Why I never said while I still had the chance, beats me. I want to say all those things that I left unsaid all these years. I had the chance to say it to you face to face, but I didn’t. Now I feel the urge to say it but you are no longer with me. I wish you could come back one last time and give me a shot at redemption. I wish.

Hindsight is a tortuous thing. It tells you that you should have done the things when you still had the chance rather than rue after the deed is done. I know I should have done all these while you were still alive, I know it. But its too late. I wish you can forgive my insolence and stay content wherever you are now. I wish all kids realise that the opportunity to show their love, affection and gratitude to a parent should never be lost. Say it when you still can, or you will rue it after they are gone.

Rest in Peace dear father. I love you.